Is America Ready For Competitive Gaming On TV?

Thanks to GameSpy for its editorial discussing whether America is ready for more TV coverage of competitive gaming, following on from last week's QuakeCon, of which it's claimed: "Television coverage of the event was almost non-existent... although many media outlets did a story on QuakeCon, and taped a few interviews with competitors at the event, none covered the finals in a play-by-play fashion." One editor suggests gaming just isn't appealing enough: ("Deathmatch as we know it just isn't it yet. Visually it isn't too sexy if you're not, yourself, a hardcore player"), whereas a contrasting view is presented by another editor ("The competitive FPS scene in America is also ripe for television. All we'd need to do to get that up and running in the US is copy what the Starleague has done [using StarCraft] in Korea.")

Re:3rd person

[vasqzr]

haven't seen any of the QuakeCon setup, but any deathmatch style clips I've seen broadcast on G4 have always been from the first person point of view.

Congratulations for being the only person that watches "G4 TechTV" since the switch.

It can't be worse than...

[hal2814]

...Scrabble on ESPN [about.com].

I guess I'd watch it.

[dave-tx]

I watched 45 minutes of "World Series of Poker" last night, so I suppose I'd watch just about anything.

Yes, On One Condition

[shadowcabbit]

As long as G4 stays far the fuck away, then yes. Yes it is.

Re:Reminds me...

[hambonewilkins]

My roommate and I were up really early one morning and saw the same. We sat in silence for one minute before my roommate said, "I don't know who's a bigger loser, the guys playing or us for watching."

We turned it off.

God, that sounds boring.

[fatmonkeyboy]

But on the other hand, people watch baseball.