Gaming the Olympics
I was just checking out the front page of the New York Times' web site, when I noticed a prominent ad in the right column, just below the financial news ... for the World Cyber Games. That event is, of course, an annual multinational fragfest where kids worldwide vie to be the best player of Halo, Unreal Tournament, and others. It's pretty cool, and the online video of the matches is really stunning. It's run by Samsung, who advertises it heavily every year.
But ... on the main page of newyorktimes.com? That's a rather remarkable moment in the mainstreaming of games, I'd say.
Posted by Clive Thompson at August 09, 2004 12:53 PM
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If competitive games wern't so hyperviolent, My guess is that you'd see a whole lot more mainstream coverage of them.
I mean how many people play Counter-Strike? That's a big potential audience.
The unfortunate part is genres that are not hyperviolent, tend to be very lag unfriendly...
Posted by: Karmakin at August 10, 2004 11:24 AM
It's true, the Counterstrike audience is massive -- I posted a while back about some interesting statistics that showed that more people play Counterstrike than watch Friends.
Good point about the violence keeping it off mainstream TV. But I'm confident that cable will eventually start showing this stuff more often -- channels like G4 will be much bigger. Over in Korea, the whole damn country shuts down and is glued to the tube when a big deathmatch is aired.
Posted by: Clive at August 11, 2004 12:24 PM
Posted by: china shareware at September 29, 2004 2:08 PM
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If competitive games wern't so hyperviolent, My guess is that you'd see a whole lot more mainstream coverage of them.
I mean how many people play Counter-Strike? That's a big potential audience.
The unfortunate part is genres that are not hyperviolent, tend to be very lag unfriendly...
Posted by: Karmakin at August 10, 2004 11:24 AM
It's true, the Counterstrike audience is massive -- I posted a while back about some interesting statistics that showed that more people play Counterstrike than watch Friends.
Good point about the violence keeping it off mainstream TV. But I'm confident that cable will eventually start showing this stuff more often -- channels like G4 will be much bigger. Over in Korea, the whole damn country shuts down and is glued to the tube when a big deathmatch is aired.
Posted by: Clive at August 11, 2004 12:24 PM
I like this site.
Posted by: china shareware at September 29, 2004 2:08 PM