”The current rate of growth in cash purses is not sustainable and creates an artificial interest in these events,” said Scott Valencia, the Vice President of GMP/WSVG and current Championship Gaming Series (CGS) employee, during the foundation of the World Series of Video Games (WSVG) in February of 2006.

Now 19 months after founding the WSVG has now closed its doors.

Competition is by its nature survival of the fittest. WSVG’s mistakes must be carefully examined to help the future of eSports. From the selection of games, to the location of events, to the amount of prize money, everything is now being questioned about why WSVG did what they did and what could have been done better.

Last year when it was founded, the landscape was much different from today. The Cyberathlete Professional League (CPL) was poised to move from Painkiller to Counter-Strike in its next tour. The emergence of the World Series of Video Games rattled eSports in North America. In an instant they swept up several of the CPL’s assets, specifically the CPL’s Intel sponsorship and key players from the 2005 World Tour -- Justin Blanchard, former Commissioner of the CPL and WSVG’s first , and Scott Valencia, who organized the CPL’s 2005 World Tour and was the Vice President of GMP in 2006.

On top of that they landed deals with major LAN events; Dreamhack in Sweden and USA’s big PC LAN event Lanwar. They also bought the rights to CPL’s 2006 summer event and used that as their premier event during the important June through August LAN season.

It looked like the new WSVG was living up to what they were saying that this league would be the Professional Golfers Association for eSports. Early on the league flexed its muscle even pulling in big names like Michael Dell, CEO of DELL, to take part in their events. By the time their finals rolled around, the announcement of College Sports TV, CSTV, seemed like a potential building block towards a successful future.

The 2007 season seemed like a night and day difference. The game selections, the exodus of staff, and the late event announcements cast a pall over the entire 2007 WSVG season. Valencia was one of the first to go leaving for CGS. It made many wonder if he disagreed with the game selections or if he had other reasons.

On top of that some events were met with had problems, specifically WSVG Louisville, that had most of the tournament admins leave the first day. All this happened while WSVG was unable to convince new sponsors to join the league. Their press release stated those facts:

“However, the continuing challenges of securing adequate revenues to sustain the production of the WSVG's large scale events and t elevision programming, in a very crowded field of competitive gaming leagues, has prompted us to re-evaluate our direction as an organization,” said the press release from Games Media Properties.

Their future, with these mistakes in mind, was grim.

CGS managed to steal the limelight from WSVG in 2007 and overshadowed the events they ran all over the world. CGS recently announced its worldwide drafts and GMs continuing to muscle WSVG out of the spotlight.

Major League Gaming, parent company of GotFrag.com, also continued to be the dominant player in the console space, with EVO being the premier fighting game event and Madden tournaments largely run by EA itself. This left little room for WSVG in a crowded space of growing competitors.

In the end the only decision was to close their doors and clear space in the crowded field. The hope for Games Media Properties is to grow their online presence. Legions of angry players and fans have every right to be upset. Not only are the stars un-paid but their future is uncertain. They are the true victims who were sold a future that no longer is in the cards.