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In my mind, most English-speaking casters fit into two schools. There are those who take after the Tastosis model of entertaining banter mixed with strategical analysis (Moletrap, Doa, Wolf). But now I've started to see a lot of casters who take every opportunity to complain about the game-play. I start to hear things like:
" I don't think this is a good idea by X. This is absolutely not what you should do to get back into the game"
"Wow, very sloppy micro by X. You absolutely cannot be losing those units this early in the game."
"X needs to more active with his units. He's made a Y mineral investment that could have been X"
I've been hearing this negative lecturing style a lot from the Korean Weekly, IGN, and NASL. I like that these casters are trying to get more in-depth BUT:
(1) Most of casters are not high-level players and make a ton of miscalls when doing this.
(2) The same analysis could be said but in a more positive manner.
(3) The negativity generally sets the mood for this type of ending:
" He's going to clean this up and then it's going to be gg any moment now."
(GG)
 
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I remember Tasteless being a pretty versatile commentator, meaning he can cover a lot of styles. He can say that "X is doing so and so, good job" or he can criticize a player like "X doesn't have any observers, what is he doing???". Depending on the situation I think many commentators can switch up their style.
Also I think that since starcraft is a 1v1 game, if one player is losing, either he messed up, or the opponent played really well, or both. So often commentators will describe both sides of the coin: they will talk about what player X did wrong and how he could improve, but also what player Y did right and the genius of his play, that kind of thing.
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On November 18 2011 04:05 Suichoy wrote:
(2) The same analysis could be said but in a more positive manner.
pretty much this. only a select few bw games have ever been translated, but the tone and banter of the commentator definitely fits the flow of the game and casting. but i suppose it has a lot to do with the overall [by comparison] laziness/"lack of energy" of western casters
with sc2 in particular, i really just dont pay attention anymore, except for a select few casters.
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Yeah to be honest I find it really annoying when listening to Orb, he's always criticizing the players and talking about everything they're doing wrong.
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Yeah, Tasteless is a big offender of this, really gets on my nerves. Listening to someone like Day9 makes the game more exciting even when it's the mistakes, whereas out of tasteless you keep getting
"Oh, god these players are playing miserably why would anyone want to watch this crap."
(now, granted, this is acceptable in rare cases like HuK vs Nestea... dear god that was bad...)
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I prefer critical commentary when they are knowledgable and make good calls, however may of your so called "IGN school" don't. Its one of the reasons I really enjoy apollo's casting, he seems to know whats up most of the time.
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Hm, yeah, I think it's generally bad for casters to say negative things about the players, especially if they're wrong, in which case they look like complete idiots. Pro's do make a lot of mistakes of course, because this game is young etc etc, and if they do something blatant (like about 29 minutes of the 31 minute long game between HuK and Nestea) I think it's appropriate for casters to point it out.
But unless the casters are pretty good at the game themselves (Wolf for example, is masters on Korea. So is Artosis) it would be advisable to take caution when it comes to criticizing players who are far better than themselves.
That's what I liked a lot when Sayle casted the recent ISL2 (I think it was 2, at least), at least the earlier rounds of it. The players were all... well, kind of not very good? So I had tons of fun watching Sayle point out all these laughably silly mistakes.
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I'm not sure why you divide it into two schools - Artosis to me has always seemed to be the prototypical 'complainer'. Actually most other casters that I've seen try really hard to emulate Tasteless and Artosis, both their good and bad. I agree that its not good when casters just bash the players in a game but I don't think its fair to say taht Tastosis don't.
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There are more than two schools.
What you described has always been around and yes, it annoys me. That's why I don't bother listening to it.
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I completely agree with you Suichoy. It seems to me that the best course of action is for the community to out these types of commentators. I'm currently frustrated with Gretorp's commentary in the NASL. His analytical commentary on the ThorZaIN/MajOr game today was categorically false and he definitely has a terran bias in all of his commentary. I wish he would stick to play by play or taking broader strokes with his analysis.
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I sometimes fall into this trap when I'm casting as well. It's something I really need to improve on. Ty for bringing this up.
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I don't know if it's a bad thing.
I know when I watch MMA and say for example someone's striking sucks Jore Rogan will be quick to call it out for being subpar. If he tried to hype it up as not that bad I'd be thinking "wtf Joe? That is horrible striking..."
Maybe it's just me, but I don't want stuff sugar coated, I like the real no bullshit truth.
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It's not a problem with just IGN. I agree that hearing "negativity" isn't the best thing for me as a spectator. Of COURSE someone is going to make a less-than-optimal decision, because that's how players lose to better players. Having imperfect information in the game isn't going to allow each player to play perfectly.
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heavily depends on the casters IMHO. if they have top notch analysis skills like tastosis usually it's ok to point out mistakes if someone like HD does it and reads almost everything possible wrong, pointing out "mistakes" that are actually good play, it just sucks.
but i think that's why this thread is named after IGN after all.
to comment on your examples:
Korean Weekly
i only heard orb casting and he has a pretty good analysis especially with Ps involved so it doesn't matter for me
IGN
i don't like most of their casters anyway but it's mostly HD with his fail analysis + being negative making a really bad cast. painusers analysis is better and he points out the mistakes pretty well so it fits his style. most anoying is when HD joins the bashing with wrong analysis.
NASL haven't seen in a while, but gretorps analysis could also be better and he should focus more on the game instead.
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EPT
