Video games make for terrible television

We don't get a whole lot of gaming television here in Australia. They show a terrible program called Game on ESPN, where the reviewers basically yell their thoughts at you in broken sentences, and the hostess is clearly trying too hard to look excited. We also get a marginally better program called X-Play, which does a better job of reviewing and has a pair of more relatable hosts, but is so out of date they're still anticipating the Wii.

I'm not sure it's much better in the states though.

In Korea, they get a great deal of Starcraft available on the box. This is a scary prospect. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't be able to watch Starcraft for more than maybe five minutes straight. It just isn't exciting, the animations are all the same and never change, and it takes a while for things to get into full swing.

Halo, on the other hand, gets me excited. During my time with Halo 2 I always dreamt of being able to sit down with my mates and a couple of beers, flick on XBox Live and tune in to top-ranked players duke it out in team skirmish. The beauty of Halo is that it could totally become a spectator sport. I can't tell you how many times I've declared "sweet kill!", "nice save!", or "I can't believe you pulled that off." They're definitely making steps toward this with the video playback options available in Halo 3, but that's only available if somebody opts to save the recording, then you'll have to look it up and download it.

Gamers are generally adverse to advertising in videogames, but I think this would be an area where it would be welcomed and beneficial. Would you really mind being told to quench your thirst if it was in between bouts of top-tier Street Fighter? Especially considering that Sprite commercial made the broadcast free for you to access. "Fragzor's 80-kill streak was brought to you by AT&T". The idea is certainly sound.

To be honest, I'm surprised ESPN hasn't already made an attempt to capitalise. It would certainly beat watching American children mutilate the Queen's English in the national spelling bee.