G4TechTV
Teams of expert video gamers face off in a high-stakes battle for glory and prizes on the set of G4TechTV's "Arena."

Video Gaming as Spectator Sport
by Andrew LaVallee

A brawny former offensive lineman bellows an introduction, and we're off: two teams battling each other to the finish, with play-by-play commentary, post-game interviews, most valuable player awards and prizes for the winners.

Welcome to "Arena," a TV show that pits teams of skilled video gamers against one another in head-to-head competition. The show's website calls it a "fragfest" that takes viewers "into the mind of the hardcore gamer." What this all means is that the home viewer gets to watch two teams of guys stare into their screens and shoot at or dance-off against each other's characters until one team emerges victorious. A split screen shows footage of both the gamers as they play and the game in progress.

The video game industry in the United States grew from $6.6 billion in 2000 to $9.4 billion in 2001 according to the NPD Group, a research organization that tracks gaming companies. A June report by Deloitte & Touche said that technological improvements will spur further growth in gaming, increasing the number of devices that can support games from 415 million this year to 2.6 billion by 2010.

And as the industry grows, it's tapping into its players' competitive streaks with increasingly public competitions like "Arena." As the stakes get higher, gamers are getting more competitive, too, and showmanship and performance are becoming part of their winning strategies. Players — and the producers and video game creators cultivating their talent — are aware that gaming has become a spectator sport.

"Arena" was launched in 2002, but its household penetration increased dramatically with the May 2004 merger of its parent channel G4 and TechTV. Now reaching 50 million households, G4TechTV is the only cable channel devoted to video gaming. "Arena" competitors play three games per episode, ranging from the musical showdown of "Dance Dance Revolution" to the killfest that is "Call of Duty."

Even "Arena's" creators admit that, until recently, the idea of watching people play video games wasn't a viable TV concept. "Three years ago this wasn't as close to quasi-mainstream as it is now," said Jim Downs, the show's producer. Noting the healthy sense of competition among gamers, he sought to develop a show "that captures that spirit."

"Arena" accomplishes that feat, Downs said, by combining footage filmed by stationary cameras trained on the game screens and cameramen darting around the competitors. For a medium that, for the most part, still consists of sitting in front of monitors while maneuvering joysticks, it was a challenge to make "Arena" telegenic. It's "inherently not that interesting watching someone sit down at a PC," Downs said. In response, the producers hired cameramen to shoot close-ups of the games being played and the gamers as they play them.

The result is a TV screen crammed with high-adrenaline footage of game, gamer and commentator at the same time. With two four-player teams competing, each half-hour episode is culled from 50 to 60 hours of tape. The end result mimics the way that stadium sports, with their varying camera angles and punchy dialogue, are covered. Winning teams receive Xboxes, gaming titles and bragging rights, while the "Ultimate Arena Champions" who win a series of episodes get all-expense-paid vacations to Hawaii.

Contestants are chosen based on a mix of charisma and skill. "If it's a total blowout at the first 10 minutes of the show, people aren't interested in who's going to win," Downs said. "It's all about spectating."

The show relies on the stakes of the prizes to keep players and viewers engrossed, Downs said, as well as the closeness in skill level between the competing teams. A healthy dose of trash-talking and entertaining commentary doesn't hurt either, he said. "We want some color there."

Gamers are slowly getting the hang of competing in public. Kevin Pereira, one of the show's hosts, said that in earlier seasons, contestants would freeze up when asked about themselves. "Personalities are finally emerging," he said, and as gamers get more accustomed to talking about their winning strategies, "we're starting to get our heroes, the people who are great in the interviews."

Competitions and jackpots are getting bigger elsewhere as well. Pereira recently attended a "Doom 3" competition held on the Great Wall in China. The cash prize was the equivalent of 10 years' salary for the average Chinese citizen. But it was the media pressure, not the competition or prizes, that the gamers noticed most, Pereira said. "One of them said, 'We don't know how nervous we're going to be,'" Pereira said. "Afterward he said he could only hear the audience cheer when they finished."

For Mark Nielsen, whose trade association, iGames, represents gaming centers where gamers go to play and compete, gaming is becoming more public largely because players are no longer "outgrowing" video games. Gamers are still playing as they grow older and younger gamers continue to join the ranks. "We're helping to feed the whole process," he said. Since video games have now been marketed to young men for 15 to 20 years, he said, "as people get older, they continue to stay involved at some level... the market continues to grow." An older, more sophisticated gaming community is more interested in public competitions, as well as the prizes and attention they can get for winning at them.

iGames, which sponsors gaming tournaments in 17 North American regions, has developed a ranking system for individual and team competitors. In August, one tournament boasted a $10,000 prize pool and was sponsored by Intel and ATI. iGames also hosted a two-day tournament in New York in September that drew more than 2,000 attendees. Gamers competing in "Call of Duty" and "Halo" were culled from 30 iGames-affiliated gaming centers nationwide.

Both Nielsen and Downs agree that video game developers are responding to the evolution from home play to competitive matches. "If you look back 20 years, arcades exploded... and part of that was that the games were created for the arcade market, not even made for the home," Nielsen said. The game centers that iGames supports hope to fill this niche by providing a showcase for new games and a public space for competitors to play and be recognized.

"Developers of video games had never considered that their games were being used in exactly this way," Downs said. They're getting the picture, he said, that "these games can be turned into spectator sports."

Watching, however, requires a degree of familiarity with the game being played. Otherwise, understanding what is going on, or who or what to cheer for is nearly impossible. For now, this limits "Arena's" audience, since non-gamers may not be able to easily follow the action.

Matt Gallant, 31, who blogs about video gaming news and gossip for the recently launched Kotaku, agreed that gameplay progresses too rapidly for some spectators. He shared a "highlight reel" from the "Street Fighter III: Third Strike" finals between Daigo and Justin Wong, two well-known gamers, at the Evolution 2004 convention in late July.

Daigo's character parried Wong's attacks, then jumps, parries again and lands a key counterattack, winning the round as the audience of gamers erupts in roaring cheers. "Nobody who doesn't play that game religiously is going to know why everyone is cheering," Gallant said. "Someone had to explain it to me, too."

Gallant had never seen a crowd react so strongly to a game win at a competition, but as a gaming enthusiast, he understood why they did. "People can understand a home-run or a 99-yard kickoff return, but they don't understand how hard it is to parry every shot of a [combination of 15 quick blows], and have the presence of mind to jump and parry the last shot," he said.

Not all long-time gamers are interested in the showmanship and public competitions, preferring instead to stay focused on their own parries and jumps. "I can't fathom watching a TV show about gaming," said Karianne Butler, 30, a computer programmer and avid gamer for four years. "I would rather be gaming myself."

Butler is a fan of what the industry refers to as "first-person shooter" games. These games pit two or more players against each other, either to overcome common obstacles or simply kill one another. Popular for their straightforward violence, these games are among the most commonly played in competitions.

For Butler, the adrenaline rush of virtual violence and seeing her name in the top rankings are reward enough. She can achieve both, she said, whether she's competing in a room full of people or alone in her Minneapolis home.

Butler has never participated in a public competition, and while "it might be fun to go," she said, "you can get that at home behind your computer knowing you just kicked everyone's ass on a server that you know is full of good players."

"If you're into the player-killing part, that's where the reward is."

But as more people flock to gaming as a way to show their stuff, meet other gamers and win bigger prizes, it is better for the games, Butler concedes, even if she doesn't intend to join them.

More people, she said, means increased competition. "And the way I look at it, these are more people I get to kill."

E-mail Andrew LaVallee at andrew at andrewlavallee dot com.