CGS: Super Game Sunday? Not yet.

Gaming tournaments are a risky, unknown entity to most television networks. Big name games do not necessarily guarantee ratings. CBS learned this when its World Series of Video Games was forced off the air last September in the midst of its second season, despite offering competitions in such giants as World of WarCraft, Quake 4, and Guitar Hero II. Major League Gaming’s Halo 2 Pro Circuit garnered live coverage on USA Network in 2006, but not since. While niche networks such as G4 and Spike may offer replacements to fill the void left by larger networks’ abandonment, they do little to promote gaming to the general viewer, or anyone who’s not already ‘hardcore’ and playing Call of Duty 4 instead of watching TV.

So the Championship Gaming Series, a new international gaming league founded in 2007, is revamping the publicized gaming strategy. CGS is handling professional gaming–as it should be–like a true sport. Before the tournament season begins, players are drafted to teams (ten players each) which are assigned a franchise location, complete with protected players and a snake selection process. The 2008 North American Combine and Draft took place earlier this month, with the team rosters completed on March 9. Live coverage of the tournament, which will feature Counter Strike: Source, Dead or Alive 4, Fifa ‘08, Forza Motorsport 2, and World of Warcraft begins July 14th on DirecTV’s channel 101. Video coverage of the draft, photos, event information and more are available at the CGS’s main site.

What the CGS and DirecTV are offering is a televised sport, not merely a video game tournament. By highlighting the extreme competition, dedication, and even drama of professional gaming, a non-gamer can tune in and be absorbed by the familiar excitement and severity that make up a heated sporting event. Fans speculate and argue over who will or won’t be picked, who deserved to make it and who was shafted. And those participants are no longer merely kids with controllers (or mice) but are now visibly trained athletes, exercising a fine-tuned skill. Your average channel surfer might not rush out to start his own guild in WoW, (has Kobayashi really increased hot dog sales?), but discussing gaming as a serious and respectable pastime may become more in vogue thanks to this turn of TV events. It requires some optimism, but I’ve got my Fatal1ty jersey ready for when that day comes.