It’s an industry worth millions, can it ever be true spectator sport?
Live streaming of tournaments on sites like Twitch already generate mass views from game players – but what spectator audiences of the future might look like could be glimpsed at Moscow’s Crocus City exhibition centre when it hosted Epicenter, the largest international cyber sports tournament to be held in Russia. Rather than just show games on large screens, event specialists Big Screen Show (BSS) made this an entertainment, a spectacle that would appeal to gamers and non-gamers alike. That took a lot of live-show stagecraft. Three pairs of Christie Roadster S+20K projectors created ambient content on the ceiling, while three Christie Roadster HD20K-J projectors 3D mapped an in-game characters’ head. You didn’t need to understand every strategic key-press or every backstory to become part of the crowd and get swept up in the emotion.
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