World Series of Video Games (WSVG) was an international professional electronic sports competition. It held its first season in 2006, with competitions in six different games and six events held around the world including the finals of the event. The total prize purse of the season was US$750,000 which includes the $240,000 prize purse that was winnable at the finals. The WSVG was operated by Games Media Properties, an American gaming company founded in 2002 with the BYOC (Bring Your Own Computer) Lan section subcontracted out to Lanwar Inc.
Participants included Johnathan "Fatal1ty" Wendel, four-time CPL world champion and runner-up of the WSVG Quake 4 competition, Dae Hui 'FoV' Cho (veteran professional gamer, one time Electronic Sports World Cup champion and third place of the WarCraft III competition), Li 'Sky' Xiaofeng (twice World Cyber Games champion, considered strongest WarCraft III player of 2006 in a worldwide poll of gaming journalists[2]) and Team 3D (twice World Cyber Games champion team and runner-up of the WSVG Counter-Strike competition), as well as eventual champions Johan 'Toxic' Quick and eSport Player of 2006[3]Manuel 'Grubby' Schenkhuizen.
A television production company, TV By Mills (now Spacestation), was brought on to create the televised WSVG episodes on CBS. This was the first time a video game competition was featured in an hour-long format on network television in the United States.
Cancellation
In a surprise move on September 12, 2007, the WSVG main page announced that "Games Media Properties will no longer produce the World Series of Video Games",[14] and that the remaining three events (Los Angeles, London, and Sweden) were all cancelled. The reasons given were that revenue from the previous events were not enough to sustain the league, especially because of its extensive televising campaign and enormous event sizes.
The WSVG has stated that it wishes to continue expansion in online advertising and their network of websites[citation needed].
2014
After the cancellation in 2007, the World Series of Video Games was relaunched by World Series Corporation in August 2014.
One of the key elements in this new version of the World Series of Video Games, is the exclusive software that they present called WSVG Battleroom, that includes an anti-cheat feature that is at the forefront of technology, promoting the clean gaming.
WSVG hosted a LAN event in Maldives in October 2015 which included games like Starcraft 2, Hearthstone, FIFA & Age of Empires 2. From the day the event was announced doubts were being raised on its viability on various other gaming forums.[citation needed]
The LAN event was not particularly great from organization point of view and was marred with technical & logistical issues.[15] The event had a total prize pool of $50,000, but $32,000 was not paid out to teams and players.[16] Since the conclusion of Maldives event no future plans have been divulged.
References
^"After the collapse of the 2006 CPL World Tour, the WSVG was announced and took over basically every prior scheduled World Tour stop. They strived to not repeat any mistakes the CPL had made in prior years, and also have a better plan to bring gaming to television." l- [1]
