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WHY TV WON'T DO VIDEO GAMES - by Mr Biffo

9/6/2016

33 Comments

 
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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?
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.
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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!

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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.

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.
FROM THE ARCHIVE:
GAMESMASTER, CAN YOU HELP ME?
DISGUSTING: 10 PEOPLE WHO ARE SO DESPERATE FOR FAME THAT THEY'D EVEN EAT A TAPEWORM
LET'S GO TO THE CAR BOOT SALE!
33 Comments
Neil
9/6/2016 10:23:22 am

*raises hands* I work in telly and play games!

The irony is that Top Gear probably wouldn't be commissioned today. Too niche and no one really seems to commission straight up magazine shows anymore.

On a different note, I remember once a looooong time ago going to a pilot of a BBC video game show called Bleeding Thumbs. It had Dermot O'Leary hosting with Kate Thornton and was a little bit shit.

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Waynan The Barbarian
9/6/2016 10:31:11 am

Remember the game show Bits? It was presented by three lasses, one being Emily Booth who usually gets her baps out in low budget britich horror flicks.

It was terrible.

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SJW
9/6/2016 01:28:07 pm

NO HE DIDN'T REMEMBER IT DID HE! THE SEXIST, GAMERGATE SUCKING MALE!

On a more rational note, it's still an interesting spot (and I am surprised Biff missed it to the point it surely was intentional?) and yet another example of what seemed to herald a new brave world of unknowns being gambled upon with low budget production able to look half-decent, but what we end up with today is, as the article says, a situation when only pre-trusted names are trusted, and even they (Brooker) can't make a difference.

Clive Peppard
9/6/2016 01:44:59 pm

Emily Booth!! i loved her a little bit. I cant remember it well but did it have Violet Berlin and that American woman on it also?

SJW
9/6/2016 02:23:22 pm

@Clive - You mean Aleks, or, Prof. Krotoski now and in regards to TV/Radio mainly does internet pop-science type stuff (see iPlayer/Radio 4) which is quite listenable. I'd bet that any opaque mention of 'bitz' is absent from her CV (but forgive me if I'm wrong).

Clive
9/6/2016 04:17:53 pm

Yes! Aleks, she does very good things nowadays, bitz should be up there on her CV though, very influential television for boys of a certain age, GIRLS(!?) that like gaming!!!! there was a programme that has prob been mentioned above where the credits were a high speed deluge of type that you had to record on a video and play back at slo mo to read. it escapes me what it was called but it had a weird guy that gave out cheat codes and called viewers slimy furtlers or some such, that was pretty good too

Dirty Barry
9/6/2016 07:27:11 pm

I remember Bits very fondly, along with the rest of the 4Later schedule. I honestly feel TV has become more boring and bland since the days of Bits and Vids. I guess all that kind of "alternative" content has moved onto youtube.

I reckon Top Games would be a massive success, been thinking about a show like that for years but don't know who to write to. Brooker as presenter, Domonic Diamond as international correspondent, Vic Reeves as first guest, weekly challenge, Reviews, Previews, pretty ladies. Channel 4, 9pm, Thursdays. Repeated Fridays 23:55. Job done. When do I get £10,000?

Kelvin Green link
9/6/2016 08:00:46 pm

Dirty Barry, that was Bad Influence, presented by Andy Crane and Violet Berlin. The gronky tipster was Nam Rood.

Euphemia
9/6/2016 10:53:42 pm

Vidz! That was a quality late night C4 item, that was.

Mr Biffo
9/6/2016 10:35:40 am

You may have a point about Top Gear not being commissioned today. It's like Doctor Who; it'd never happen now. That said, long-runners like Countryfile and Songs of Praise - different audience, but no less niche - continue to bring in the viewers. More than ever, really. I think that's what the BBC needs to offer even more of: things that nobody else will or can do.

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Neil
9/6/2016 10:58:18 am

Countryfile and Songs of Praise do bring in the viewers, but that's cos they appeal to such an OOOOOOOLD demographic... i.e., the only people still watching TV like it's 1979.

With my commissioner hat on, video games are probably just as niche (these days) as christianity and the countryside... but the demographic that would be interested just don't watch telly in the same numbers.

Mr Biffo
9/6/2016 11:02:58 am

I agree... which is why I propose a big budget shiny-floor show! No guaranteed of success, mind. And it would never be commissioned. Oh well.

Neil
9/6/2016 11:08:08 am

There is Dara O'Briain's 8 Bit that's coming out later this year. That feels like it could break through...

Waynan The Barbarian
9/6/2016 10:28:31 am

Well i've gotta admit Biff, this is the first i've heard of VGN's demise!
As an avid viewer i am both shocked and appalled! (I went all Points of View there)

That would explain why my Sky box hasn't recorded any more episodes... hmm...

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Harry Steele
9/6/2016 11:07:16 am

I believe that Dara Ó Briain is hosting a new videogame show that has been filmed but not released yet - although I think it's more an e-sports type show than a review show.

I've always wondered why the BBC hasn't done a videogame show in the style of Film 2016 (which I admittedly stopped watching a long time ago as I found the hosts annoying).

It surely can't cost too much for a couple of sofas and some people from Edge/GamesTM to discuss the new releases?

I guess with so many people already doing that on youtube there seems little reason (in TV commissioner eyes) to replicate it on the telly

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Bruce Flagpole
9/6/2016 12:10:43 pm

Funnily, as I started reading this, I thought to myself 'If they wanted to make a good games show it would need to be like Top Gear is for cars'....and then you said the same thing.
It could be said that great minds think alike... or more worryingly for one us, that we just think like the other!
:)

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Darren Lock link
9/6/2016 12:49:02 pm

As an avid watcher of Videogame Nation, I think it was one of the few gaming shows that wasn't execrable and actually found an endearing format. A mixture of footage, talking heads and the odd gaming challenge by the staff made it a fun watch with a cup of coffee at the weekend.

The only problem with it was that it was on Challenge TV and I was the only sod watching it...

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Steve Williamson
9/6/2016 08:29:47 pm

I thought #VGN was really good and actually borrowed fairly heavily from Top Gear. It might not have had the live audience, but you are spot on with the mixture of footage, talking heads and the odd gaming challenge.
My only hope is the guys that worked on it can splinter to several other shows.

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Alex
9/6/2016 10:50:01 pm

Last ep is this saturday 11th June.

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Dean Hannah
11/6/2016 11:07:37 am

No, there were plenty of us watching but video gaming is still considered 'childish' and consequently not many would admit to watching it.
I think the show's demise was ironically that it was shown on Challenge TV. Had they not paid Ginx then the show would never have happened but Challenge TV just doesn't have the audience that some channels do which could have pulled in the viewer numbers.
Oh well, at least we got two years of pleasure from the show in an otherwise barren land of gaming footage. "Tis better to have loved and lost..." etc etc
Good luck to Steve McNeil (I know that's you posting above!!), Aoife Wilson, Dan Maher, John Robertson and to all of the VGN staff in your future endeavours and keep on gaming!

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Chinny Hill
9/6/2016 12:54:00 pm

Same problem as always. Commissioning editors who don't understand gaming.

Not a games show (but loosely based on Atic Atac), Knightmare was a huge success. What happened? The new controller of Childrens ITV Dawn Airey demanded the show was dumbed down and the episode count reduced. Then she axed it anyway. It was still the top rated show in it's slot.

That example is years ago but demonstrates the huge problem getting stuff commissioned. People who don't care for or understand stuff holding the purse strings and going for the lowest common denominator.

Meanwhile Youtube steals broadcast TV's clothes. There's a Minecraft video that went up 2 days ago that already has 2 million views. Even a tiny niche channel like mine aimed at relatively obscure machines compared to those of today can drag in 11,000 views a month.

TV has dropped the ball and with the decline of linear broadcast TV as a medium, I don't expect it will ever pick it up again.

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Jim The Plumber
9/6/2016 01:31:17 pm

"the decline of linear broadcast TV as a medium" It always feels that way but I thought odd, upwardly pointing things were unexpectedly happening to figures in the world of overnights? And why the BBC3 axe was premature...

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Chinny Hill
9/6/2016 02:37:43 pm

But the 'unexpected' things are due to people watching linear broadcast in a non linear manner. That will increase while traditional broadcasting declines.

BBC 3 axe was premature but the trend is correct. And the people offended most aren't in the target audience. A bit like when Radio 1 stopped playing Status Quo records.

Best you can hope for is a successful gaming series that can go online but also be broadcast on one of the minor channels such as Dave. Bit like Car Pool.

paulvw
9/6/2016 01:47:38 pm

Yes Youtube and the internet completely gut the content of any news based Games show getting there much faster.

So it's got to be a personality based entertainment show format.

Perhaps a travel show format, one person with a few friends wanders the world looking at the games industry E3 Japan, Rockstar in Scotland, Steam etc etc would cost bugger all.

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Neil
9/6/2016 02:02:40 pm

Here's a thought...

Next year's the 25th anniversary of Gamesmaster... maybe a TFI Friday / Eurotrash style one-off revival done with the audience that grew up with it in mind? So adults playing classic challenges. Maybe even a celeb or two.

Replace Patrick Moore with Brian Cox.

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LeighDappa
9/6/2016 06:17:35 pm

I'd still keep Patrick Moore...

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Dr Kank
9/6/2016 03:03:00 pm

I'd like to see a Top Gear style approach but done on the cheap. Instead of glamorous and exotic locations I'd just have three middle aged men going into a different Game store each week to cause trouble and stir up shit.

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Chinny Hill
9/6/2016 11:29:45 pm

They could give away a scratch and sniff card with the Radio Times. Although each panel would need to smell of BO and self loathing if it's going to be Game.

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Kelvin Green link
9/6/2016 07:57:51 pm

Maybe they can bring Ben the Boffin back!

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Starbuck
9/6/2016 11:05:54 pm

Ginx shows what can be done with UK videogame TV - including some surprisingly entertaining shows within its 24 hour programming (love The First Hour). A pity it's only available tellywise on Virgin (I think).

PS Now having flashbacks of Dexter Fletcher and Dave "Animal" Perry shouting over each other on the lost series of GamesMaster. Ugh.

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PS1Snake
10/6/2016 12:42:07 am

I think video games as a form of entertainment still hasn't been able to shake off the juvenile, waste-of- time stigma that you don’t get with films and music. Yeah, gaming is more socially acceptable these days, but in my opinion a lot of people still associate video gaming with immaturity. I think it’s because people tend to associate the word “game” in video game and the word “play” (when someone says “I play video games”) with children. Or maybe it’s the immature aspects of modern video game culture that people have come into contact with (thru the media) that has shaped their views.

But I do think it just isn’t seen as a form of entertainment that’s worthy of real discussion among average people. I know people with PS4s and Xbox Ones under their TVs and yet most of them just use their machines for FIFA or Call of Duty. They couldn’t care less about the nuances a particular game or series. It’s a superficial interest – there’s no interest in the culture, history, industry personalities, etc. If I want to have a discussion about a particular game or the industry then I have to go online talk about it in a forum. The people around me are more interested in going to the gym, social media, Netflix and football. They don’t care about delving deeper into a game and talking about it.

Despite going mainstream and evolving massively in recent decades, society still doesn’t regard video games in the same way as they regard films or TV - I don’t see that changing. All those old gaming shows like ITV’s Cybernet , Bits and Thumb Bandits were show late at night. Even VGN itself was on at 11.30pm on a Sunday in 2016. The time slots give the impression that video games are some sort of after hours, dirty fetish designed for people who don’t have to get up early the next day.

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CdrJameson
10/6/2016 12:41:29 pm

Do people who play games actually watch much telly these days?

I know I spend more time on the former than the latter (but then again, a LOT more reading stuff off the Internet.)

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Clive Peppard
10/6/2016 01:34:47 pm

What Ive got from this article particularly is a lot of Google image searches for Emily Booth.

Good work Biffster!

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