poker superstars:Get your game on: professional gaming comes to North American TV

6/6/2006 1:50:05 PM, by Jeremy Reimer

A number of years ago, there was a Far Side cartoon featuring a young nerdling consumed by his Nintendo games. His adoring parents gazed on, dreaming of a whole stack of newspaper job ads with taglines like: "Can you save the Princess? We need you! $60,000 to start plus company car!"

Well, Gary Larson may have spoken too soon. Starting around the time that the original Quake was released, professional gaming leagues began forming around the world. In 1997, the Cyberathlete Professional League (CPL) hosted their first big Quake tournament. Each year, the number of contestants, the number of games played, and the total prize money have increased. In the CPL's most recent tour in November 2005, the grand prize winner Johnathan "Fatal1ty" Wendel walked away with a cool US$150,000, the largest single prize in professional gaming history. There are other leagues, such as the World Cyber Games (WCG), that also host large tournaments every year.

Of course, as every professional sports league knows (especially the NHL), you're nothing if you don't have a TV contract. Well, Major League Gaming (MLG) has solved that particular problem, signing a deal with the USA Network, a channel that reaches about 90 million cable subscribers in the US.


"Video games already have a spectator factor -- when someone is playing in their living room, others tend to gravitate toward the television to watch the action and cheer or heckle the player," says Sundance DiGiovanni, the cofounder of MLG. "We are using commentators and telestrators to explain strategies and key moves, and to give the feel of any other sporting broadcast."

USA network executives say the shows are planned to air in November as a series of seven one-hour unscripted episodes. Featured games will include Halo 2 and Super Smash Bros. Melee. Will audiences be riveted? It might seem far-fetched, but when you consider that broadcasts of professional poker tournaments get good ratings these days, perhaps it isn't as bizarre as you might think.

As in many other things, South Korea is already far ahead of the rest of the world in the field of professional gaming. Not only do they have professional Starcraft leagues with corporate sponsors and multiple TV channels dedicated to covering matches, but the best players get to wear team uniforms and are worshipped by leagues of screaming teenage girls. Some of them do pretty well financially. One of the top players, Lim Yo-Hwan, better known as BoxeR, recently signed a multiyear deal worth over KRW 200 million per year, or US$200,000 (excluding endorsements and tournament prize money). Not only that, but the 26 year-old's autobiography became a best-seller in Korea. His fan club boasts more than 600,000 members.

All this for playing video games? Some may see the idea of video-game superstars as being a bit silly. However, after having viewed some of the best televised Starcraft matches, I'm firmly convinced that the intense training and nearly superhuman skill exhibited by the top video game players in the world can be just as much fun to watch as seeing grown men chasing after a ball or a puck. The executives at the USA Network are hoping that others will agree.