Example: Player A and Player B have a massive clash in the centre of the map. At the same time Player A sends a small force to Player B's gold expansion.
The bad caster moves the camera away in the middle of the battle to stare aimlessly at the empty place where the expansion used to be and perhaps do some mouse-clicking action, while analysing: "What an amazing move by Player A, he killed this expansion."
The good caster moves the camera for just one second and goes back to the battle immediately or does not move it at all and makes a note that the expansion has been raised. Hint: The pixels on the minimap are gone. Lost. Never to be seen again.
I <3 you for mentioning this... it is the #1 pet peeve I have with certain commentators. In addition to this, I will see interesting things happening on the minimap but commentators will look elsewhere and wont notice it quick enough for me!
Easier said than done. Know a lot of commentators through organizing iCCup TV Events. It's hard to keep it up for 6+ hours on a live event (or 34 for Raelcun :D ). Also some youtube commentators hate doing the same replay multiple times as it does take time to do it and edit it and upload, etc. But nice points either way.
The only issue i have with low level commentary is the excuse that "its targeted at casual players". You wouldn't have a 3rd grade teacher telling students that 2+2=4 but maybe not kinda im not sure. With that said, i'm just going to leave this topic alone
Excitement Where is it? Korean eSports is fun and exciting because of the casters, even though I don't know too much Korean I can hear the excitement and get enthralled in a game because of it. I also don't particularly like hearing, "Yeah this game is pretty much over, gg any minute." It just sucks the wind out of my sails especially when watching a best of 5 series.
Oh god, this. It's like commentators are nerdy enough to spend all their time watching, playing and studying Starcraft, but too self-conscious to yell while casting. It may have something to do with the 3-commentator setup, though, which Korea uses extensively and the West uses... never.
I just feel like the level of casting can be risen almost throughout the board by most casters. Husky and gretorp work well together. They provide basic commentary designed to appeal to the masses. They have a plan, and it works.
The problem, however, arises when we put 2 casters together that don't often work with one another. A great example would be when I see day9 and gretorp. I just don't think gretorp works well as a co caster tbh. His insight is great, but so many times I hear day leave an opening for him to segue into some color commentary and there's just an awkward period of dead air before gretorp realizes he should talk, or else day has to egg him on to speak.
Tasteless and SDM however, have tremendous synergy. They feed off of one another, fill the "downtime" with anecdotes or theory, but when the action picks up again they both rise to the occasion.
I think one of the biggest things that a caster can do to provide a higher quality viewing experience is take a few hours and study commentating in general. Nony and idra have a ton of knowledge and can probably theorycraft on the fly all game long, but they might be terrible at casting. On the other hand, any ESPN field reporter would be able to study the game for a few weeks and probably be a great color commentator.
If you're going to put the time in to become a great commentator, put the time in to study commentating :D
On June 18 2010 13:07 PeT[uK] wrote: Can OP get banned for his siggy cause I'm offended.
I agree it may be tasteless, but you can't ban someone on the premise of being offended. Offensiveness is completely subjective. If I was offended by people speaking Korean it wouldn't give the right for me to request anyone that offends me to receive repercussions. That being said, lets get back on topic
At the moment I'd be most appreciative of caster who manages to sound like he understands the game as good as me as viewer - when it comes to my main race. I like all the most popular casters for the different sort of entertainment they offer, but almost all seem to miss stuff that a 2k zerg wouldn't. Some "advanced basics" that should be top notes for the caster to notice, but without actual experience of first person high level playing on all races you'll end up missing really important stuff. This likely goes for all races, eventhough at least toss seems to have some pretty good (in SC2 skill) representatives for casting
As example I could use the HDH finals, where really important factor in most of the games was the amount of colo tech vs. scouting it and spire timing. Really, when the toss makes 2robo colo, the main focus in game should be on how zerg is going to counter it since it's the autowin unit if zerg doesn't react to them being around. I'd be scrolling over the zerg base constantly to see spire, or talk about other options zerg might have in mind such as infestors were in one of the games. This has seemed to become nuisance in most of the zvp games - corruptors at some point just show up, or don't, in masses without spire often even being revealed for viewers or production tab being shown at any point to show where zerg is standing in anti-colo perspective.
Anyhow, that was just one example. I don't expect casters to be top10 representatives of any race, but maybe some sort of overall cliffnotes for casters about what to focus on would be in order since some issues' importance just doesn't seem to be visible for casters who in other ways act as well as I could think of. There is almost no zerg game where I don't feel like some important stuff is not being shown to viewer, I doubt I'm alone with these feelings.
I know most don't care about as tight strategic elements as I do and go for entertaining sound and feel of the caster primarily, but I don't see why these couldn't unite. As much as I did like the klazart,diggity and all those casters job with SC1 starting from like 3 years ago, still as learning experience I still remember most the FPVODs of Ahzz and Nony. Pretty much the only english commentaries that actually provided sensible strategic insight then that I couldn't think of myself (note: not dissing any liquidrelated sc1 casting, just didn't get to hear any then ).
On June 18 2010 12:13 Voronoff wrote: Check out TotalBiscuit. He's an interesting counterpoint to much of the current style of Starcraft shout casting.
Glad I read this thread, I think that guy is awesome ^_^
One major thing I would like to request from casters: Include a link to the file of the Replay that you're casting. I think we would all gain a tremendous amount more of understanding if we had access to the actual replay file.
I don't know if this has been already said but casters should defininitely try to master the wonderful art of mouse discipline which you can see in almost perfect form in korean esport broadcasts!
1) Don't click around like you're playing the game. Insteat do the opposite: Move and click super slow while still showing all (necessary) information. This will be especially hard for (ex-)pros and maybe you'll have to practice this by setting up a very slow mouse sensibility. Of course this is also true for screen movement. The viewer will be very thankful because this way he can see the game instead of 300 APM mouse actions.
2) Don't show everything. An average viewer can only process 1-2 things a second. It sounds antithetical but by showing less information you can communicate more information.
3) When you don't need the mouse, "hide" it somewhere in the UI so the viewer doesn't get distracted.
4) Do everything in rythm! This is where mouse discipline becomes an artform. It is the combintaion of everything above and by no means a must because it probably requires a lot of practice. Move and click like a slow walz when there's less action and pump up to samba in big moments. (Of course this has to come "naturally" - if you force it, it'll probalby look horrible)
On June 18 2010 19:09 shin ken wrote: I don't know if this has been already said but casters should defininitely try to master the wonderful art of mouse discipline which you can see in almost perfect form in korean esport broadcasts!
1) Don't click around like you're playing the game. Insteat do the opposite: Move and click super slow while still showing all (necessary) information. This will be especially hard for (ex-)pros and maybe you'll have to practice this by setting up a very slow mouse sensibility. Of course this is also true for screen movement. The viewer will be very thankful because this way he can see the game instead of 300 APM mouse actions.
2) Don't show everything. An average viewer can only process 1-2 things a second. It sounds antithetical but by showing less information you can communicate more information.
3) When you don't need the mouse, "hide" it somewhere in the UI so the viewer doesn't get distracted.
4) Do everything in rythm! This is where mouse discipline becomes an artform. It is the combintaion of everything above and by no means a must because it probably requires a lot of practice. Move and click like a slow walz when there's less action and pump up to samba in big moments. (Of course this has to come "naturally" - if you force it, it'll probalby look horrible)
I have to say that I really agree with this point. Having slow concious mouse movements makes everything look so deliberate, and in turn more confident. Spamming and clicking all over is a hard habit to break I'm sure, but if you could exercise a little restraint it goes a long way.
On June 18 2010 13:07 PeT[uK] wrote: Can OP get banned for his siggy cause I'm offended.
troll harder
@topic
IMO, the commentators can be compared to BW itself. as time pass, they get better. SC2 is just starting and there will always be potential for these types of eSports casting .. the following are great examples from commentators. you dont really need to understand what they are saying, you just need to go with the flow of the game. the spectators will understand whats on screen ..
On June 18 2010 12:57 RyanS wrote: Language When casters (or even players/forumers in general) say things like "good micro" and "good macro" it seems silly to me. Not sure where these words originated, but they were passed down and people picked them up to try and sound gosu or something. How can I try to get a friend to watch eSports and have them enjoy it when words like that are used? What is wrong with saying "control" and "production"? To the outsider that isn't into the forum "gosu" lingo it seems like that would be a little easier to comprehend.
Entertaining thread, this comment in particular made me laugh. Faulting someone for speaking in the lingo that everyone in the community understands and uses? Good stuff.
On June 18 2010 18:15 XtrEEmMaShEEN3k2 wrote: One major thing I would like to request from casters: Include a link to the file of the Replay that you're casting. I think we would all gain a tremendous amount more of understanding if we had access to the actual replay file.
^ Absolutely!
Probably the only problem I have with the few casters I watch is accuracy. Calling a Probe a Drone and not realising you called a Probe a Drone makes me wanna throw my monitor into the sun. If you correct yourself, all good, but when a caster consistently makes such basic errors without noticing it it brings their knowledge into question.
One other thing that gets on my nerves (but isn't such a big deal) is casters calling the SLIGHTEST variation a "super creative play". Everyone agrees that TLO is a ridiculously creative player, but that doesn't mean that when he goes 14 pool, 15 hatch, you have to scour the map for some tiny deviation from standard play.
"OMFG! TLO is rushing with 4 lings instead of 6! SUPER CREATIVE PLAY!"
Edit: And actually following that... Casters should NEVER let their player-favoritism get in the way of casting each team as evenly as possible. I've seen too many games where the more famous of the two players will have the replay-cam constantly in his base, and the other play gets almost completely neglected.
EPT
