Dara O'Briain's Go 8 Bit (Gaming TV is never very good?)

[PAPER/ARTILLERY]

I'm sure many of my fellow UK shmuppers checked out the new 'retro gaming' TV show 'Dara O'Briain's Go 8 Bit' - the whole thing was pretty underwhelming to me but it was nice to see some classic games and gaming trivia get airtime on a fairly big TV channel. It got me to thinking though - why are gaming TV shows fairly poor if not terrible on the whole? It's arguable that gaming news moves so fast that any attempt at a 'current events' show would be outdated by the time it goes to air, but surely there is a market (and a space) for decent gaming-related television? Why do most attempts fail?

[TransatlanticFoe]

Whoever thought of the rotating stage section, and accompanying dances, needs a slap. It was so cringeworthy.

It wasn't too bad overall but given games on TV have been little more than Charlie Brooker's Gameswipe, it had a pretty low bar to reach. It's not that news is too fast moving - you get panel shows put out days after filming - if anything there isn't enough news for a weekly show and that's the format. So you have competitive games (which limits genres covered) with snippets of fun facts... it's basically the best we're going to get.

[PAPER/ARTILLERY]

The rotating stage thing was pure shite agreed.

I'm not sure that a dearth of content is the problem though, there's more than enough to make a show out of each week in gaming. It might sound ridiculous but I think you could get away with a 'Mock The Week' type setup if someone was brave enough to chance it. After all, gaming is one of (if not the) biggest entertainment industries on the planet.

And every week there are gaming events, be it in fighters - FPS - shmups - MMO - whatever, surely the audience is there. Youtube and gaming sites prove that people are interested in news in these arenas, but it still doesn't translate to TV somehow.

[BryanM]

It got me to thinking though - why are gaming TV shows fairly poor if not terrible on the whole?

Because the people entitled to create and purchase content for television aren't gamers.

Additionally, you're talking about a specialist hobby. You don't see too many shows about coin collecting, movies, books... I guess watch a show about fishing and that's what a show about vidya games is like to the normies.

Alternative media completely bypasses such quagmires. Any decent youtube critic or let's player is superior to the entirety of everything that's ever been aired in old media when it comes to games. Any kind of games.

TV is for shallow sex and violence and nothing else. Dat broad market appeal.

but it still doesn't translate to TV somehow.

Because everyone who gives a shit is watching Twitch or yootoob.

Who the fuck watches TV anymore? Certainly not anyone born in the 70's or later. Waiting hours upon hours to see something I wanna see? zzzzzzzzzzz bullshit. I want to see it now, and I want to see 8 hours of it in a row.

Dinosaurs, man. Fossilized bird-lizards.

[PAPER/ARTILLERY]

Okay okay yes, the media reflects the content and most serious gamers are happy to go to YouTube for their updates and commentary.

Calling gaming a 'specialist hobby' is pretty crazy at this point though, gaming is most definitely the norm. And there are still shows in existence about films and books (although perhaps more often in the retrospective sense than current events).

If I were a TV exec I would be looking fairly keenly at the gaming audience right now, the one thing regular tv can offer is increased budgets and access- surely that could mean good audiences for people willing to go after it?

[Obiwanshinobi]

Spoiler

If all things real made for interesting watching on the TV, it would be one of the easiest to do cheaply forms of entertainment out there. Same reason why, when there's any videogaming in a movie script, the camera appears to be more interested in the game on screen than the gaming person. Even our games are more interesting than us.
Although - in all fairness - quiet reading is just as notoriously unattractive.

[Ed Oscuro]

Archeology, even back in the very late 1950s, was said to be one of the things that'd always work on TV.

Well, gaming isn't archaeology. You can't go "look, this is Space Invaders. It holds up the mirror to our 21st century way of life."

You could try pretty hard, and you could find lots of "behind the scenes" stories about what was going on in the world at large when this and that was happening, but ultimately it would end up being more about obscure contemporary history, and less about gaming.

I'd rather be playing some Scooby-Doo title.

[Obiwanshinobi]

Japon: histoire du shooting game is an okay TV film, assuming the budget was quite humble. I would also gladly watch a BBC-produced documentary of not so exclusively gaming as home computer subcultures from the days of yore (in the vein of Synth Britannia), which would perhaps be more expensive to produce (just UK won't suffice in this case; in fact, it would need to be a series).

[ZacharyB]

Games are just that, games. People using their infinite power of embellishment, grandstanding, and vapid, ravenous possession can't change that.

What IS interesting, are the human stories behind games. The trials and tribulations denuded in a blackoak translation. Some chucklehead on Youtube stammering his way through a review or theory or playthrough is inane. Reading about a lone man sitting in an unairconditioned building in his underwear as his computer overheats, threatening to destroy progress on three intricate frames of animation, is passion.

[DJ Incompetent]

There is a french gaming show called nolife. It is admirable.

United States attempted a gaming channel called G4. Here is a documentary about its burning to the ground. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEBwGOHntro

Gaming doesn't have good (english) TV for a combination of reasons:
- Every attempt was bankrolled by an executive who only wanted to cash-in on an observed culture. Nobody in charge actually had a background playing videogames.
- In the 40 years of TV execs stumbling over getting gaming culture watchable, gaming culture itself was savvy enough to create its own internet shows targeting very particular tastes.
- The number of people dedicated to the whole of the gaming entertainment medium is not actually that large. Gaming is an industry that can sustain things mainly because customers are accustomed to spending three-to-twelve times more cash on gaming media than followers of different mediums that rely on advertising.



We could collaborate right now and assemble a youtube playlist "programming block" with weeks of Hero content.

[BryanM]

Think about how many people watch movies and don't actually give a shit about movies.

AVGN bringing up the difficulty of throwing a newspaper into a mailbox, that one moment of a tiny breakdown and observation alone, manages to eclipse the value of the entirety of Roger Ebert's career.

Did you know Ebert gave The Zookeeper four stars? O-k.

redlettermedia

A note about how much giving a shit really costs and how niche it really is.

It takes them about a week to carefully do a movie review in their Half in the Bag series. The knob goblins knocking out kotatkauak game reviews have about thirty minutes to write an article. When they do a break down look back at the classics in re:View, the audience has to give a shit about the movie they're talking about. Besides people not giving a shit about anything in general, that often requires a prerequisite that the audience has already seen the movie they're talking about. This has diminishing returns.

So instead of spending all that time and money on introspection, it's more efficient for giant Media Conglomerates to poop out another Pixels or Harry Potter or whatever. If they spend $1 million to make $5 million, they've lost money because they deal in units of opportunity - the blocks of time they can use television to pump up their product with the public's finite attention ("Please for the love of god give us money for Ghostbusters: Answer the call -- XXOO, Sony").

It's the difference between a corporate and indie studio. They can't compete with each other on the same terms. The internet is a realm of many silos. Television, is the flattest crap centered around the broad appeal of sex and violence. The internet is working to make television and movies worse, not better. Which is good since it's one less thing to pay attention to.

[TransatlanticFoe]

The last couple of episodes have been much better than the opener... I wonder if the editors have seen sense because the shit like the stage rotation has been toned down a lot. It's a bit more like 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown - "here's some vague competition but mostly just fuck around for a bit"

[Volteccer_Jack]

X-Play/Extended Play was very briefly good back on TechTV, then Comcast busted in and started systematically ruining everything about TechTV starting with the name.

Games aren't actually interesting unless you're playing them, or at least invested in the idea of playing them. The only way I can really imagine a gaming show getting me hooked would be something in the vein of Top Gear, focusing on the fun around the games rather than the games themselves. You can sort of argue that some Youtube dudes do that, but realistically your choices right now are annoying cringey douches who shouldn't be allowed on camera, or very niche stuff that isn't suitable for casual viewing.

[Immryr]

Gamesmaster was great.

[Skykid]

Gamesmaster was great.

Best TV video game show of all time, mostly thanks to the wonderful juxtaposition of Dominic Diamond not giving a fuck about video games.

[TransatlanticFoe]

Don't forget Sir Patrick Moore, who seemed to deliver his lines with genuine resentment for everyone.

[davyK]

If gaming on TV is to have a chance it needs a presenter who has knowledge and a passion, can communicate , and looks presentable on camera, though preferably lovingly eccentric, and isn't known now - it needs to be someone new. A known celeb who quite likes games isn't going to cut it.

Moore did it for Astronomy. Sister Wendy Beckett did it for History of art. It can be done.

One series with this frontman/woman, with the budget to cover East and West, with access to the right people, and if that series is able to communicate to the uninitiated what makes gaming so interesting, then it might have a chance. That one series could be possibly mainstream but otherwise it will always be niche - and that's alright.

[Sumez]

I would love a Tony Wilson of video games.

But like I think I said earlier in this thread - who even watches TV nowadays?

[PC Engine Fan X!]

Another cool show to watch back in the early 1980s was Starcade -- a nationally syndicated American TV show that dealt with the latest & greatest arcade games. I used to watch it on channel 31 when it would air on Saturdays. Those were the days of early arcade gaming lore at it's best. The game show host, Geoff Edwards, did the hosting of all those Starcade episodes. The cool thing was, if the arcade game contestant could beat a certain high score in the alloted given time, he or she would win their very own full-sized arcade game cab to take home as the grand prize. How cool was that?

I heard through the grapevine that there are plans to bring back the Starcade show.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[PC Engine Fan X!]

X-Play/Extended Play was very briefly good back on TechTV, then Comcast busted in and started systematically ruining everything about TechTV starting with the name.

Games aren't actually interesting unless you're playing them, or at least invested in the idea of playing them. The only way I can really imagine a gaming show getting me hooked would be something in the vein of Top Gear, focusing on the fun around the games rather than the games themselves. You can sort of argue that some Youtube dudes do that, but realistically your choices right now are annoying cringey douches who shouldn't be allowed on camera, or very niche stuff that isn't suitable for casual viewing.

Yep, some of those X-Play episodes were filmed at the Sony Metreon's in-house arcade located across from the Moscone Center in San Francisco back in the day.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[Tarma]

As already mentioned, Gamesmaster was and still is the best videogame TV show ever created to date... in the UK at least.

It's only slip was season 3 with Dexter Fletcher

Dominik Diamond was legendary... now a radio DJ for Jack FM in Calgary fact fans.

[Satan]

The daft thing about this show is that the people involved mistakenly believe it's earning them 'cool' points. It isn't and I'd like to see West Brit Irish sell out O'Briain hunted and skinned alive and his face fucked clean off.

[TransatlanticFoe]

This gets a new series, kicking off tomorrow night.

While that'll probably be more of the same (hopefully without the moronic dicking around while the stage rotates), it's followed by a new companion show called DLC - which sounds like it'll be more of a "proper" games show, with a focus on reviews and discussion about games.