Charlie Brooker Makes Gameswipe a Success
On Tuesday, BBC Four aired “Gameswipe” featuring Charlie Brooker, and viewers have declared the show a success. The show is an informative and humorous look at video games in the past and present. The British comedian and broadcaster presented the show in the same kind of style as Screenwipe and Newswipe, which turned out to be good.
The show ran for 50 minutes as part of a primer that explained the genres of games, such as MMORPGs (Massive Multi-player Online Role Playing Game), platformers and shoot ‘em up games. The show offered great insight into topics like brilliant guest editorials, mainstream coverage of games, and badly written games. And Brooker also covered specific games, like Wolfenstein, Portal, Grand Theft Auto, Half-Life and Manhunt 2.
Viewers liked the show so much that 2.2% of the UK television audience, which is about 361,000 viewers, watched it. “Gameswipe” aired from 10pm to 11pm just after “Electric Dreams”, which drew 2.3% of the audience, or about 492,000. This isn’t too much of a drop for the one time show about video games, as the BBC Four usually draws 8 million viewers for the average week around the same time.
Although the show was just a one time thing, the BBC may decide to make more episodes since it drew so many viewers. Plus, Brooker said early Wednesday that the show attracted more viewers than the other non-fiction shows he’s done. Then he added that it’s possible he will add games content to Newswipe and Screenwipe. Brooker is known best for the mini-series drama “Dead Set” and his work for The Guardian.