Professional Video Gaming Milestones

o Creating a real collaborative partnership with ten major companies
o Launching the world’s first 24 hour all access professional video gaming channel
o Negotiate media distribution partnerships with three largest cable provider, Comcast, Time-Warner, and Charter.
o Televising and hosting million dollar tournaments
o Help professional gamers negotiate lucrative endorsement deals

By John Lewis, Co Founder of Delta Beta Lambda Fraternity Inc

Is There A Need For Another Professional Video Gaming Channel?

By John Lewis, Co-Founder Delta Beta Lambda Fraternity Inc
Answer: Yes. But consolidation is the key.
Facts and Statistics: Competitive video-game leagues have contracts with ESPN, MTV, and DirecTV, draw as many as 80,000 paying fans to arena events, and boast dozens of formal teams that pay salaries of up to $90,000 a year, putting video-gaming on the cusp of mainstream competition.
The rise of professional players is proof that the $32 billion a year video-game industry has come of age as a sport as well as a business, says Amy Lee, director of Career Services at Art Institute of Las Vegas Game Art and Design.
One problem that may currently be holding back professional gaming from its ascent is that there is no standard. There are multiple professional organizations, including Major League Gaming, the Championship Gaming Series, and the global World Cyber Games, not to mention many more leagues in Europe and Asia. So one thing that would help, the panelists agreed, would be some consolidation.
XLeague.TV, the first British TV channel dedicated to competitive gaming, will be launched tomorrow, May 16, on Sky channel 291. XLeague will show both live and recorded matches with commentary and analysis, and feature league and tournament play. It will also screen gaming news, reviews and magazine shows.

Although eSports competition is traditionally PC-focused, XLeague.TV will feature prominent console titles across all multiplayer genres, including Resistance: Fall of Man, Pro Evolution Soccer and Project Gotham Racing.
After making a ton of money in the advertising business, Michael Sepso and Sundance DiGiovanni decided six years ago that it was time to goof off. How did these two guys, then in their late 20s, pass the time? They played a lot of "Halo."
Then they had an idea: Why not start a professional video-game league?
Don't laugh. The former ad men raised $35 million from private-equity investors, rounded up some skilled gamers and launched Major League Gaming in 2003. Today, the predominantly web-based league has five million monthly unique users, most of them young men whose average age is 19. They flocked to MLGpro.com to watch star gamers like FearitSelf and ThuggishKilla blast each other to smithereens in shooter games like "Halo 3" and "Gears of War." In June, the league hosted nearly 600,000 amateur matches on its GameBattles Web site.
Now all Major League Gaming has to worry about is not being blown to smithereens by Champion Gaming Series, a competing professional league that made its debut last year and is backed by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. (NWS, Fortune 500).
Major League Gaming's founders say they aren't afraid of their well-financed rival. "I mean, we're two really competitive guys," says Sepso. "When you do something like this, you want the big guy to fight you. We want to beat News Corporation. Our attitude is, 'Holy s--t! This is cool!'"
Perhaps the biggest reason for Major League Gaming's success is that allows its fans to become its stars. Amateurs who score the highest on GameBattles can join teams that compete in tournaments with as much as $100,000 in prize money. Major League Gaming's July tournament in Orlando, Fla. drew 12,000 people - 20% more than a similar event only a month before in San Diego. Another 365,000 fans watched it on MLGpro.com.
On top of its GameBattles site, Major League Gaming also has a PC-gaming site and another one dedicated to "World of Warcraft." All of them are ad-supported, and have have attracted such blue-chip sponsors like HBO (TWX, Fortune 500), Procter & Gamble's (PG, Fortune 500) Old Spice, Dr. Pepper and Stride Gum.
Championship Gaming Series, on the other hand, has a minimal Web presence and is pouring most of its resources into television instead. The new league is directly bankrolled by three of News Corp.'s satellite television providers: DirecTV, BSkyB and Star. That means it has a potential audience of 450 million viewers worldwide.
"We're creating something that's powerful," Andy Reif, then-CEO of Championship Gaming Series, said in an interview earlier this month before he left the company. "Not just in the U.S., but really big globally." Its sponsors include PepsiCo's (PEP, Fortune 500) Mountain Dew and Dell (DELL, Fortune 500).
Championship Gaming Series started its first season by televising its draft from the Playboy Mansion. Huge Hefner was away, but some of his centerfold models were on hand to make the event more appealing to young male viewers. The league says 2 million viewers watched its second season this year on DirecTV. The champs, England's Birmingham Salvos, walked away with $500,000 in prize money. That's five times more than Major League Gaming's championship "Halo" team can expect.
However, Sepso and DiGiovanni argue that television isn't the best way for either league to attract fans. They should know. Early on, Major League Gaming hired an Emmy-winning producer of more than 30 figure-skating events and spent $6 million on two seasons of shows - one for USA Network and the other for Comcast's (CMST) G4, a cable network that covers video gaming. The former ad guys learned that sponsors didn't want to buy television ads to reach young men. They thought Web ads were a better way to get their attention.
So Major League Gaming pulled the plug on its television shows. Now the award-winning producer handles Major League Gaming's Internet programs. The league says it has more sponsors than ever and expects to be profitable in the fourth quarter. "We can give you five times the number of young men on our Web sites than any television network," Sepso boasted.
It's too early to declare a winner in this smackdown. "I think that, right now, Major League Gaming has more traction than Championship Gaming Series," said Billy Pidgeon, a gaming industry analyst at IDC. Still, he's doubtful that professional video gaming will ever be as popular as other major league sports. "How many people are actually going to watch it?" Pidgeon asked. "I've always thought watching gamers on TV is a waste of valuable gaming time."
Even so, the battle between the leagues should be interesting to watch. In late August, Championship Gaming Series replaced Reif with Dale Hopkins, the former chief operating officer at G4. Unlike Reif, a former executive at pro volleyball league who didn't play video games, Hopkins is comfortable with a controller in her hands. She has a PS3, an Xbox and a Wii at home. She plays "Madden NFL" with her son.
Sepso and DiGiovanni had better look out. It looks like it's finally game on between Major League Gaming and Championship Gaming Series.
DIRECTV, the nation’s leading satellite television service provider, is making sports history once again with the exclusive live broadcast of the inaugural Championship Gaming Series (CGS) World Final. The competition will take place December 6-14 at the Sony Studios in Los Angeles where more than 100 of the world’s top professional gamers will compete for the league’s first-ever World Champion title and a share of the $1,000,000 prize purse. All the action will be captured live and in HD on DIRECTV’s original entertainment channel, The 101, starting December 6 at 10pm ET.
“This is the Super Bowl 1 of professional video gaming,” said Eric Shanks, executive vice president, DIRECTV Entertainment. “We couldn’t be more pleased with year one of the league and the excitement that it has created worldwide.”
The CGS World Final will be the first-ever international gaming event to present all the action live, as it happens, allowing fans at home to experience the match-ups like any other sport. The groundbreaking coverage will commence with the start of CGS World Final on December 6 and broadcast three hours of single elimination competitions each night leading up to the championship game on December 14.
The playoffs will feature the top CGS teams from around the world as they compete in PC and console based games. Valve’s Counter-Strike®: Source® and EA’s FIFA 2007 are the official PC games for CGS while Tecmo’s® Dead or Alive® 4 (DOA4) and Project Gotham Racing® 3 (PGR3) from Microsoft Game Studios will be played on Xbox 360. Each round of the World Final is single elimination and the last team standing will receive the coveted Dew Trophy as well as $500,000 in prize money.
In addition to the team playoffs, the World Final will also feature a special “battle of the sexes” DOA4 match-up where Vanessa Arteaga and Ryan “OffBeatNinja” Ward, the top female and male DOA players in the world, will battle it out for supremacy. The contest, dubbed the “Itagaki Challenge,” is the brainchild of DOA creator Tomonobu Itagaki, who will preside over the face-off and present the winner with the ultimate DOA prize package, including a ceremonial Japanese Katana sword and a trip to Tokyo. The individual competition will air live on The 101 December 13 at 11:30pm ET.
“We’re honored that DOA game creator and international superstar Tomonobu Itagaki recognizes the CGS as the world’s leading professional video gaming league in the world,” said Andy Reif, CGS commissioner and CEO. “We’ve set our stake in the ground and proved ourselves as a legitimate sport and look forward to growing the league and esports in the years to come.”
In what will become an annual platform for the world’s best gamers to compete professionally, the inaugural CGS World Final will be broadcast on television to more than 350 million viewers worldwide by DIRECTV’s The 101 in the U.S., BSkyB’s Sky One, Sky Two and Sky HD in the UK, ESPN STAR Sports in Asia, SKY in Mexico and Brazil, DIRECTV throughout the rest of Latin America, and across mainland Europe via additional soon-to-be confirmed broadcast partners.
The Cyberathlete Professional League, the most popular North American professional game organization, this week received a $45 million commitment from private investors, as well as very public support from Intel, which will provide hardware and marketing support for the next year. This happened on 5-25-02.
The money will help the league host more high-stakes tournaments, which would help it grow beyond its hard-core base.
"We've generated some profits, but we want to expand this concept worldwide," said Angel Munoz, president of the CPL.
After five years of struggling, the league's fortunes need to change -- and by next year, Munoz said. If it can't expand beyond the hard-core gamers, it will be in serious trouble.
Whether the league survives or not, Munoz said professional gaming is here to stay, if for no other reason than the fact that video games generated $9.6 billion last year. With so many consumers paying and playing, companies are falling all over themselves to get involved.
"I love interactive entertainment," Munoz said. "I realized when I launched the CPL that this was historical, whether we failed or succeeded as a business. Now, the trend has been established. Games are going to be a spectator sport."
Currently, the CPL operates very much like professional tennis, hosting invitational tournaments around the world. Last December's (2001) five-man Swedish Counter-Strike team walked away with $50,000 after winning the annual tournament.
The big tournaments can attract several thousand spectators. While it sounds impressive, it's actually an indication that the league doesn't draw beyond its base of hard-core players.
Gamers between 18 and 35 have always made up the bulk of the audience, really limiting the growth of the game culture. Now, a new generation of kids who have never known a day without games is coming of age.
"What really bodes well for the industry's future is the fact that the generation behind (the 18- to 35-year-old demographic), the 6- to 17-year olds, are the first interactive generation in history," said Douglas Lowenstein, Interactive Ditgital Software Association president. "They are the first to grow up not only with technology, but with interactivity at the center of their lives."
The hard-core audience is rubbing shoulders with newbies as well. The CPL has been holding hard-core tournaments since 1997, but league commissioner Frank Nuccio recently launched its amateur leagues online, allowing the casual players to compete. Winners don't receive any money, but they do get a chance to pick up tips by watching the tournaments.
The money and support being thrown at the CPL is paltry in comparison with popular professional sports leagues, but the infusion of cash will allow Munoz to raise its visibility. It's a small step, but it comes at a time when video games have captured the public's fancy.
Despite the popularity of gaming, particularly on the small screen, Munoz said he plans to eschew traditional television coverage. Instead, the league will stream its competitions over the Internet. So far, that has proven to be a rousing success.
Last December, the CPL broadcast its winter tournament, attracting 24,000 users to the site to watch teams battle for supremacy in the Counter-Strike, a war simulation where players hunt down and destroy their opponents, using a variety of weapons.

Asian Online Game Community Garena Secures $2 Million

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on July 29, 2008 - 11:11am.

Singapore - Garena, a Singapore-based company that hosts online game tournaments, has raised $2 million in angel funding from investors including Skype co-founder Tovio Annus and the government of Singapore, Alarm Clock reported.

Garena counts over 5.5 million registered users for its advertising-supported service, which supports LAN games, casual games, and various leagues and tournaments.

The company also has a deal with MTV Asia that lets its users watch MTV programs, music videos and animation content on an integrated player.



Related Links:
http://snipurl.com/37bdu (Alarm Clock)

http://www.garena.com

Game industry projections - 2005 to 2010

Short Sunday post - just some Very Important Data:

Total global game software market:
$23.1 billion in 2005
$35.4 billion in 2010
Compound Annual Growth Rate 8.9%

Mobile game software 2005 $1.67 billion
Mobile game software 2010 $6.5 billion
Compound Annual Growth Rate 31.2%

PC online game software 2005 $3.2 billion
PC online game software 2010 $9.1 billion
Compound Annual Growth Rate 23.2%

Console online game software 2005 $0.26 billion
Console online game software 2010 $2.95 billion
Compound Annual Growth Rate 62.5%

Handheld game software 2005 $3.84 billion
Handheld game software 2010 $2.7 billion
Compound Annual Growth Rate -6.8%

PC retail game software 2005 $3.1 billion
PC retail game software 2010 $2.7 billion
Compound Annual Growth Rate -2.7%

Console game software 2005 $11.0 billion
Console game software 2010 $11.4 billion
Compound Annual Growth Rate 0.7%

Online gaming drilldown:

2010 long session market (eg MMOs) $4.82 billion
Compound Annual Growth Rate 26%

2010 mid session market $4.72 billion
Compound Annual Growth Rate 29%

2010 short session market (eg casual games) $2.5 billion
Compound Annual Growth Rate 34%

Video games Reference Sources

The video games market reflects consumer spending on console games (including handheld games), personal computer (PC) games, online games, and wireless games, as well as on video game advertising. The category excludes spending on the hardware and accessories used for playing the games.

A sampling of global facts and forecasts:

* "In the US, the console video game market is being driven by the newest generation of platforms. Console/handheld games will continue to dominate the market, increasing at a compound annual rate of 6.3 percent to $11.7 billion in 2012 from $8.6 billion in 2007."
* "In Asia-Pac, rising broadband penetration will drive online gaming in general and MMOGs in particular, especially in China. Across the region, online games will increase at a 13.3 percent CAGR, reaching $5.6 billion in 2012"
* "The introduction of advanced wireless phones capable of downloading games will help to make wireless games the fastest-growing segment of the Canadian market, with a CAGR of 20.2 percent taking it to $346 million in 2012."

Gaming expected to be a $68 billion business by 2012

If gaming seems to be all the rage these days, just wait until five years from now. PricewaterhouseCoopers has published its comprehensive Global Entertainment and Media Outlook report for 2008. Data from the report indicates that the future of gaming is, unequivocally, a bright one.


The report offers in-depth global analysis and five-year growth projections for the year 2008 through to 2012. As Reuters points out, headlining the report is a projected compound annual growth rate for the gaming industry of 10.3 percent, which will easily top growth in the majority of other entertainment sectors. Global industry sales as a whole will rise from $41.9 billion last year to $68.4 billion in 2012. This falls in line with previous forecasts, including PWC's own from last year that predicted gaming would outpace growth from other entertainment sectors like movies and music.


Console games will continue to lead the way in terms of sales, with an expected growth of 6.9 percent from $24.9 billion in 2007 to $34.7 billion in 2012. In the US alone, the report predicts an increase at a compound annual rate of 6.3 percent, with sales up to $11.7 billion in 2012 from $8.6 billion in 2007. Following suit, online games will also see massive growth. Online games, which generated $6.6 billion in 2007, will jump to $14.4 billion in 2012.

Data source: PriceWaterhouseCooper

Despite comments from industry insiders who adamantly defend the PC market, the study forecasts a decline in PC gaming through to 2012. The sector's sales are expected to drop from $3.8 billion last year to $3.6 billion in 2012. That 1.2 percent drop, though small, isn't great news for the PC market. This will likely come as a result of the general downturn in the number of quality PC game releases, with just a few big titles each year winning the hearts and wallets of PC gamers at large. One would expect that platforms like Steam and GameTap will continue to enjoy growth, however.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the recent influx in video game advertising ventures—most notably the acquisition of Massive by Microsoft and Sony's recent deal with IGA Worldwide—will lead to a 16.7 percent annual growth rate for in-game advertising, as profits are posited to rise from $1 billion in 2007 to $2.3 billion in 2012. It's likely that more companies will begin to take the plunge, too, as profits continue to soar. In-game advertising is here to stay, whether gamers like it or not.

Riding on the ever-increasing wave of success, the oft-ignored mobile gaming market will see the most substantial increases of all. With handheld devices at large hosting more and better games, predictions peg the mobile gaming sector to grow a staggering 19 percent, sales rising from $5.6 billion last year to $13.5 billion in 2012. Canada will apparently benefit the most from this boom following the introduction of more Edge and 3G phones to the country, with a compound annual growth rate of 20.2 percent, bringing profits for the sector up to $346 million in 2012.

With more and more consumers picking up a controller these days, the video game industry shows no signs of slowing down. The report makes it clear that gaming is clearly going to outpace almost every other form of entertainment, movies and music included. That could mean that movie and music revenues continue to fall as game revenues rise. These forms of entertainment are all competing for the same wallets.

For the gaming industry, growth is proceeding at a rapid rate, and it's not hard to look past these figures for 2012 and see an even brighter future as the industry moves toward the eighth generation. For that to happen, though, game companies will be pressed harder and harder to come up with new ideas, which could make for an uphill battle. After all, the last time industry forecasts looked this rosy, back in 1983, the whole industry crashed.

Video Gaming Industry Adapting to Internet Age

By JARED NEWMAN, Special to the Sun | February 1, 2007

In the future, video games will be shorter in length. They will be easier to comprehend, and they will appeal to a wider audience. They will lack hefty instruction manuals and lengthy tutorials. Many will be downloadable. Some will contain advertisements.

These were some of the ideas tossed around Tuesday evening at a panel discussion on the booming video game business at New York University's Stern School.

With broadband Internet becoming more accessible, everyone wanted to talk about the future of digital distribution of video games. Online gaming sites are popular as ever, and all of the new consoles — Microsoft's XBox 360, Sony 's Playstation 3, and the Nintendo Wii — offer their own online marketplaces for downloading smaller games. The panelists, who included the Vice President of Business Development for Atari, Robert Stevenson, and an interactive entertainment analyst for Bear Stearns, Edward Urban, each had their own strategies and reasons for tapping in to the online market.

"It's kind of a tricky thing for publishers, because your bread and butter is the retail business," Mr. Stevenson said. "So you want to do the digital distribution, but you don't want to bypass or avoid Wal-Mart and Best Buy because it's still a valid business." Mr. Stevenson pointed out that online sales of the game Neverwinter Nights made up 5% of total sales. Although Atari was pleased with that figure, it obviously didn't compare to sales in stores. Still, Mr. Stevenson suggested that the online would strengthen over time.

The chief executive officer of the online game company Kuma Reality Games, Keith Halper, said digital distribution is more analogous to television than to Wal-Mart. His company offers free games over the Internet, distributed in small bursts, or "episodes," and forces players to watch advertisements. "As a startup, you don't want to find yourself competing against the likes of Atari or Vivendi," he said, adding that smaller companies need to find less traditional business models.

The vice president of Sierra Online Latin America, Esteban Sosnik, said there would be a change in the way video games are made as the Internet's role increases. He said that his company's awardwinning game, Assault Heroes, wouldn't have been possible without Live Arcade, Xbox 360's downloadable game service. He also implied that micro-transactions — the purchase of add-ons or upgrades through the Internet — would become more prominent.

Panelists agreed that shorterlength video games would be popular with consumers.

"I think it's happening because of a change in demographics," the coordinator of the New York City chapter of the International Game Developers Association, which helped organize the panel, Wade Tinney, said after the discussion. There are still kids who can play for hours on end, he said, but there are also older people, like himself, who grew up on games and don't have that kind of time anymore. "And I'm the one with the credit card and the income," he said.

"I personally don't think our players have any interest in the 40-hour experience," he said.

Mr. Halper found that his customers, many of whom are new to gaming, were unsatisfied with the company's longer offerings and preferred games to last an hour or less. "There's something about the mass market coming in that makes a difference in the kind of games you create," he said.

After the panel, Mr. Stevenson said that his business model isn't going to change much, but that the games Atari distributes probably will. In his words, video games in the future will simply be more "digestible."

Gaming Subscription Site in Top 10 Websites

March’s Comscore numbers just came out. I took a look at the top 2000 web domains, but this time I ranked them by number of visits per month. The results were a little surprising. Here are the 41 sites that were visited 10 times or more on average by US internet users in the month of March 2007:

The next category on the list is gaming, with four sites; World Of Warcraft, Pogo, Webkinz and Runescape. I’m sure most readers will be familiar with WoW, Pogo and Runescape. Webkinz is a very interesting offline toy - online game hybrid launched by Ganz in late 2005. Ganz has been making plush toys for years, but with Webkinz they gave each toy a unique secret code that allows kids to take care of their pet/toy online and play games with it. It has gone from nothing to over 4m UU/mth since then. Webkinz is part of a very interesting trend towards offline-online hybrid services that I will explore more in a later post.