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Going Head-to-Head with the Creators of SCI FI's WCG Ultimate Gamer
by Troy Rogers
 The video game industry continues to grow each year by leaps and billion dollar bounds. With so many gamers trying to make a career out of playing their favorite games, the industry has created a variety of worldwide competitions for the best-of-the-best in various game genres that rival some sporting events, including the World Cyber Games. Now SCI FI is throwing down the video game challenge on TV with the new reality series, WCG Ultimate Gamer, which premieres Tuesday, March 10 at 10pm.
Utilizing a familiar reality format, WCG Ultimate Gamer pits twelve contestants against each other as they live together in an L.A. loft, compete in various video game challenges while being thrust into real-life video game simulations inspired by famous games, and go head-to-head in elimination rounds for the title of "Best Overall Gamer" in a jam-packed arena. Throughout the Ultimate Gamer, gamers compete for prizes that include $100,000 cash and the ultimate Samsung electronics package, with the winner going global as a VIP rep of the World Cyber Games.
Leading up to the premiere WCG Ultimate Gamer, we hopped on the phone for some conference call gameplay with Ultimate Gamer creators Michael Agbabian and Dwight D. Smith, host Hanna Simone, and co-host Joel Gourdin to find out what gamers can expect from the new SCI FI reality competition on March 10, the real life simulations of Halo and Virtua Fighter, and how playing video games can sometimes lead to a lucrative career.
THE DEADBOLT: What’s the most challenging part of pulling off a show like this?
 DWIGHT D. SMITH: Oh, boy. You know what? For me, I would say initially the most challenging part was a perception from people that watching video games is not interesting on television. When we sought out to create this show, we really fought to completely break that perception and I feel like we did it. I feel like we changed a lot of things in the show that you would expect from a video game show.
We made these large-scale physical challenges. We made playing video games a spectacle. We have Samsung Arena, which takes gaming to a whole new level where they’re playing video games on these 20-foot giant screens. So it was really kind of taking a perception of what video games is and kind of blowing it up into something that was an exciting spectacle.
MICHAEL AGBABIAN: One of the other challenges, Dwight’s totally right. That was a lot in terms of breaking perception. And then I think also engaging viewers into a game that they, themselves, are not playing, like getting them invested in the game [and] getting them invested in the person playing the game. But also, just on a technical level, we do different games every week and every game is completely different. There’s different scoring, they have different technical requirements, it’s just different completely. A fighting game is different than a racing game, which is different than a sports game.
So the challenge, just among the producers, is that every week is like a new show. It’s not like a show - let’s say like a dating show - where you kind of have a similar format every week with different dates and different locales, etc. I mean this show every week is kind of completely different, which, as producers, was a particular challenge because it’s like, "Okay, we’re going to just do this again and again." You kind of have to reinvent it every week. So I think that, for us, was also a big challenge. I think we succeeded. But I definitely think it’s unique to this series because we’re dealing with games that are all different and function differently.
THE DEADBOLT: After watching the first episode and seeing the gamers tackle the real guitar, what are you going to get them to do for Halo III and Virtua Fighter V? Are they going to have them beat the crap out of each other?
 AGBABIAN: [laughs] I’ll take the Halo and Dwight can take Virtua. Halo we do a rather large. I would say large-scale paintball challenge. We took a lot of care to meticulously try to recreate the game in real life. And again, I think we succeeded. Of course I’m biased, I’m one of the producers, but I think that it’s really exciting. It almost feels like a movie to me, like an episode of 24 or something. It kind of has this ticking clock and you have teams against each other and we have some special effects, and things like that.
So I think it works well with the game itself because Halo is really hard to interpret in reality. I mean, it’s kind of impossible ... What we did with every challenge, which also is the case for Virtua Fighter, is we boiled down the skill of what’s involved in each video game to a true human skill, like whether it’s fighting in terms of hand/eye coordination or in terms of target practice or whatever. We honed it down to what is the real human skill and then built a challenge around it. And with Halo, it was paint ball. It was obviously being accurate with your targets and using your head and trying to get to a certain goal, and I think it plays really well.
JOEL GOURDIN: One word: "bomb."
SMITH: Yes, it did definitely go beyond paintball. There was a bomb involved with explosions and ...
GOURDIN: Bomb!
 SMITH: Security codes and all sorts of other aspects to that challenge as well. Michael’s right, that one was done on a very large scale. In terms of Virtua Fighter, I’m sure many of our contestants would have liked to take a swing and punch at each other. But that was not what happened. It was done as a very physical, aggressive martial arts-inspired challenge that also had an element of strategy to it, which made it a really interesting competition because it was a thinking game as well as a very physical game.
THE DEADBOLT: I remember when I was a kid, I was always being told, "Stop wasting your time, this is not going to be a career. Who cares if you got highest score in Asteroids?" Why do you think it turned out to become a spectator sport and now guys are pulling in hundreds of thousands of dollars?
HANNAH SIMONE: It’s incredible, actually. I know Joel and I have spoken about this before, that a lot of kids are told to put down the video games [and] go outside. And now the contestants that we had on this show can make careers, a living wage, playing video games. And it was incredible to witness people at the top of their game, especially when they get into Samsung Stadium and one of those people is going home. They are really pushed to perform and to show their best.
The level of skill blew my mind. This is a show that completely breaks down all the misconceptions and stereotypes around gamers and really shows how they can be so strategic and really work their personal relationships and build on their technical skills because they want to win. At the end of the day, when you play a video game, there’s nothing for coming in second.
THE DEADBOLT: Joel, I’m guessing you must be in your glory with a show like this. Did you already know any of the gamers from Attack of the Show or XPlay?
 GOURDIN: You know, that’s a cool question, because I did. I was concerned about that when I got brought on to the show. Before we started - Dwight and Michael probably remember - I actually told them that I did know a few of the gamers. Specifically, I knew the Frag Dolls. In my time in video game media I had met a lot of those girls, and of course a few of them were brought on the show. So I needed to know if that was a conflict of interest before we began shooting.
And really, it was treated very delicately by the producers. Essentially, I basically had to pretend as if I didn’t know them. I mean, really, it sounds silly. But really, that’s what we did. And then we finished up the show, we wrapped the show, and I remember going up to [Amy] and being like, "Hey, I’m your friend again," and we both laughed. So I hadn’t talked to her in four and a half weeks even though I was seeing her more than I’d seen her in the last year. But that was just the reality, you know? And only Amy and Allison did I really know pretty well.
AGBABIAN: Also, to add to what Joel’s saying, the way our scoring works, it is [almost] completely based on how they do in the game itself. I mean, Joel was not judging anybody or affecting anybody’s outcome. So it didn’t affect any scoring or any eliminations in any sort. So that’s why everyone was able to basically be on the same set. Had Joel obviously had a say in who gets eliminated, that would’ve been a much bigger concern.
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