Competitive gaming was shaken today with the collapse of one of its major organisation, the Championship Gaming Series. The series was a joint venture between satellite TV operators BSkyB, STAR TV and DirecTV and was the first 'esports' enterprise with television coverage. With the CGS's demise and the end of the Cyberathletic Professional League (CPL) in 2007, the console-only Major League Gaming is left as the only important gaming league in the United States.

While the concept was ahead of its time and we are extremely proud of what we’ve accomplished, it became increasingly clear as this ambitious project evolved, that profitability was too far in the future for us to sustain operations in the interim.

Controversial in the tournament gaming scene, CGS began by raiding the US Counter-Strike 1.6 scene for many of its players. It then contracted its new talent to league owned franchises based on the American pro sports model. This created a two year competition freeze between the CGS dominated North America and the independent club/clans based in Europe and Asia as represented by the Group of 7.

The end of the CGS also affects a number of Australian based players under contract for Sydney Underground, a franchise that competed in the CGS' 2008 Pan Asia and World tournaments. The high point for the team came this year with their top two finish at the Pan Asia championships.

The CGS was the first gaming league to broadcast onto television and was one of the first leagues to feature matches played across multiple games - in its last season teams had players for CounterStrike Source, Dead or Alive 4, Forza Motorsport 2 and Fifa 08. Previous tournaments had also included included World of Warcraft battleground competitions.

Wow, this is huge. Out of all the new startup competitions these guys seemed to have the public edge. The competition structure itself was a bit of a let-down, but they had it all over WCG, ESWC, etc with their on-screen presentation. Admittedly it was still B-grade stuff compared to NFL, baseball, et.al. but was on par with extreme sports coverage, poker, etc..

For me the big indicator was the forums. 1/2 the commentary on the forums were from team members. The fan base per team is non-existent (compared to other sports on the same tier). I would have thought the TV viewing numbers would have supported it though.

This is going to be a big setback. I can't imagine another company attempting a TV-centric competition in the next 5 years after this failure, so it looks like we're stuck with the old stalwarts for the time being.

Don't take this the wrong way Bones (no backpunches), but Computer Gaming is not a sport. It shouldn't be considered sport, and it should definately not be broadcast as sport.

so it was like an IPL except in e-'sports' ?

also mongie is right

you're high if you think it will ever be consider a sport like soccer or cricket or rugby league etc

Haha. When I was in asia-land this s*** was on ESPN. I watched bit of where it was a sydney team vs some euros. It didn't work very well on TV because you couldn't choose what you wanted to watch and they never used the first person view.

I had trouble following it and I play computer games... how would some random go watching it? They wouldn't.

e-sports are right up there with men's beach volleyball in the sports that shouldn't exist list

Apparently Chess is a sport.

Haha. When I was in asia-land this s*** was on ESPN. I watched bit of where it was a sydney team vs some euros. It didn't work very well on TV because you couldn't choose what you wanted to watch and they never used the first person view.

I had trouble following it and I play computer games... how would some random go watching it? They wouldn't.

Yep, this is the crux of the problem, its hard to show a game where there's no real focal point. I used to think CTF would be good because it has the flags as focal point, but even that I think is too complicated. Maybe one-flag CTF would be doable - there'd still always be stuff happening away from the flag though and knowing where to focus on would be really challenging.

2 player RTS I guess is a little easier cuz you can prolly show both viewpoints at once, but FPS games where you can't see all the action at once (like q3gridiron, amirite!)... hard stuff to make fun to watch.

From WCG the most casual crowd involvement came with FIFA soccer and beat 'em ups. FIFA looks enough tlike soccer that most people think it's natural to sit and watch on a screen (although the commentary of instead of usually breaks their little world apart. Beat'emups share the advantage of single screen viewing with fairly self explanatory action (guy that get hit a lot is losing), however the Korean market has shown that once the audience is up to speed with the nuances of the game, even complex strategies like Starcraft can be watchable (3 fulltime TV stations broadcasting starcraft in Korea)