But earlier this afternoon, the World Series of Videogames shut its doors, and announced that all of their future events are cancelled. In their notice, they cite the "challenge of securing adequate revenues" to keep up their big events (they had tourneys planned in LA, London, and Sweden yet this year). Games Media Properties, WSVG's parent company, says they will continue to grow the "online advertising network" of websites-- which sites these are, we're not sure.
Again, wow. GotFrag has already talked to Pandemic about the closing, and they say they're going to go into a "waiting game" as regards to professional Arena PvP, and that they're "deeply disappointed" in WSVG's "inability to finish out the season." They, too, had no idea this was coming. Will someone else step up into the WSVG's place in professional gaming promotion? Blizzard was doing a lot of work directly with the WSVG in terms of presentation, and while it's hard to say this will be the end of professional Arena PvP, there's no question this will have a major effect on professional gaming at large. The World Series of Videogames as we know it is no more.
Thanks, Jason!
Update: Curse has more, including players calling it "a huge blow to WoW professional gaming."
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
9-12-2007 @ 10:40PM
Rubin said...
Wow, didn't see that comming.
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9-12-2007 @ 10:48PM
ASP said...
I read the Curse link and seems the "zomg im quitting wow" quotes are just lame.
What happened here was the company organizing these events got the whole dotcom greed effect and were hoping somebody would buy them out before they burned what little cash they had which of course never panned out.
I read many blogs where people said watching these events were actually kind of boring and making watching somebody else play a video game instead of playing yourself is something that only a real niche crowd could get into and not something the normal population (masses) could ever get into.
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9-12-2007 @ 10:50PM
klink-o said...
While I'm surprised this happened so quickly, I was never very optimistic about the long-term success of the WSVG. I just didn't see where they were making enough profit to justify the expenses. I see professional video game play as a whole still in its infancy pretty risky territory.
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9-13-2007 @ 3:52AM
Bearskunk said...
Hopefully that'll make BLizzard see the errors of their ways and have them scale back their catering to "professional" gaming as far as changes to the game solely for the benefit of this rather small segment of customers goes.
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9-13-2007 @ 4:47AM
Sash said...
Oh, wsVg? I thought it said WSG. That would of been bad.
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9-13-2007 @ 8:49AM
isuckatpvp said...
pvp has a high upkeep... in RL at least
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9-13-2007 @ 9:23AM
Hollywood Ron said...
Aren't professional PVPers called twinks?
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9-13-2007 @ 9:31AM
Memzer said...
When Blizzard stated that they weren't interested in balancing PvP for 1v1, 2v2 or 3v3 they pretty much assured us that there would be no place for World of Warcraft in a professional gaming arena anyway.
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9-13-2007 @ 10:45AM
Paw said...
Maybe now with nothing in the "professional gaming PvP Arenas" to target, Blizzard will maybe start to consider the game as a whole again and do something to improve the world PvP. Wouldn't that be nice? World PvP with meaning. Now that they don't have to concentrate on ramping up for the pros they can get on it.
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9-13-2007 @ 3:02PM
Strongmark on Arthas said...
I am not sad about this at all... Like someone earlier said up there, what fun is it to watch when you can play it yourself? Most of the people who cared and would've watched, would've been playing the game anyway, instead of watching...
Maybe CBS will buy em out?
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9-13-2007 @ 3:42PM
Nachtsturm said...
To be honest, I'm glad they're gone.
If there's one thing that the 3v3 Semi Finals at Toronto showed us, it's that the WSVG was not a legitamite competitive league.
For those of you who don't know, Yea We Lift was forced to replay the semi-finals of the 3v3 Arena Tournament against MoB because the Hunter on Yea We Lift tamed a Scorpid pet for the event. However MoB complained AFTER Yea We Lift had already beaten them, and even though a WSVG official said it was okay for Yea We Lift's Hunter to go tame a Scorpid before the Tournament, another official said it was not, and nullified the matches. The re-match was played the next day, and MoB switched their lineup to specifically counter Yea We Lift.
If the WSVG was even remotely legitimate, they would have made the two teams go against eachother right away, or at the least prohibit MoB from changing their lineup.
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9-13-2007 @ 7:41PM
Fletch said...
Professional gamers? Hahahahaha
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9-14-2007 @ 3:44PM
Delta said...
Meh, the one time I watched it on TV it was short and really pointless. That and I didn't care to watch Fight Night and Guitar Hero II, which took up more time than the WoW segment did. Blizzard should just do their own tournament and hook it up with G4 or someshit, not that G4 is great, but it'd give me a reason to actually watch the channel for something other than Code Monkeys
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