championship-gaming-series posts

Last year, the organizers of E3 switched to a media invite format by moving the show from the Los Angeles Convention Center to several Santa Monica hotels. One other location used was the Barker Hanger at Santa Monica Airport which was almost universally loathed by journalists attending the event due to its distance from the rest of the show (over 20 minutes by shuttle) and the lack of interesting games show in its rather small building.

Now the Entertainment Software Association has made the good call to return E3 this year to the LA Convention Center and the Championship Gaming Series is trying to make E3 2008 work to their benefit. The pro gaming tournament organization is holding its world quarter finals during E3 week in LA and the tournament organizers know a ton of gaming journalists are in the area around that time. However, they are choosing to hold these events (on July 14 and 16) at the infamous Barker Hanger. Huh? There are a ton of locations in LA they could have used but making us media types go back to that awful place is sure to be not looked upon kindly by those same media reps. Still it might be interesting to cover. We just have to get those bad E3 2007 memories out of our head.

Satellite TV company DirecTV is a co-founder of the pro gaming tournament organization the Championship Gaming Series and while DirectTV has shown coverage of events in the series on their own channels the CGS hasn't had much media exposure beyond that (we are guessing that the actual viewing audience for the CGS coverage is somewhere around 12 people). That will be changing, however, thanks to a new agreement with cable TV channel G4TV.

The new agreement will have the pop culture (with some gaming) cable TV network broadcast four 90 minute specials that cover various CGS events, including this year's North American and World Finals. The first such special is due to air on July 16 and will likely add a ton more actual viewers to the CGS coverage. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Championship Gaming Series announced today that the upcoming launch of the CGS Pro-Am Division will include two new titles for online competition, Valve's Counter-Strike 1.6 and Team Fortress 2.
Launching in North America and Europe in August, the CGS Pro-Am puts top players against each other in CGS game servers, online. The top Counter-Strike 1.6 and Team Fortress 2 players in each region will receive top seeding and travel packages to compete in CGS 2009 North America Combine tournament competing multiple prizes including a $50,000 grand prize.

Registration for the CGS Pro-Am Division begins online, in July.