Ok, so Football is America's sport, isn’t it? I think most of us can agree on that. What may not be so well known by many is that in other countries, many people enjoy watching professional video game players. Starcraft is incredibly popular in Korea.
They’ve tried to bring professional gaming to the US. And they’ve failed. It just doesn’t catch on. Noone seems to want to watch professional gaming on TV. Why is that?
Well, I for one, would love to watch professional gaming on TV. I’ve watched the attempts of the video game industry to bring televised video games to the US, and each time, I’m left screaming at the TV things like “What weapons did that guy use?” and “Yeah, I saw it go boom, but how did it happen??!?”.
It is my contention that the biggest problem with watching Video games on TV in the USA has been the lack of good sportscasters. The games themselves are fine – we have some great players – but for us non-experts to watch the experts play, we need the guidance of the sportscasters to tell us what we’re not seeing. We need to be told about the subtle nuances that we don’t see because we have never played on that level.
In American Football, when something unusual happens, the sportscasters are there to give us an instant refresh on the pertinent rule, or a reminder of a particular player’s background and stats. We may not always remember that a particular player has never missed a field goal at 46 yards in the last 8 games, or we may have missed that the receiver had a pinky toe on the line when he caught that ball. Would we still find football as interesting to watch on TV if the sportscasters only said “Wow, those guys sure are big! I bet they can run fast!”
I’m paying close attention to the pre-release activity surrounding Blizzard’s forthcoming game Starcraft 2. During the beta-testing, several very good Sportscasters have caught my attention. On YouTube, you can easily find HDStarcraft and HuskyStarcraft “casting” matches of replays or even live games, and TotalBiscuit over at CynicalBrit.Com is getting into the action with a fun-to-listen-to style that keeps me coming back.
I’m really crossing my fingers that these guys get the attention they deserve. They are the key element that needs to be nurtured if the Video Game industry wants to try one more time to bring Televised Professional Video Gaming to the USA.
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