12/03/24
October 07, 2004
World Cyber Games comes to America.: Is the World Cyber Games the next Olympics? WCG competition started in 2000 with players representing 17 countries, and has quickly grown, thanks to blanket media coverage in Asia. South Korea has three cable TV channels dedicated solely to showing other people playing video games, with expert commentators acting as the Frank Giffords of strategy games. Top players have fan clubs with up to 400,000 members and are as recognizable as World Cup soccer players to most of the public. ... "The USA is the biggest market for the game industry ... You have a lot of skilled players. They just have to be introduced to the idea of treating this as a sport. It's just a matter of time." And Sport or Not Sport? [brought to you by the Cult of forksclovetofu]
posted by worldcup2002 to other at 10:56 PM - 3 comments
I've been planning on and dedicating too much time to this for a while now. I've been in serious training on a four man ESPN Hockey squad. The Ogden Ogres, by which name we've never referred to ourselves, are world-beaters. But alas, hockey is a niche sport, even in cyber-la-la-land.
posted by garfield at 09:41 AM on October 08, 2004
Is Halo part of it? I'm a super nerd when it comes to Halo.
posted by WeedyMcSmokey at 12:21 PM on October 11, 2004
I have heard of this. It scares me a little. We could be witnessing the transformation to a true "cyber" society. This isnt a sport, its a game. To treat it like a sport elevates its important. Alot of people are more interested in a players stats then what the team does. Some would like to deal with "perfect" fantasy, cyber players and teams, than the flawed real thing. This is a case of a good thing going completely overboard.