By Steve Rousseau

For years, organizations such as the World Cyber Games (WCG) have been trying to legitimize the hobby of playing video games by creating organized annual international competitions. However in an odd step, attaching their name to Sci-Fi’s new reality show, “WCG Ultimate Gamer” has taken a step back in terms of serious video gaming.

If you’ve seen shows such as “Shot of Love,” “America’s Next Top Chef,” or any other reality show based on finding the top something, then you’ve already got the basic premise of “WCG Ultimate Gamer.” “WCG Ultimate Gamer” takes ten “top gamers,” puts them in a house, has them compete in gaming-related challenges and eliminates one every week. The winner gets 100,000 dollars, and a Samsung electronics prize pack.

Each week, the show focuses on a specific game, and bases its challenges around that. Initially, there is a real-life challenge based on the game. For example, in the first episode focuses on the game “Rock Band 2,” and for the real-life challenge competitors had to perform as real rock bands. After that, the contestants are then put into the “isolation chamber,” in which they play the actual video game, highest score winning. From there comes the elimination round. In this round, the worst-performing gamer must face off against the top performing player’s pick. The loser of that final round is then eliminated from the show.

The real problem behind “Ultimate Gamer” is its credibility. Reality shows such as “American’s Next Top Chef,” showcase skill because all the competitions are entirely based on raw cooking ability. “Ultimate Gamer,” however, just seems to take every stereotype and then throw them into nonsensical competitions. Characters range from the token black man, Adande, the “Fraternity Tournament Champion,” J.D., the pretty blond, Alyson, punk rockers, Robert and Ciji, to finally your average Joes, Mark , Jeff and Kelly. What is even worse is that their qualifications for being “America’s top gamers” vary greatly. There is Geoff, a legitimate WCG tournament champion, and then there is Chelsea whose accreditation is listed as, “Plays 40 hours a week.” The show’s cast looks like the producers took every pop-culture stereotype, instead of really selecting the cast based on their accomplishments in playing video games.

Aside from the spotty list of “gamers,” the competitions themselves are suspect. While the actual sections featuring video game competitions are well done, the real-life competition just comes off as extremely hammy and awkward. In the show’s first episode, contestants formed rock bands and preformed “The New Kid in School” by The Donnas. However, this pretty much just boiled down to one person singing, while the other three stood there with guitars doing nothing: hardly a test of video game skill.

“WCG Ultimate Gamer” could have been decent if it was just over the top, not taking itself seriously, just having regular people struggle through video games, hilarity ensuing. It could have also been decent if it took the contest aspect more seriously, bringing in a much more credible playing field instead of the most diverse, doing away with the real-life competition, and making it strictly based on video game skill. In the end is a show that’s in between these two styles, mixing some gamers with Barbie dolls in pseudo-competition, resulting in an awkward mess.