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Hi!
I'm Darquess, player and newbie caster of the greatest game ever made, Starcraft 2. One of my favourite parts of Starcraft is the casted games, so I thought, why not cast some myself?
So far, I've only published one casted game, a PvT on Overgrowth LE, from /r/castit, which you can watch here. Since I'm new to the whole casting business, I would really appreciate some feedback on what I have done right and what I have done wrong. Also, I would be happy to cast any replays sent to me.
Other than the actual casting, do you think the quality of my video and audio is OK as well? My internet isn't great so I can't really compare the HD quality to other casters. Unfortunately, due to my internet I'm not able to stream casts to Twitch either (at any rate, my audio is edited to remove noise so livestreaming probably isn't the best idea anyway).
Please give me feedback, and please like and subscribe to my Youtube channel if you enjoy my casting.
  
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You said your HD quality wouldn't compare, but the quality seems perfectly fine to me, lol. I don't play/cast SC2, but are you sure HD isn't just a necessity to even play SC2?
As for some feedback, couple things I could mention
- Try to avoid quiet moments. People watch casts (or an English cast) for the sake of having a substitute to listen to someone talk about the game, rather than listening to a Korean commentator that they don't understand. Talk about things like the players, the matchup, the map and its showings/statistics of said matchup. In your first video, you could've talked about how you were aiming to make an impact and/or why you want to cast in the first place.
- Try not to move your screen all over the place. Though it wasn't excessive, you constantly moving the screen little by little all over the place was a bit distracting. Basically, as an observer that's casting, you want minimal amount of movement to not be a distraction with your pointer and screen dragging, but you obviously want to be able to capture the points as well. Try to use your arrow keys as they tend to be smoother and try to avoid dragging across the minimap.
Lose your Scottish accent.
- No offense to the players, but keep in mind that people are more likely to watch higher leveled players play, rather than watching Bronze/Silver/Gold players play. If you wanna raise up your viewer count by any means, it doesn't even have to be players in Proleague like Flash, but off of other foreigners that could use recognition and feature Master/Grandmaster level play.
I cast Brood War myself, though not for a long time, so I'm not exactly an expert, but that was just the basic pointers I found out while casting the game myself. All in all, I hope you have a great time casting and thrive to improve your casting skills along with keeping others entertained.
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Thanks for the reply. By the HD quality comparison, I meant I couldn't view other videos in HD on Youtube because my internet isn't great, so I wasn't sure what other HD Youtube casts look like lol. I was a bit worried about too much quality lost when reducing the video size via Handbrake, but if you say its fine then cool.
I'll try to talk more in future casts, as well as give some more background on my casting. As much as anything, the screen movement was simply instinctive since I was in Starcraft 2 lol, but yes, I realise its something I need to try and reduce. thanks for the tip on the arrow keys, I'll definitely keep that in mind. Do you think disabling Fraps from recording the cursor would be a good idea as well?
Interesting you comment on the Scottish accent; none of the native Scots I know really hear it (I was born in NZ, but moved to Scotland when I was 6), and in fact quite often have people asking me if I am an American or something lol, whereas whenever I visit New Zealand on holiday everyone there comments on my Scottish accent.
As for the games, as much as anything it was simply because they were the games on /r/castit, however since I recorded that I've heard SC2-Replays.net is a good place to find replays and they seem more high level.
Thanks again for the advice and for the words of encouragement. I've been practicing casting more today so maybe some new videos up tomorrow.
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I don't cast myself, i only have a viewer's experience, so please take this with a grain of salt.
While sync[gm]mentions the arrow keys, i thought it was also possible to hold the scroll wheel to change the screen. Suppose this is possible, if you'd put the that scroill sensitivity quite low, you (with some practice perhaps?) might be able to make very natural smooth small screen movements, for example during an attack on a fortified position, or to show a defensive tankline towards a third base or something.
I don't think i'd be a fan of not showing the cursor. First of all, although that's more of an observer than a caster thing, you might be able to highlight some upgrade or other part of gameplay with the cursor in a non-verbal way. Most of the times this won't add much, but including your cursor in casting increases your verbal flexibility; you don't have to think too much about saying 'this (location)', 'there', and other of those kind of words. Also, the caster's use of the minimap becomes more clear, as you see the cursor going to a location on the minimap, and then see a change of position, instead of the other way around. I do think however that using the cursor too much will be annoying for viewers, so you have to find a balance. I can imagine that rapid cursormovements can be annoying for example.
Just voicing my first thoughts after reading these posts and recalling my viewer's experience. But if someone with casting experience claims this is bs, it probably is.
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Right now you are at a point where you will get vastly better simply by practicing. That's kind of the toll you pay as a caster. You have to put in a lot of time with no one caring about you and people saying mean things until you get good enough for people to start caring. But if you really care enough about the game/casting, you will fight through it and get through the barrier to entry.
There is a lot I could say; too much for it all to be completely internalized at this point. One thing that I will say to focus on is making sure nothing is negative. If the audio/video/casting issues are bad, then people don't need you to tell them about it. If they aren't, then you have caused people to now realize, and focus on it. This applies to game play too. Players do not make mistakes, they make interesting decisions that give you an opportunity to talk about what advantage that they wouldn't get if they played "correct/standard". If a player really did fuck up, then they didn't make a mistake; their opponent's brilliant play forced the error. That terran didn't forget to lift the depot; the protoss hit an unusual timing catching the terran off guard. Id on't know enough about sc2 to be able to say if 2 on gas could be used for a specific strategy. But if you can't think of anything, just point it out and say "that's interesting," and let the viewer decide if you are pointing out an error and are simply polite in not calling him a retard, or if it is simply an abnormality, and something to remember as the story of the game unfolds.
Never being negative while not coming across as sarcastic or campy or ignorant is a skill. It has been years since I watched day9, but he used to be really good at it, I assume he still is.
People like accents as long as it isn't to the point that people who might have English as a second language have an issue understanding you. I think you are fine.
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I agree with the other posters whole heartedly. In the mechanics of it you shouldn't be jerking around the camera, you probably need to get used to all the caster hotkeys and most of the time you want to show the production tab. But those are things you can learn just by really paying attention to the next cast you watch, and trying to emulate it for yourself.
ATM you're just saying what happens on the screen which can only fill so much time talking. At the beginning of each game you're typically going to have about 5 mins (game time) where the players are just doing the standard builds. In that time you want to talk about features of the map, history of the players, current meta etc. Which means its not only more entertaining for the viewer to watch higher level games but also easier to cast as you have more to talk about.
Additionally in terms of finding games to cast a lot of tournaments release replay packs of their qualifiers which never get casted (because they're qualifiers) if you looked through some of those you'd find high quality games with well known players.
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Thanks for all the feedback everyone. I definitely realise now that I need to be much gentler when moving the camera, so I'll try and remember to do that. That'll get better with practice as well, I suppose. Thanks for the advice on negativity as well. That is a good point that I'll try to keep in mind.
I will take a look at qualifier replay packs, that sounds like a good idea.
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Hey! Awesome to see more people getting into casting! Though I think the other posters have given some good tips already, I'd really recommend trying out something I did when I was still getting started with casting.
Here is my challenge. Cast one game, every single day, for 30 days. Doing this will get you more comfortable with talking about the game beyond purely what's happening on the screen. The first few times people commentate a game, they tend to focus mainly on exactly what is clearly visible on the screen. After you've gotten a bit more comfortable with things though, you'll naturally start to mix in more analysis or even just more jokes if you're trying to be more of an entertainment commentator.
At the end of the 30 days, you'll have a much better idea of what it's like to commentate games. I don't know how involved you want to get into commentating but another really important lesson if you are somewhat more serious about it is sometimes you'll have to commentate games on days that you don't really feel like doing it on. Everyone has bad days. Figuring out how to still "get up" and commentate the game and just enjoy it will help you an immeasurable amount in both learning how to deal with it, as well as helping you figure out for yourself how much you enjoy commentating.
While you're doing this challenge, I'd recommend you also don't think too deeply about "what other casters are doing" because the best casters are putting themselves into their cast. When you're starting out, it's really easy to get into the mindset of "I want to be like TotalBiscuit, Day[9], Apollo, Artosis, etc." and just doing things that they do. It's even really easy for this to happen without you really realizing you're doing it. Just focus on what you want to say/do/talk about and let it develop naturally. Even for advice you get, take everything with a grain of salt and evaluate it. Be the caster you want to be, not an amalgamation of every piece of advice you get from hundreds of different people/preferences.
This was a challenge Day[9] issued to me when I told him at an MLG that I was getting into casting. I look back on it as an incredibly awesome experience that I learned an insane amount from. I hope you decide to take on this challenge too! Ask friends you can rely on to be honest with you for feedback and when you're starting off, watch your own casts to figure out what you'd like to do differently. Best of luck on your journey!
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Hi Feardragon. I have been trying to cast at least a game a day for the past few days (though not uploaded any more to my channel yet, still figuring out the best Handbrake settings), so I'll definitely try out this challenge, after I come back from a weeklong school excursion next week at any rate. Thanks for the advice and for the challenge.
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EPT
