Here's an idea, video games have a chance
to become the next spectator sport.
Even if you don't put your chest and face
and hold up one of those adorable D
with the fence signs, there is a rather good chance
that you have at some point watched sports.
It's OK, your nerd cred is still intact.
Hooray, he's kicked the ball.
Your nerd cred is especially intact,
though, if you've painted your chest and face
and held up a defense sign not at a football or futbol game,
but at a StarCraft match.
Competitive gaming is exactly what it sounds like.
People who are very good at video games like
"StarCraft," "League of Legends," "Call of Duty,"
"Street Fighter," compete professionally
for glory and money.
Otherwise known as esports, competitive gaming
is population nationwide in South Korea.
It's growing in popularity in Europe and good old America,
meaning that while the audience for competitive gaming
is smaller than, say, the Super Bowl, it is by no means small.
4.7 million people tuned in to last year's major league gaming
spring championship, 6 million to IGN's IPL 5.
For comparison, that is 2 million more viewers
than game two of the Stanley Cup finals, but about 10 million
less than game five of the NBA finals.
The Super Bowl got about 108 million viewers,
and the 2010 World Cup about-- drum roll
please-- 3.2 billion viewers.
So while it might be a while before DOTA 2 is
capturing half of the world's eyeballs,
we can't help but wonder what it's
going to take to make a video game the next big spectator
sport.
I mean, when we think of sports and why we spectate,
it's a very particular set of activities that comes to mind,
feats of dexterity, strength and athleticism.
It's about putting the ball or the puck
or your body in the right place at the right time.
It is about winning.
But really?
How much of any sport is wholly and completely
about who is factually and actually the best at it?
People aren't invested in the rivalry between the Boston Red
Sox and the New York Yankees because they're two very evenly
skill matched groups of millionaires
in different colored clothing.
Professional sports is about personal histories
and backgrounds.
It's debates about who is the greatest.
It's the hero's journey and who deserves it to be a champion.
Da Bulls.
When all of this stuff is paired
with the unpredictable action of the sporting event itself,
a narrative emerges and the athletes
become just as much characters and performers
as they do practitioners of some very impressive task.
Professional sports is fundamentally about story.
The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat
is just as true in the wide world of sports
as it is for Shakespeare's Henry VIII or High School Musical.
So of course, the infrastructure we
build around sporting events, the television networks,
the flying cameras, the commentators, advertisements,
and merchandise, all exists to support that story.
It is not simply about who is a better athlete
or wins more games.
I mean, ask any cubs or Liverpool fan.
Ooh, burn.
See it's not just about the game.
Rivalries drive the narratives.
Camera angles and closeups of players' faces
let us speculate about how they're feeling.
Commentators let us know what they must be thinking.
Danny, stay on your bike!
On screen overlays elucidate the mechanics
and report the state of game so everybody
can focus on what's important, the narrative.
Competitive gaming by comparison lacks most if not all of this.
Not the story, of course, you can't have competitive anything
not even curling or cake making without a good story.
But you can lack the infrastructure
which supports and reinforces it for a wide audience.
As Jason Johnson points out in his Kill Screen article--
link in the description-- most games
played competitively are made for one person.
He points out that if you had to watch American football video
game style from the helmet cam of a single player,
you'd have no idea what was going on
and you'd probably vom.
Additionally, there's no video game version
of the NFL's crowd pleasing bright yellow first down line
or multi-camera slow mo instant replays
to outline or review goals and objectives.
There are no globally collected and shared
stats for all of the esports players in the many leagues
upon leagues upon leagues.
And easily comparable stats are the fundamental building blocks
of character and narrative in the sports world,
ask any commentator or announcer.
Plus, the nature of video games means they're always
being changed and updated.
This puts a ton of stress on the announcers.
We don't need the Brent Mussburger or John
Madden of video game commentary detailing
every practical action.
We need them spinning an amazing yarn
so that I know why I should love or hate flash.
We need all of these down and dirty sporty nuts and bolts
so that we can organize the facts and know who is who,
the underdog, the long shot, the villain.
Who do I root for?
Just tell me.
Because until gamers start dressing and acting
like wrestlers wearing their characters, literally
on their sleeves, and we need insight.
Great stories need great characters.
"Counter Strike" needs its Tiger Woods, "Street Fighter"
its Mike Tyson, "Call of Duty" needs its Lance Armstrong,
sort of.
It is around the cult of personality
that so many people are invited into sports
and then left to consider what is truly
riveting about the game itself.
We need to know Justin Wang's history
before we can understand just how
inspired his pwnage really is.
Also we have to know that he's one of the best
so that we can root for the underdog.
It also might be helpful to know whether or not
he's a jerk in real life, or goes around saving puppies.
Once the technology coalesces to decrypt these incredibly
new and Mercurial games, allowing
us to consume stories full of characters
that we're interested in, I think
it's safe to say that in more places than just South
Korea and Sweden, a video game could become a major league
sports or at least a more engaging Olympic event
than long distance swimming.
25 athletes swim 6 laps of the course marked out by buoys.
What do you guys think?
Will a video game become the next big spectator sport?
Let us know in the comments.
And Idea Channel doesn't run on pylons,
it runs on subscriber-lons.
That really didn't work out.
I'm not going to go comments, because that would be too easy.
Let's see what you guys had to say about our love of zombies.
OK first, before comments, some links,
there's a really great conversation about our Maths
episode on Boing Boing.
We'll put a link to that in description.
And speaking of math verse maths, Brady at Numberphile
made a math verse maths video which is awesome.
And a bunch people also pointed us
towards the extra credits video on zombies, which is great.
You should watch that as well.
So much watching for you to do.
To crossy28 and other people saying
that the "Last of Us" and "28 Days Later"
are not actually zombie properties,
I think the threats in those things
are basically indistinguishable from zombies.
So regardless of what they're called in the universe,
to me at least they're zombies.
XIVbomb is really sick of zamboogles, whatever those are.
But to everyone else who is sick of zombies,
it's yet another indication that the fad is dying out
and we should pick something else to be
terrified of pretty soon.
I think, first of all, I don't know if that's true.
But second of all, I think that you don't necessarily
actually have to be afraid of the thing
in order to fully buy into the fear element of it
and I think the representation can be strong even if it's
not literally effective.
LMASergeant attributes the popularity
of zombies to the fact that they are a humanoid monster
that you don't have to feel bad about killing
and so you can then kind of pretend like you're killing
your co-worker or something, which
is a little bleak and dark but maybe has some truth to it.
To spaindavid1125, at first I was like, ha,
but then I was like, ugh.
Relatedly, Urbansound points to the "Day of the Triffids"
which if you haven't read, you should.
It's about killer plants basically.
Enrique Ayalla points out that technology was actually
the solution to these z problem in "World War Z."
I haven't seen it, but I would guess maybe it's like a,
is it possible that it is a cause of and solution
to kind of thing?
I don't know.
Scmiss3 says that they think the next monster will
be maybe some sort of mind controlling being, because
of our fear of surveillance or the destruction
of personal autonomy.
Yeah, I'm on board for that.
That' sounds terrifying.
[GURGLING]
I would also say, The Holder would be absolutely just
horrifying monster.
I'm not sure if you're serious, but Uwe, sorry
for mispronouncing your name.
Graham Russell says that he could
see Slender Man being one next big mainstream baddies, which
I agree and also kind of related to Cthulhu, because he's
this sort of unknowable, like mysterious thing that
is like everywhere.
But Yeah, mysterious, mysterious is good.
This week's episode was brought you
by the hard work of this shambling gray hoard.
And there are two tweets of the week this week,
one from Khalid Watson who point us to some zombie
scholarship on Jacobinmag, and the second
is from Twiptwit who points us towards a call for papers
about the relationship between Dr. Who and religion.
We're not the only ones.
Also some people have expressed an interest
in hanging out and having conversations
in a place other than the YouTube comments section.
So we are going to try an Idea Channel IRC.
So we'll put some instructions for doing
that in the description.
Maybe I'll see you there.