Final WSVG

Some mainstream coverage on cnet:

But the Counter-Strike match wasn't easy viewing for a live audience. If competitive gaming is going to gain more footing as a sport, at the very least there's going to have to be a scoreboard of sorts.

It's too bad that with such exciting matches that the coverage was so poor. I mean 3D tied the match and it went to OT in the CS final. I was reminiscing about NiP vs 3D on de_nuke oh so long ago.

More info on the live audience experience on eSplat.

All I can say about being in a studio audience is that it sucks. Spectators are not allowed to do pretty much anything during the match except cheer for the player you want to win. Sure it makes for good TV but damn it really sucks having to sit there for an hour not being allowed to go to the bathroom while the crew are trying to fix a technical problem and they won't let you out because they don't know when the'll be able to fix it and start the filming.

Nice to see that they actually knew what they were doing. I can just imagine during an NFL game not allowing the audience to go to the bathroom. Can you say riot?!

The net coverage was horrendous. On the first day nothing worked. On the second day the coverage was spotty, laggy, and often down. On the last day, with the biggest CS matches on the line, the technical details still had not been worked out. Not only that, but the producer (or technical director, or whoever was in charge) obviously had no idea how to broadcast the show. Although the TSN shoutcasters did a decent job covering the games, the camera kept cutting from in-game footage to a view of a player staring into a computer monitor. Wow, exciting! And not just during the slow times in the matches (say at the end of a round or during buy time) but when critical moments such as one team attempting to penetrate a bomb site were taking place, or when it was 1v2 in the final seconds of a round. Brilliant! More problems like a poorly shown scoreboard, epilepsy-inducing in-game camera changes, and station/commercial breaks that were announced but never taken (we'll be right back after a word from our sponsor, I think I heard that twice, but the break never happened?). Whoever was in charge should have been fired.

Additional notes on Amped and GotFrag.

Hopefully the CPL Winter event will have better coverage (Q3 and CS 1.6).