ESPN's Scoop Jackson Talks Videogame BasketballAt a Glance
Any real basketball fan should have already set their TiVo to record NBA Live: Bring It Home for all six episodes of the upcoming reality videogame competition on ESPN. NBA reporter Scoop Jackson hosts the new show, which takes the popular Madden Nation concept and twists it just so to bring something new to the boob tube.
Scoop Jackson offers gamers $100,000 and their 15 minutes of fame on ESPN. "ESPN went onto the Xbox Live® leaderboards and found all of the top NBA Live 07 players," said Jackson. "They picked out eight of the Top 20 players. One of them, Jordan Simmons, was ranked number one, and his twin brother was ranked number two. So they only picked one of them. They wanted to make it the best television possible. They focused on who were going to be the best characters, who had the best personalities, what were going to be the best storylines? It's the same stuff they do on shows like The Apprentice." Bring It Home The producers of the show held a preliminary videogame match-up with the eight players, and the winner of each match gets home court advantage for the next round. Not virtual home court advantage, mind you, but a home court advantage in real life. They can play anywhere they want and invite as many friends as they have to cheer them on. Jackson said this makes for great TV, as well as a very hostile gaming environment for the competition. Another twist occurred in the Final Four round, which had the best gamers playing coach to real NBA stars Vince Carter, Antoine Jamison, Carmelo Anthony, and Baron Davis playing the game for the competitors. Jackson said it was funny to watch the transition of the players from awestruck fans to desperately shouting coaches as their $100,000 was on the line.
Scoop Jackson hosts NBA Live: Bring It On. NBA Gaming "Guys like you and me, we can't play games for eight hours a day," said Jackson. "Our girls would get mad at us if we weren't out there hustling. But these NBA cats, they're sitting on millions anyway. That's how they get addicted. Some of them are pretty good, too. They love video games." Accordingly, Jackson stays away from video games like they're the plague. "Imagine sitting where the world is yours with millions and you're sitting in a hotel room playing games," said Jackson. "If video games can do that to cats with money what are they going to do you and me?" Jackson said video games are becoming a culture all to themselves. "What's changed is now we have cats who are getting paid for it," said Jackson. "I've learned from this show that these games are their passion. People have been playing games for a long time, but they've never been able to benefit from it monetarily. It's really going to be like the X Games. When it first started, it was just what these guys did. But ESPN created a vehicle for them to perform on TV. X Games is huge now." "12 years ago, you might have had 10,000 people that got down with skateboarding and snowboarding and freestyle skiing," Jackson continued, "Now you probably have close to 200,000 people that are into extreme sports. We know a lot of people play video games, but once you introduce the chance to win money and be on TV, it's going to open up the floodgates and bring in a whole lot of other people that are going to start trying to play seriously."
The NBA comes to life on Xbox 360 for the eight competitors. Next Season |
