DirecTV/eSports

Word from Kotaku on the DirecTV eSports invitational coming from a news article in Rocky Mountain News. I posted earlier about DirecTV obtaining the rights to broadcast the CPL. Looks like DTV is moving big time into the eSports scene.

"Our goal is to become the home of gaming on television."

Steven Roberts, vice president and general manager of DirecTV.

Since I don't have cable (can't be arsed to get it), has anyone seen any of these shows? Are they worth watching or are they simply the typical mainstream media's look at video gaming and eSports (look, you can make money playing games, isn't that neato!)?

So what's to come? Larger prize money. Bigger shows. Bigger venues. More stable leagues and tournaments. More broadcasts. More advertising.

All of it, and I mean all of it, will be tied to advertising. Media runs on the advertising dollar and nothing else. Get in while you can before the boom busts. Remember, the tournament earnings are nothing without the endorsements. Tiger Woods makes far more through advertising and product endorsements than he does in tournament earnings.

So let's see. We'll have some geeks wearing logos (shirts, hats) during play and whenever they are interviewed. That's nothing new. What will be interesting is if the advertisers force players and gaming companies to use advertising logos in game. No longer will you simply see the boring Terrorist and Counter Terrorist in Counterstrike (although those may be changed to red and blue teams, or something equally palpable to the mainstream). No. Instead you will have the Logitech Team vs. the Razor Team. Or the Intel Team vs. the AMD Team. Or the ATI vs. NVidia (oops, I meant ATI and AMD vs. Intel and NVidia).

If you're good looking and you can frag with the best, you win. Pasty white geeks do not good spokespersons make. Any Maria Sharapova lookalikes who can take down fatal1ty? You win!

UPDATE: The website for the invitational can be found here. It's available on DirecTV channel 101.