I never quite got around to watching Videogame Nation, but I always meant to.
Co-host Dan Maher is a talented and funny boy, and he's always said nice things about Digi, so I felt I should give it a go. I'm a sucker for a bit of flattery. So much so that I should probably change my name to Flatter-Me-Henry! LOL?
By all accounts, people loved Videogame Nation, often telling me it was the sort of TV games show they all wanted... and now I'll never know if they were right. Because Challenge TV - the network which it ran on - has axed the show. Honestly, it's like something out of a Shakespearean tragedy.
Most reports of Videogame Nation's demise described it as the only British TV show dedicated to video games... which is almost true.
Earlier this year, the strange and wonderfully bleak VideoGaiden returned for a six-part online series and a TV special - commissioned by BBC Scotland - while BBC Three flirted recently with eSports. Albeit flirting in the way a 13 year-old boy might flirt; you could hear their knees knocking above the sound mix.
But in comparison to the halcyon days when we had back-to-back series of Gamesmaster and Bad Influence and Games World - at a time when games were more of a niche thing - the gaming TV landscape is more barren than an X-ray technician's loins.
So quite why is it so hard for telly to get behind gaming, in an age when everyone now plays games?
Co-host Dan Maher is a talented and funny boy, and he's always said nice things about Digi, so I felt I should give it a go. I'm a sucker for a bit of flattery. So much so that I should probably change my name to Flatter-Me-Henry! LOL?
By all accounts, people loved Videogame Nation, often telling me it was the sort of TV games show they all wanted... and now I'll never know if they were right. Because Challenge TV - the network which it ran on - has axed the show. Honestly, it's like something out of a Shakespearean tragedy.
Most reports of Videogame Nation's demise described it as the only British TV show dedicated to video games... which is almost true.
Earlier this year, the strange and wonderfully bleak VideoGaiden returned for a six-part online series and a TV special - commissioned by BBC Scotland - while BBC Three flirted recently with eSports. Albeit flirting in the way a 13 year-old boy might flirt; you could hear their knees knocking above the sound mix.
But in comparison to the halcyon days when we had back-to-back series of Gamesmaster and Bad Influence and Games World - at a time when games were more of a niche thing - the gaming TV landscape is more barren than an X-ray technician's loins.
So quite why is it so hard for telly to get behind gaming, in an age when everyone now plays games?
WHAT CAN I FORGET?
Firstly, you can forget kids TV ever commissioning a games show.
We're living in an age when something like Ratchet & Clank feels like an aberration, rather than the norm. Think of all the big releases over the past six months - most of them cast the player into a pit of mass-slaughter.
Simply put... any CBBC show offering comprehensive coverage of gaming would either be taken off the air after the first episode, or be forced into focusing on a tiny part of what's available. And, let's face it, the majority of kids play games that aren't meant for them anyway. Or would only want a show about Minecraft. The little idiots.
So, for the most part, games have grown up. Or, at least, have reached a troublesome adolescence where they think it's cool to swear and be edgy.
Consider that you could only make a games show for an adult audience - and, indeed, demographics suggest that we're all mostly adults anyway - and it's hard to know where that show would go in the schedule. At least, if you were basing it on what has gone before.
Gamesmaster and Games World used to be on in the early evening (barring the late-night Gamesmaster gore special). Shove your hypothetical show on late at night, and nobody is going to watch it. Consequence: there wouldn't be the budget for the sort of show I think it needs to be.
Firstly, you can forget kids TV ever commissioning a games show.
We're living in an age when something like Ratchet & Clank feels like an aberration, rather than the norm. Think of all the big releases over the past six months - most of them cast the player into a pit of mass-slaughter.
Simply put... any CBBC show offering comprehensive coverage of gaming would either be taken off the air after the first episode, or be forced into focusing on a tiny part of what's available. And, let's face it, the majority of kids play games that aren't meant for them anyway. Or would only want a show about Minecraft. The little idiots.
So, for the most part, games have grown up. Or, at least, have reached a troublesome adolescence where they think it's cool to swear and be edgy.
Consider that you could only make a games show for an adult audience - and, indeed, demographics suggest that we're all mostly adults anyway - and it's hard to know where that show would go in the schedule. At least, if you were basing it on what has gone before.
Gamesmaster and Games World used to be on in the early evening (barring the late-night Gamesmaster gore special). Shove your hypothetical show on late at night, and nobody is going to watch it. Consequence: there wouldn't be the budget for the sort of show I think it needs to be.
PERSPECTOR GADGET
From the perspective of somebody who works in TV, it seems to me to be an industry simultaneously terrified of video games - and YouTube - stealing away its audience... while also being utterly disinterested in it.
I don't know anybody who works in TV - at least, not in a commissioning or producing capacity - who plays games. Or even really understands games, or the culture around games.
As a result there's no passion or momentum for it.
Even Charlie Brooker was said to have pitched a series version of his one-off Gameswipe - and couldn't get any takers. If someone with his reputation and clout can't get it away, none of us stand a chance.
So, it isn't going to happen. Certainly not any time soon. And maybe that's fine. Maybe games aren't meant to be talked about: they're meant to be played. But completely blowing that theory out of the water are the millions of Let's Play videos, or online shows, where people just... talk about games.
And if there was to be a new video games TV show, it would need to be one that does things that people online can't offer. It needs to be sexy, it needs to be noisy enough to stand out, and it needs to appeal to non-gamers, lapsed gamers, and - whisper their name - casuals...
It's an Ouroboros-like situation that hurts my head, but it can only do what it needs to do if it has a decent budget, and it's only going to get a decent budget if it can prove that it can do what the budget will facilitate it to do. Ai yi yi!
From the perspective of somebody who works in TV, it seems to me to be an industry simultaneously terrified of video games - and YouTube - stealing away its audience... while also being utterly disinterested in it.
I don't know anybody who works in TV - at least, not in a commissioning or producing capacity - who plays games. Or even really understands games, or the culture around games.
As a result there's no passion or momentum for it.
Even Charlie Brooker was said to have pitched a series version of his one-off Gameswipe - and couldn't get any takers. If someone with his reputation and clout can't get it away, none of us stand a chance.
So, it isn't going to happen. Certainly not any time soon. And maybe that's fine. Maybe games aren't meant to be talked about: they're meant to be played. But completely blowing that theory out of the water are the millions of Let's Play videos, or online shows, where people just... talk about games.
And if there was to be a new video games TV show, it would need to be one that does things that people online can't offer. It needs to be sexy, it needs to be noisy enough to stand out, and it needs to appeal to non-gamers, lapsed gamers, and - whisper their name - casuals...
It's an Ouroboros-like situation that hurts my head, but it can only do what it needs to do if it has a decent budget, and it's only going to get a decent budget if it can prove that it can do what the budget will facilitate it to do. Ai yi yi!
TOP GAMES
Much as I'd like to, I'm never going to pitch a video games TV show to anyone. But... if I did... I'd model it on Top Gear.
Just to get it out of the way now - I actually enjoyed the second episode of the Clarkson, Hammond and May-less series.
Not as much as I'd enjoyed it previously, but I enjoyed it enough that, had I not ever seen the Clarkson, Hammond and May show, I would've considered it decent telly. And I don't even find cars very interesting. I own a crumbling Vauxhall Zafira, and I pretend to have a fit whenever somebody asks me what sort of engine it has.
I think that's what any potential video games TV show needs in this era: it can't just appeal to gamers. Obviously, it should appeal to gamers - but you've also got to find a way to draw in a casual audience. Only if it's a big hit will it reverse decades of congealed fear.
You've got to get the games content in by stealth, in the way that Top Gear is still a show that reviews cars... but it does it in a way that doesn't disturb anybody who doesn't care for reviews of cars.
In my hypothetical TV show - let's call it Top Games - the games coverage is often disguised. It has to be funny. It needs challenges, it needs big, glossy, location footage, with drone shots. Get out of the studio, and make some good travel telly. Which is often what people forget Top Gear actually is: it's a travel show fronted by ageing buffoons.
Much as I'd like to, I'm never going to pitch a video games TV show to anyone. But... if I did... I'd model it on Top Gear.
Just to get it out of the way now - I actually enjoyed the second episode of the Clarkson, Hammond and May-less series.
Not as much as I'd enjoyed it previously, but I enjoyed it enough that, had I not ever seen the Clarkson, Hammond and May show, I would've considered it decent telly. And I don't even find cars very interesting. I own a crumbling Vauxhall Zafira, and I pretend to have a fit whenever somebody asks me what sort of engine it has.
I think that's what any potential video games TV show needs in this era: it can't just appeal to gamers. Obviously, it should appeal to gamers - but you've also got to find a way to draw in a casual audience. Only if it's a big hit will it reverse decades of congealed fear.
You've got to get the games content in by stealth, in the way that Top Gear is still a show that reviews cars... but it does it in a way that doesn't disturb anybody who doesn't care for reviews of cars.
In my hypothetical TV show - let's call it Top Games - the games coverage is often disguised. It has to be funny. It needs challenges, it needs big, glossy, location footage, with drone shots. Get out of the studio, and make some good travel telly. Which is often what people forget Top Gear actually is: it's a travel show fronted by ageing buffoons.
POTENTIAL MIX
Top Games can work if it gets commissioners, producers, and the audience excited about the potential of games as a broad and accessible thing to make telly about.
Get the presenters up on top of a skyscraper in Dubai doing parkour for a Mirror's Edge feature. Drop
them on a tropical island for their Uncharted coverage, and have them climbing up temples. Or training with the US military in the desert, shooting at dummy foreigners, for the next Call of Duty. Or fannying around San Francisco in a beanie hat, going "Oooh, I'm so street and cool", for Watch Dogs 2.
By all means include reviews and news... but get games out of the virtual world and into the real world, and make the features interesting regardless of whether or not you care about games. Make the show entertaining in and of itself.
And don't get a bunch of bloody kids to present it: you're going to lose two thirds of your potential audience right there and then. And probably no interviews with developers: that would be absolute death. Nobody wants to switch on their TV and seeing some pasty hipster waffling on about the implementation of their interface.
It's never been done before, because they're too scared. Thus, on the achingly rare occasions that TV does tackle games, it's only ever in a way that feels niche, and will only appeal to the niche, and maintain the stereotyped and narrow demographic that they believe makes up any potential audience for a games TV show. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
But that's what I'd do if I was in charge of telly. Which I'm not. And so that's never going to happen.
Anyway, well... yeah, bye then. YEAH, BYE.
Top Games can work if it gets commissioners, producers, and the audience excited about the potential of games as a broad and accessible thing to make telly about.
Get the presenters up on top of a skyscraper in Dubai doing parkour for a Mirror's Edge feature. Drop
them on a tropical island for their Uncharted coverage, and have them climbing up temples. Or training with the US military in the desert, shooting at dummy foreigners, for the next Call of Duty. Or fannying around San Francisco in a beanie hat, going "Oooh, I'm so street and cool", for Watch Dogs 2.
By all means include reviews and news... but get games out of the virtual world and into the real world, and make the features interesting regardless of whether or not you care about games. Make the show entertaining in and of itself.
And don't get a bunch of bloody kids to present it: you're going to lose two thirds of your potential audience right there and then. And probably no interviews with developers: that would be absolute death. Nobody wants to switch on their TV and seeing some pasty hipster waffling on about the implementation of their interface.
It's never been done before, because they're too scared. Thus, on the achingly rare occasions that TV does tackle games, it's only ever in a way that feels niche, and will only appeal to the niche, and maintain the stereotyped and narrow demographic that they believe makes up any potential audience for a games TV show. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
But that's what I'd do if I was in charge of telly. Which I'm not. And so that's never going to happen.
Anyway, well... yeah, bye then. YEAH, BYE.
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