Is game knowledge really important for a caster? - Page 2

Terranist

United States2496 Posts

February 16 2011 19:35 GMT

#21

On February 17 2011 04:29 Mastermind wrote:
In my opinion the only thing more important than game knowledge is having a voice that isnt annoying.

absolutely agree. it's going to take a long time to get used to her pitch, but overall i don't see the big problem as long as torch joins her. understanding is good and she has a passion for sc2.

Chill

Calgary25990 Posts

February 16 2011 19:35 GMT

#22

No, it's not necessarily important, and this thread is kind of dumb because everyone already knows that.

petu

Finland81 Posts

February 16 2011 19:36 GMT

#23

To me Artosis is clearly the best caster in the world and biggest reason for that is his game knowledge that is unrivalled in other big name english casters. And in my opinion in every caster duo there should be at least one who has nearly Artosis-level of game knowledge.

Xswordy

United Kingdom425 Posts

February 16 2011 19:37 GMT

#24

What kind of question is this? Ofcourse it is important. You can't talk about something if you don't know anything about it. Also tasteless has very good game knowledge.

Brandus

148 Posts

February 16 2011 19:37 GMT

#25

Game knowledge is far less important to me than entertainment value. They could be the best player in the world but listening to annoying people for hours at a time is excruciating.

bLuR

Canada625 Posts

February 16 2011 19:37 GMT

#26

For me its extremely important because i dont want to listen to someone who doesnt know what their talking about, because that isn't entertaining.

Hearing them say dumb things and thinking "Wow thats actually wrong and there is probably 5000 people watching who thinks it's right.." Is quite frustrating

aristarchus

United States652 Posts

February 16 2011 19:38 GMT

#27

Obviously there's a balance, and obviously it's less important if you have another caster with you who has that knowledge, but I think it's pretty important. I suspect Torch has has plenty of game knowledge for this pair, and it's not like she has none, but we'll see. It also depends on the audience. As I've gotten more knowledgeable at the game, casters I liked before (HD, Husky) have gotten less appealing (though still not awful). I've never been entertained by Total Biscuit. I like the emotion, but the emotion has to follow the actual story line of the game, showing a buildup that understands how things are falling into place for those later big battles. What really bothers me is wrong game knowledge. I don't mind too much when a caster fails to point out some nuance that I know is true. It completely ruins it when the actively say something that I know is completely false. I think this would work out fine in a pair if it's openly acknowledged that one caster is much better with the high-level strategy, and the other defers to them on those sorts of judgments (or is ok being contradicted when they're wrong, etc.)

bonifaceviii

Canada2890 Posts

February 16 2011 19:41 GMT

#28

One for content, one for colour. The less the colour commentator knows, the more he/she needs to make up for it in entertainment.

vahgar.r24

India465 Posts

February 16 2011 19:43 GMT

#29

Interesting thread here, did not ever realize the commentator/caster difference. A lot also depends on how the chemistry is between Torch and Kelly. Tasosis could finish each others lines ina very funny awkward way which was the main pull for GOM viewers. I guess we dont like our nerd community to be infiltrated by a girl? GOM aint stupid..but this is a big risk none the less.

The_Piper42

United States426 Posts

February 16 2011 19:45 GMT

#30

I think game knowledge is more important to players, enthusiasm is more important for casual viewers. Right now I think the majority of people who watch GSL are players, but having enthusiastic, entertaining casters is important for attracting non-gamers to the sport.

Tripal

Finland92 Posts

February 16 2011 19:46 GMT

#31

Kellymilkies definetly doesn't posess enough game knowledge to cast GSL. She is one of the only casters that really makes me turn of the stream even though I would love to watch the event.

She just doesn't know enough about the game her casting often causes awkward silences and pauses in casts.

b0oyah

Canada117 Posts

February 16 2011 19:47 GMT

#32

For me, game knowledge is the most important thing. In second comes personality, and thats why my favorite casters are artosis/tasteless/incontrol/chill

leakingpear

United Kingdom302 Posts

February 16 2011 19:49 GMT

#33

I don't really get why it has to be one or the other and why it's acceptable for 'personality' commentators to get away with being factually wrong so often. There's this weird idea that because people like Husky and TotalBiscuit are popular that's a measure of competency, that there surely isn't enough time in the world to do casts and also learn the game at a high level, like you can't just do less casts if you're really that hard up on time.

Starcraft 2 is not some grand enigma that you can only understand by playing it for years at a super high level, I mean ignoring that it hasn't been out for a year there's enough easily obtainable resources like Day9's dailies, Liquipedia, these forums and even other casts such as the GSL and MLG. It's like there's some prevailing logic around here and especially on YouTube that you can't have accessible commentary that's also intelligent, despite evidence to the contrary in the form of Day9/Artosis/etc.

In my opinion, as worthless as every poster on TL's may be in actually changing anyone else's view on a matter, it's ridiculous that some of the ones profiting the most from commentary are the ones who have refused to improve their knowledge past what they infer from the games they cast, or in the case of TB intentionally remove any meaningful commentary in favour of crowd pleasing gimmickry. I can kind of understand that the internet is a mean place and that after a while it becomes impossible to distinguish constructive criticism from baseless insults, but when you're one of the few awarded the ability to do it as a sole source of income, it's insulting to the depth of the game, the progamers playing it and whatever this nebulous community term means, to ignore it all.

For the TL,DR gang: There really isn't any reason for entertaining commentators to be so lacking in knowledge.

Rouel

Sweden138 Posts

February 16 2011 19:49 GMT

#34

Game knowledge is important for a good caster, yes.
Especially opinionated casters like those who did a recent tournament whom simply didn't understand what was going on and "didn't like" what players did when Naama & co. actually (orly?) do stuff for a reason which should be pointed out for the casual viewer so they can appreciate the game.

edit: I removed the tournament in question, don't want to point fingers.

Tabularasa

Germany116 Posts

February 16 2011 19:50 GMT

#35

TotalBiscuit is a great example of a caster, who isn't that good himself (I think he once said he was in Silver), but in his case his casting style is still great because he its entertaining and doesn't try to analyse or make decisive assumptions, as he knows he is not that good at it.

If you want to analyse, you have to know what you are saying. Otherwise its just annoying. For example I didn't like the casters of glhf.tv when I watched them some days ago because they tried to analyse situations, but made wrong points and made assumptions which could make sense, but often were simply wrong and never corrected. This also lead to be focusing on aspects which weren't important in the situation. Similiar to the mistakes player of lower leagues tend to make ingame.

Calling preemptive ggs is common for Tastosis, but I think such things are not a problem - because it can actually be close, depending on too many small factors like micro and as such be hard to judge (or even impossible from a subjective point of view). This is what makes such moments so intense to watch. But they (obviously) realise their mistake and can probably tell what actually happened, because they understand the small differences.

I think casters just need to be self-aware on how competent they are, and if they can keep and overview over the whole spectrum of a high-level match. Small adjustments and precise decision-making can turn a game, but can be overlooked easily - and you don't want that to happen in a GSL game.

Zombo Joe

Canada850 Posts

February 16 2011 19:53 GMT

#36

If you don't have game knowledge you'll be stating the obvious. Commentators comment, if their comments are useless or unfunny then they won't be entertaining.

kickinhead

Switzerland2069 Posts

February 16 2011 19:53 GMT

#37

for me yes, but obviously not for a lot of ppl, seeing how many horrible casters (in terms of game-knowledge) got a huge fanbase.

Jayrod

1820 Posts

February 16 2011 19:55 GMT

#38

Ugh... she's seriously casting Code A? If I'm up to watch that I'm definitely going to have to mute. Its really frustrating to listen to her and shes such a moonglade fangirl its absurd!

JamesSwift

United States71 Posts

February 16 2011 19:55 GMT

#39

In nearly all US pro sports broadcasts, there will be a play-by-play and a color commentator. The play-by-play's job is to be the knowledgable one, calling the action and also expounding on some technical/strategic aspects of what is going on. The color commentator is to provide 1) humor and 2) constant dialogue (which is the biggest failing of tastosis imo). The color commentator is not meant to be a guru by any means, however there is expected a certain level of knowledge. You should rarely see a situation where it is obvious that the color commentator isn't up to snuff on their game knowledge. But you also won't be blown away by it either.

I think that as long as the non-play-by-play announcer has the requisite knowledge (and who knows what the requisite amount is) the actual most important factor is their ability to keep dialogue going constantly, thus entertaining the audience.

Geo.Rion

7377 Posts

February 16 2011 19:55 GMT

#40

it depends. I, for example love to listen to Totalbiscuit because of his excellent vocabulary and awesome "accent", even though he's not the most knoledgable caster

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