This was really written many moons ago. And in the time since, the World Series of Video Games has been completely and utterly canceled. Not just on TV but even as a standalone entity. I was not one of the few people taken by surprise by this development.

Here we have the only world series of any kind that takes up less than an hour of programming time on a Sunday morning on CBS. Right before golf. And after something I didn't get up in time to watch. Probably a hunting/fishing show. At least in my neck of the woods (not a metaphor). I was surprised to see that the contestants were limited to only playing one game (thus rendering the word "series" meaningless) and they competed in Guitar Hero 2, Fight Night 3, and World Of Warcraft. Wha? Where's the Counter-Strike? The Unreal Tournament? The Halo 2? Rainbow Six: Vegas? Smash Bros. Melee? Quake? Warcraft? Starcraft? All the games that Wikipedia tells me are, you know...popular in competitive gaming circles? Totally absent and replaced with games were the competition is uninteresting at best and nebulous/counter-intuitive at worst.

Guitar Hero 2 entailed a solo performance followed by three judges giving scores out of 10 for the level of self-imposed difficulty, overall accuracy, and...style? The style points were given out by someone named Coltrane Curtis who is, according to himself, an MTV fashion VJ. A medical condition which should completely disqualify him from commenting on the styles of others. How does one achieve style in Guitar Hero? By aping the tired tropes of guitar playing like "playing behind one's head" or "slamming one's guitar into the ground at the end." Thank god the rock legends are already dead because they wouldn't have lasted through this attack on their life-force. The "totally awesome to the max" guitar smash actually gave that particular poser the win. There's nothing like seeing two people so uncomfortable in their own skin move into preset positions, hoping beyond hope that that their whole bodies won't collapse under the strain. It's like watching animals get nails driven into their arms so they'll more accurately represent the 12 Apostles in the diorama of the Last Supper your crazy aunt is making. So what I'm saying is: this was at least as entertaining as a horrific car accident. That your beloved family members are currently in the middle of.

The game was played one person at a time until a tiebreaker was required because the judges felt only 9's and 10's were valid responses. It probably didn't help that the performances were pretty much identical. This was truly the nadir of the entire program. Thank goodness they saved the "exciting" tie breaker until the end of the show. I was worried I'd forget how badly this sucked.

In Fight Night 3, we saw a really fat kid face off against a tall skinny kid while both were famous heavyweight champions of the world. These guys couldn't take a heavyweight's glare for more than two seconds without exploding. CBS, realizing this most likely even before they started putting this farce together, decided to create as much pathetic comedy as possible. How, do you ask? By making each player wear real boxing gloves. Then, they forced them to get up in each other's faces for brief cutaways in between rounds with menacing glares bared. Of course, since neither of the two is the least bit threatening, it looked much more likely that they were about to consummate a secret love affair than get to brawling. I just hope the CBS crew didn't give out stage directions like "That's great guys, but, ya know, more gay please." I think they also need to just ban unattractive people from competing in these things if everything else is going to suck this much. At least get good looking people so we, as a social group, can start to move away from the "disgusting trolls and awkward giants" stereotypes.

The game itself must be the most boring fighting game ever made. Much like real boxing, the fighters are not exactly speed demons. They lumber towards one another and then punch. Then they block. Then they punch some more. Ding ding ding. Repeat ad nauseum. Whereas every single other fighting game seems to revel in fast action and crazy moves and combos, Fight Night is convinced its mission in life is to present a watered down version of a sport no one even watches anymore. The camera was so undynamic, I questioned if it could actually move around. Playing the game later, I saw that power/signature punches will make the game zoom in dramatically but these two paragons of gaming somehow failed to utilize these obviously arcane techniques. Skinny talls won the day after three short uneventful rounds. You know, it was a great fight when one boxer goes down after 15 minutes.

Finally, World of Warcraft. Undoubtedly the most popular game there but it probably had the worst presentation and set up. It was 3 on 3 and I think everyone got 3 lives. It was also best out of five. Not that it mattered because the winning team absolutely killed their opponents. It was like watching a puppy go through unpleasant machinery. I suppose this is what you get when you take a game heavily focused/outright demanding on/of teamplay and tell it to go deathmatch. The audience was shown exactly what the players could see. You already know why this is terrible. The interface and readouts take up at least 40% of the viewable area. Combine this with (relatively) fast paced action and multiple viewpoints for multiple players on two separate teams and awareness just crawls out to the shed and dies.

Don't forget that WoW is no simple game. Therefore, the hosts spent about 10 minutes explaining in painstaking detail exactly how the game was played before the action started. Then, not confident in their already laborious explanation, they continued to narrate at a breathless clip over the ensuing carnage, being sure to bring up every conceivable detail that might confuse someone who crossed over to this channel looking to see if Ted Nugent was still on. John Madden, I feel gets a bum rap for being overtly descriptive and simple. "Here's a guy that if he can run faster than the defense, he'll score." Hey, maybe somebody watching doesn't know that. At least he doesn't say things like "Tiki Barber runs around to the right, then stops a bit, now he's running again, his left foot is leading, he's hit by a guy, probably from the other team, uh oh he's tackled, now he's getting back up, shaking his head, he touched his helmet, now he's over at the sidelines, he's drinking some Gatorade, he's talking to some guy, sorta looks like Dauber from Coach with Craig T. Nelson, do you remember that show, now he's back at the line of scrimmage, and he just turned into a turtle." Yes, they really did talk that much. And yes, at one point, a player did transform into a turtle. This was the gaming equivalent of the Immaculate Reception. Perhaps in fifty years, I'll look back and think: "Where was I when L33+H@MM3R the F1r5t was transmogrified into a chicken?" I hope my mind has degenerated enough at that point to not remember.

As you can tell, this was all very awful. What can be done to save competitive gaming as a source of visual entertainment? For starters, put that camera some place worth looking at. Just because the optimum view for playing a strategy or role playing game is zoomed out all the way with a barrage of obscuring meters and readouts doesn't mean we should have to suffer through all that garbage. Get a couple of in-game observers with the ability to pick out good angles and shots from the bad and then edit their captured footage into a genuinely exciting piece. Ya know, kinda like how they do with real sports. Then, retool the games themselves so that they are strictly visually informative. Make sure we can know who's who and what team they're on. Emphasize the actions of the characters visually. If someone just cast a spell at another player, I'd better actually see him go through a motion while casting it and its ensuing destructive act. I need to see a visual representation of the character's health. Have his skin flake off or arms get torn off. Something. Fight Night Round 3 does make important strides in this area.

A vital rule is this: if the game you're thinking of presenting is so complicated you have to talk over it constantly just so people can understand what's happening, forget about it. And never, never should televised competitive gaming do something that anyone can do in real life. The Guitar Hero segment would not have been much worse off if it was a Cooking Mama competition instead. Not to bash those particular titles because they are quality games but I'd much rather watch a real cook-off or a battle of the bands than gamers aping some other activity. And I think that will be the most common view when it comes to televised video gaming. Video games can optimally allow us to do things we could never do in real life and that's what can be uniquely entertaining about them. We'll never get real gladiatorial games again but we can conceivably get their modern day virtual equivalent. And god I really hope we do because this shit is weak.