World Series of Video Games Cancelled

Goobergunch writes "The official site for the World Series of Videogames is now indicating that the WSVG, including planned events in Los Angeles, London and Sweden, has been cancelled. The WSVG included competitions for Guitar Hero II, Quake 4, World of Warcraft Arena, as well as Counter-Strike and Warcraft III. From the announcement: 'The continuing challenges of securing adequate revenues to sustain the production of the WSVG's large scale events and television programming, in a very crowded field of competitive gaming leagues, has prompted us to re-evaluate our direction as an organization. Unfortunately, the decision is to cancel the remainder of the WSVG season, as we shift our focus solely to growing our online advertising network of websites, which currently reach seven million users each month. '"

Not to be a troll but...

[east coast]

I kinda give this a "Ah, who cares" vote.

Not in the fashion of "Why is this on Slashdot!!??!?oneone!!" but more of a "watching people play video games is boring" way.

The great thing about video games is that, for the most part, I can wake up at 4 AM and still get my game on. I don't need to go someplace or find people to play them with.

Organized team sports are interesting to the public because it involves the swilling of beer and a bunch of guys out on a field doing something as teams. I'd be hard pressed to get enough people together to play a legal game of baseball or football. Luckily with video games I don't need to worry about it.

And even with a large group of skilled professional athletes there really isn't too much of a thrill in watching someone else play anyway.

The main problem: It sucked.

[devnull17]

This should come as absolutely no surprise to anyone. The WSVG was insultingly dumbed-down and content-free ("Wow! Was that an ice block?!?"). I'm a semi-serious WoW player, and my friends and I all found their arena coverage to be completely devoid of any meaningful content. I realize that their aim was to attract a wider range of viewers, but "normal people" don't give a rat's ass about competitive videogaming (and probably never will in the US), and people who do care would probably prefer coverage and analysis from people who have actually played the games before.

Just look at the judging methodology for the Guitar Hero competition: ten points each for style, technical correctness and difficulty, each determined by a single judge. Two of the three judges were D-list celebrities who had probably never even played Guitar Hero. The extensive statistics provided by the game after each song were completely ignored in the decision process. The whole thing was structured much more like an episode of Nickelodeon GUTS than a serious competition designed to determine the best player.

The 2:1 commercial-to-programming ratio couldn't have helped, either.

In short, the whole thing was a commercially oversaturated, content-starved mess; I'd like back the hour of my life that I spent watching it, and no one will be the least bit sad to see it go.

Re:I feel a disturbance in the force

[Notquitecajun]

On the other side of this, we are seeing an interesting new breed of athlete...particularly football. The Madden Football generation is playing now, and with its fairly complex play-calling ability, what we are going to find is there may actually arise some Gen-X coaches who...ahem...know how to handle clock management. LOTS of football players are learning how to be more intelligent about the game through video games, and it gives coaches an interesting way to simulate plays and game situations.