As someone who's been heavily involved in the competitive console gaming scene for the last five years, it has been an exciting few months. For PC gamers, competitive gaming is nothing new. Tournaments for games like Counter-Strike, Quake, Unreal and Starcraft have been going on for years, reaching national and global levels, yielding big bucks, and even celebrity status for guys like Jonathan "FATAL1TY" Wendel. But for us console faithful, competition is fairly new. Online multiplayer has only recently become a standard, thanks to the launch of Xbox Live, and most console gamers are limited to online ladder sites like GameBattles.

Halo was the breakout game for console competition. From Halo's immense multiplayer popularity, Major League Gaming was born. MLG continues to grow, in fact just last year they purchased the aforementioned GameBattles.com, and itself has spawn several imitators. One of those was of course, the World Series of Video Games. I never liked WSVG. In fact, I'd say I hated WSVG. They were always more about flash and style rather than the pure spirit of competition. But they were (supposedly) becoming incredibly popular. Their support of games like World of Warcraft and Guitar Hero, while seemingly bizarre and unorthodox, had drawn quite a bit of attention to the WSVG circuit. WSVG's TV deal with CBS seemed to cement their place amongst the rest of the top gaming leagues. Rumors had been swirling for months that WSVG was close to securing exclusive usage rights to both Halo 3 and Call of Duty 4, causing a bit of panic within the MLG community.

So I was just a tad shocked to learn today that WSVG has officially canceled the 2007 season and shut down all operations. Needless to say, MLG was quick to report on the "bad news" in this totally unbiased post. While I'm sure it comes as a heavy blow to all the Guitar Hero pros out there, MLG loyalists like myself couldn't be happier. While MLG strives to legitimize gaming as a sport, WSVG was always more of the MTV of competitive gaming. All image, no substance.


Rest in piece, WSVG. And good riddance.