This is a common ocurrence for casters who play a certain race or root for a certain player. I often see HuskyStarcraft only care about White-Ra's base and build while almost NEVER looking at the opponent. Though very understandable since "Speshul tactics" are very interesting this brings forth a 1-sided commentary.
In a game, the caster should commentate as much as possible on both player's builds and how they develop throughout the game. We don't only see this problem with husky, other commentators such as Mr.Bitter who loves to commentate on Zerg play also show a 1-sided commentary sometimes.
The problem with this kind of commentaries is that you never see the other side of the spectrum. People who root for the other player might get irritated that they don't see what their favourite is doing.
I don't know, do you guys ever feel that you watch a 1-sided commentary?
Is it even possible to completely remove this kind of commentary from the scene!?
Over-focus on one kind of thing, if its a kind of thing I don't care about, does turn me off a cast tho. The Mr Bitter and zerg play being a great example of a cast I've turned off in the past.
Yea at Lonestarclash i felt this happend quite often. Imo it is okay if done sometimes but at LSC it somewhat annoyed me to see rotti and alex(?) talking only about grubby when he was playin sleep (a really really great zerg to look at considering that you could build a story).
But yea as we would say in germany "we are complaining on a high comfort level". Imo.
I guess it could be a focus for improvement for casters but it will never go away.
Nowadays many tournaments have first person views of both players so you could just watch your favorite player or have the main stream and your player's view open at the same time.
If all else fails the production tab is almost always open the whole game so you can follow that way.
On March 19 2012 23:14 Felnarion wrote: But to your point, if you don't like it...Just don't watch it? He can do whatever he wants, why does it matter?
Because people should try to provide quality content? If sufficient people dislike an aspect of his casting, it's something to consider.
On March 19 2012 23:10 Sea_Food wrote: I think its fine. Gives a bit personality.
caster bias is most certainly not fine when you are doing a solo cast but luckily these guys usually cast together in tournaments so I can't complain..
Kinda noticed it during the Lone star clash with mr bitter & his co caster. Especially so in the game between heavenslight and select. Light seem to be playing EXTREMELY greedy in the early game , building 3 roaches to defend against hellions hoping that select doesn't take the risk and just run past the roaches. The casters just kept saying "wonderful , amazing , brilliant , intelligent play by heaven" or something along that lines.
But I guess mr bitter's biasness has been discussed to death anyway. Don't really see obvious biasness in any other caster though
Sometimes its really annoying, especially when a caster is hating on a certain race just because they themselves are weak in that particular matchup (zerg casters hating on terran, terran casters hating on protoss etc)
"And here comes an all in from player X, oh wait its not even an allin because he has mules, trolololol"
Sometimes it depends on the race the caster himself is playing. A Protoss Caster can definitely gives a better commentary on the Protoss player as oppose to Terran and Zerg.
I'm pretty sure you can email Husky to give him quality feedback ( like, not saying bla you're bad obviously ) and he will read it. Husky is pretty responsible for that.
Some other caster are biais and it's the way it is. In the end, TB support Bling more if he plays, Bitter support Foreigner zerg player more, etc Deal with it. It put some diversity into the game. I think the main problem with it is when the caster is the observer too. In GSL, Artosis could fantasm as much as he want for Clide, but ST_Legend will do a good job not sticking to Clide base for example.
On March 19 2012 23:14 Felnarion wrote: But to your point, if you don't like it...Just don't watch it? He can do whatever he wants, why does it matter?
Because people should try to provide quality content? If sufficient people dislike an aspect of his casting, it's something to consider.
It's also important to note that some of these casters cover events where there is no option in who the player watches cast it, meaning that fans have to watch those casters to see those games. This kind of thing is pretty important in those cases.
On March 19 2012 23:05 XiGua wrote: This is a common ocurrence for casters who play a certain race or root for a certain player. I often see HuskyStarcraft only care about White-Ra's base and build while almost NEVER looking at the opponent. Though very understandable since "Speshul tactics" are very interesting this brings forth a 1-sided commentary.
In a game, the caster should commentate as much as possible on both player's builds and how they develop throughout the game. We don't only see this problem with husky, other commentators such as Mr.Bitter who loves to commentate on Zerg play also show a 1-sided commentary sometimes.
The problem with this kind of commentaries is that you never see the other side of the spectrum. People who root for the other player might get irritated that they don't see what their favourite is doing.
I don't know, do you guys ever feel that you watch a 1-sided commentary?
Is it even possible to completely remove this kind of commentary from the scene!?
I never see 1-sided commentary.
Just because a caster plays a particular race and shares insight into that race when they casts doesn't make them biased, it makes them good(and Mr. Bitter often relates those insights onto how it affects the other side, not sure why you are calling him out like that. That's what is supposed to happen).
And sometimes, only 1 of the bases is actually worth focusing on, because that's where the interesting action is going on. It's up to the observer to decide what gets shown and what doesn't, and sometimes one of the players just has more that should be shown than the other player.
But I have yet to see casts that solely dwell on one side and never commentate on the other. + Show Spoiler +
(except for that one joke cast of I think Joshy with the immortal warpin, but the whole point of ignoring was the reveal of that joke)
It really sounds like it's just your bias showing through.
Personally i don't care much about casters, what i want to see (which is on topic here i guess) is some1 dedicated to camera movement... so you always get to see the action and overall important stuff (which casters now miss a lot) and if you don't like or care about the casters you can simply mute them + put some music on (which you can do now as well, but then the poor camera movement becomes even more apparent).
On March 19 2012 23:25 Noocta wrote: I'm pretty sure you can email Husky to give him quality feedback ( like, not saying bla you're bad obviously ) and he will read it. Husky is pretty responsible for that.
Some other caster are biais and it's the way it is. In the end, TB support Bling more if he plays, Bitter support Foreigner zerg player more, etc Deal with it. It put some diversity into the game. I think the main problem with it is when the caster is the observer too. In GSL, Artosis could fantasm as much as he want for Clide, but ST_Legend will do a good job not sticking to Clide base for example.
Yes, my main problem is when that caster is also the observer. If he isn't the observer then I'm kind of fine with the "bias" because it doesn't really turn into a 1-sided commentary.
Also, I don't want to point out husky exclusively. I just chose him as an example because he is the most popular one in the Starcraft 2 scene. (Very subjectiv opinion)
On March 19 2012 23:22 kurrysauce wrote: Kinda noticed it during the Lone star clash with mr bitter & his co caster. Especially so in the game between heavenslight and select. Light seem to be playing EXTREMELY greedy in the early game , building 3 roaches to defend against hellions hoping that select doesn't take the risk and just run past the roaches. The casters just kept saying "wonderful , amazing , brilliant , intelligent play by heaven" or something along that lines.
But I guess mr bitter's biasness has been discussed to death anyway. Don't really see obvious biasness in any other caster though
This is different.
Two ways to be biased: (1)praise and congratulate one player more than the other and (2)report what one player is doing more than the other.
(1) is pretty common and has already been discussed quite a bit. I think (2) is what we're talking about here and it's a bigger problem because it prevents the viewers from following the game well. It's like having vision on only one player. These games need to be in the 3rd person perspective. When viewing and talking about only one player's perspective at length, the 3rd person perspective is dropped.
Husky casts differently when he's casting games on his own youtube channel than he did when he cast at a major tournament such as MLG last year. On his youtube channel, he knows that the crowd he's broadcasting to is massively broad, and generally, a large portion of the casual sc2 fanbase. He aims to please his target audience with his casts and he does a terrific job of that, not by being analytical, but by being exciting and observing the exciting stuff. Hence, when you have a game between WhiteRa and a relative unknown to people who don't follow the scene closely like coLGoswser, it's perfectly understandable in my eyes for Husky to set a large portion of his in game focus to the bigger name.
When you see him cast at MLG he provides a much more balanced overview of the game, at least in my opinion.
I think when you have someone such as Mr Bitter - who became famous in the sc2 community for his zerg analysis and commentary - its just natural that they talk more about what they know about. He can't explain all the intricacies of a terran build order but perhaps he can for a zerg, so he uses this knowledge when he casts. I really don't have a problem with it, he's a fantastic caster in my opinion.
Husky is the non technical caster, more of the fun guy. So your not going to get much from him in terms of builds. So thats probably why he focused on the more known player, and talk about how good he is and so on. I havent watched a husky solo cast in a while, but I liked his casts at mlg with other casters.
Mr.Bitter is a zerg player and likes zergs, which is quite obvious from his casts. So he tends to focus at that. I've never actually watched his solo casts, but with rotterdam it's quite a nice back and forth because rotterdam likes protoss and supports toss.
At the same time someone like day9 will focus on the both sides, because he's a more rounded technical caster.
So yes, one sided casting is kinda bad, but at times it's just the result of the casters strengths/likes.
Edit: Came in thinking this was going to be about koreans and foreigners, with foreigners casting, luckily it wasnt that :D
On March 19 2012 23:22 kurrysauce wrote: Kinda noticed it during the Lone star clash with mr bitter & his co caster. Especially so in the game between heavenslight and select. Light seem to be playing EXTREMELY greedy in the early game , building 3 roaches to defend against hellions hoping that select doesn't take the risk and just run past the roaches. The casters just kept saying "wonderful , amazing , brilliant , intelligent play by heaven" or something along that lines.
But I guess mr bitter's biasness has been discussed to death anyway. Don't really see obvious biasness in any other caster though
This is different.
Two ways to be biased: (1)praise and congratulate one player more than the other and (2)report what one player is doing more than the other.
(1) is pretty common and has already been discussed quite a bit. I think (2) is what we're talking about here and it's a bigger problem because it prevents the viewers from following the game well. It's like having vision on only one player. These games need to be in the 3rd person perspective. When viewing and talking about only one player's perspective at length, the 3rd person perspective is dropped.
Tyler essentially hits the nail on the head here. The first one is very subjective. The caster may think a move or decision deserves more praise than you do. Neither of you are necessarily wrong (unless of course the praise originates from ignorance in the first place) on the point and one player will always be praised more than the other, that's just the way things go. It's also ok for casters to have a favourite just like viewers do.
What is not ok is compromising the viewing experience by giving a lopsided view of the match. I'd go as far as to say that's bad production. Casters are part of the production, they are responsible for how the match is presented the audience. If they don't present it properly then they aren't doing their jobs correctly.
I think it's also easier (as a caster) to comment on what you know... I play terran so it's easier for me to watch the terran base and let the viewers know what and why a player is doing. (Sometimes it's also that, as a fan myself, I want to see what "my favorite player" is doing.) I do agree that casters should focus on trying to show the WHOLE game and give equal analysis to both parties. Sometimes, one player is dictating more of the action or doing something unusual that warrants more attention. I'd also like to point out that I think Mr.B has gotten a LOT better about being less bias. I was not a big fan of his show, however I think he's really developed as a caster.
On March 19 2012 23:13 StarMoon wrote: I don't care about bias.
Over-focus on one kind of thing, if its a kind of thing I don't care about, does turn me off a cast tho. The Mr Bitter and zerg play being a great example of a cast I've turned off in the past.
I personally dislike any caster showing bias. But usually it doesn't make me dislike a caster or not want to watch them cast. It may add some personality or flavor, but a caster can do that without showing bias and it merely proves a point that as professional as any caster is. Having bias makes them as imperfect as anyone else.
Khaldor is among my favorite casters but from time to time he shows a little bias, though to me it's not a big issue of it since he does try to balance it out. Bitter is probably the most excessive of the biased casters next to Husky. Rotti on the other hand despite his great knowledge and experience of Toss tries to come across as the more balanced unbiased of the duo which is pretty good. Then there's Artosis with his flat out NesTea nuthuggery. I honestly hope he stops with them NesTea is god jokes and all that jazz. Though he doesn't show too much bias for a Toss player in Code S least from what I've seen as of late this year (or maybe I'm not looking hard enough).
For the most part caster bias to a race, player, or something in regards to the game balance imo shouldn't really be around or accepted if they want esports to survive (insert Caster Bias is killing esports), but it is and there's not much we can do about it. People can try to make a note of it and maybe if possible tell a caster they're doing it in hopes of them possibly trying to prevent it in the future.
Usually if I find myself focused on the caster, I shut off the stream. It doesn't happen often, but it has happened. It's kinda like John Madden vs Dick Vitale. My father could watch Madden, but Vitale had to go on mute and he would listen to the radio broadcast. Same caster will annoy 10 different people for different reasons.
I always catch Biscuit winking at me through the camera. He don't think I see him, but I do, pisses me off.
One solution that I know is to let a 3rd person be the observer. The casters can say whatever they want but the observer will provide enough information for the viewers to get satisfied.
But this can also lead to problems such as bad synch and a worse viewer experience.
On March 19 2012 23:05 XiGua wrote: This is a common ocurrence for casters who play a certain race or root for a certain player. I often see HuskyStarcraft only care about White-Ra's base and build while almost NEVER looking at the opponent. Though very understandable since "Speshul tactics" are very interesting this brings forth a 1-sided commentary.
In a game, the caster should commentate as much as possible on both player's builds and how they develop throughout the game. We don't only see this problem with husky, other commentators such as Mr.Bitter who loves to commentate on Zerg play also show a 1-sided commentary sometimes.
The problem with this kind of commentaries is that you never see the other side of the spectrum. People who root for the other player might get irritated that they don't see what their favourite is doing.
I don't know, do you guys ever feel that you watch a 1-sided commentary?
Is it even possible to completely remove this kind of commentary from the scene!?
I never see 1-sided commentary.
Just because a caster plays a particular race and shares insight into that race when they casts doesn't make them biased, it makes them good(and Mr. Bitter often relates those insights onto how it affects the other side, not sure why you are calling him out like that. That's what is supposed to happen).
And sometimes, only 1 of the bases is actually worth focusing on, because that's where the interesting action is going on. It's up to the observer to decide what gets shown and what doesn't, and sometimes one of the players just has more that should be shown than the other player.
But I have yet to see casts that solely dwell on one side and never commentate on the other. + Show Spoiler +
(except for that one joke cast of I think Joshy with the immortal warpin, but the whole point of ignoring was the reveal of that joke)
It really sounds like it's just your bias showing through.
Your very narrowly defining 1-sided commentary. To me one sided commentary includes going on and on about how awesome one player is playing when its clear that its not the truth or that its an exaggeration. This is what Mr. Bitter is guilty of on a regular basis especially in ZvT. He will be saying something about how awesome the zerg is, then the terran wins the fight which everyone knew was because he was ahead, and then he'll just say something like, oh well thats terran and mules! (slight dramatization).
The only problem I see is when the casters also control the camera, because if they are talking/focusing on one specific thing, they are also going to follow it with the camera view so we might miss what is happening everywhere else. That's why a dedicated observer is awesome because the casters can choose to look at whatever they want on their screen to get a better in-depth view and me as an observer can both listen to what is happening and seeing something else going on. Of course it's not good if it happens too often but sometimes I even get tired of hearing Tastosis cast but then Grooveshark and Legend got me covered
On March 19 2012 23:05 XiGua wrote: This is a common ocurrence for casters who play a certain race or root for a certain player. I often see HuskyStarcraft only care about White-Ra's base and build while almost NEVER looking at the opponent. Though very understandable since "Speshul tactics" are very interesting this brings forth a 1-sided commentary.
In a game, the caster should commentate as much as possible on both player's builds and how they develop throughout the game. We don't only see this problem with husky, other commentators such as Mr.Bitter who loves to commentate on Zerg play also show a 1-sided commentary sometimes.
The problem with this kind of commentaries is that you never see the other side of the spectrum. People who root for the other player might get irritated that they don't see what their favourite is doing.
I don't know, do you guys ever feel that you watch a 1-sided commentary?
Is it even possible to completely remove this kind of commentary from the scene!?
I never see 1-sided commentary.
Just because a caster plays a particular race and shares insight into that race when they casts doesn't make them biased, it makes them good(and Mr. Bitter often relates those insights onto how it affects the other side, not sure why you are calling him out like that. That's what is supposed to happen).
And sometimes, only 1 of the bases is actually worth focusing on, because that's where the interesting action is going on. It's up to the observer to decide what gets shown and what doesn't, and sometimes one of the players just has more that should be shown than the other player.
But I have yet to see casts that solely dwell on one side and never commentate on the other. + Show Spoiler +
(except for that one joke cast of I think Joshy with the immortal warpin, but the whole point of ignoring was the reveal of that joke)
It really sounds like it's just your bias showing through.
Your very narrowly defining 1-sided commentary. To me one sided commentary includes going on and on about how awesome one player is playing when its clear that its not the truth or that its an exaggeration. This is what Mr. Bitter is guilty of on a regular basis especially in ZvT. He will be saying something about how awesome the zerg is, then the terran wins the fight which everyone knew was because he was ahead, and then he'll just say something like, oh well thats terran and mules! (slight dramatization).
Except that when a caster goes on about how awesome 1 player is, that is opinion. Whether you don't think that it's the truth or is an exaggeration is also just an opinion. One of the casters purposes is to point out when 1 player is doing something awesome or cool or innovative, and it's almost never done to excess.
The feeling of excess is usually people's own bias coloring their interpretation of the cast. When the casters talks about the listener's race, the listener is content and it doesn't stick out in memory, but when casters talk about the other side, it sticks out since they don't want or care about hearing that part. Then they make threads bitching about the part they remember, and not the part they don't.
And especially Mr. Bitter doesn't say things like that, if he is confused about the outcome of a game, he'll try to analyze what happened afterwards instead of blowing it off. He does the exact opposite of what you describe.
Personally, I just mute the casters most of the time other than when I watch GSL because tasteless and artosis are so funny to listen to. I've never tuned into a MLG and probably won't be able to because of their PPV, hopefully I'll be able to and hear some good commentating from their casters.
On March 20 2012 00:12 BicBootyBoi wrote: Personally, I just mute the casters most of the time other than when I watch GSL because tasteless and artosis are so funny to listen to. I've never tuned into a MLG and probably won't be able to because of their PPV, hopefully I'll be able to and hear some good commentating from their casters.
This really has nothing to do with the subject at hand.
On March 19 2012 23:15 bluQ wrote: Yea at Lonestarclash i felt this happend quite often. Imo it is okay if done sometimes but at LSC it somewhat annoyed me to see rotti and alex(?) talking only about grubby when he was playin sleep (a really really great zerg to look at considering that you could build a story).
But yea as we would say in germany "we are complaining on a high comfort level". Imo.
Rotterdam and Bitter always talks "too much" about their friends. Always, you have to listen to countless things about Dimaga. And no, I do not dislike either of those two, or Dimaga for that matter, but sometimes it's a bit too much.
it might be partly the problem when the caster mains 1 race specifically, they look at what the player who is playing their race more because they feel more comfortable and confident in talking about strategies,builds etc of their own chosen race.
On March 19 2012 23:46 XiGua wrote: One solution that I know is to let a 3rd person be the observer. The casters can say whatever they want but the observer will provide enough information for the viewers to get satisfied.
But this can also lead to problems such as bad synch and a worse viewer experience.
I really like that idea. Whenever there is a third person doing the observing I feel like the camera work is much better. While the observer still reacts to what the casters say they often notice things like drops quicker because they don't get caught up in some kind of thought they are just trying to explain. The third person observer is a really good addition to professional casting in my opinion and was missing at Lone Star Clash for example. The constant clicking on upgrades and stuff like that while talking about them was a bit annoying and unnecessary in my opinion.
What do casters think about a third person observing? I can imagine it to be quite annoying not to have camera control but on the other hand it keeps you on your feet to pick up on what is going on.
I think it's actually really hard to give both players the exact same amount of attention, the best way to prohibit this is to simply use a neutral observer, caster x can be as biased towards player y as he wants, the neutral observer will do his best to show both bases equally.
But I feel like before we even worry about this we might want to ensure that casters actually know what they are talking about. A lot of caster either have the game knowledge of someone between bronze and platinum league (tb, moletrap, catzpijamas etc. pp.) or they don't know the full picture and just straight up have no idea about certain regions (best example is bitterdam not knowing shit about korean metagame). I feel like before we worry about bias etc. pp. we should force casters to actually understand the game and be good ad it, back when the game came out it was ok to explain every single piece of the game, but listening to moletrap/tb explaining a forge fast expand or how a drop works almost two years into the game is just straight up wrong.
Rotterdam and Bitter always talks "too much" about their friends. Always, you have to listen to countless things about Dimaga. And no, I do not dislike either of those two, or Dimaga for that matter, but sometimes it's a bit too much.
I really like these kind of things in a casting. It's always nice to hear a funny or interesting story about a well-known player. And they usually do it in the early game, which is most of the times very boring. There are some casters (like Cats Pajamas) who are so annoying in the early game, because they can't talk about anything else but the builds. Honestly, what's so exciting about a 12 rax or a FFE? Nothing.
More on the topic: As a terran player I find it really strange that all of the casters are either Z or P. Anyone has a clue why?
On March 19 2012 23:46 XiGua wrote: One solution that I know is to let a 3rd person be the observer. The casters can say whatever they want but the observer will provide enough information for the viewers to get satisfied.
But this can also lead to problems such as bad synch and a worse viewer experience.
While this is a good idea, it can also lead to problems. The GSL uses a dedicated observer (ST_Legend, who is doing an awesome job, one of the best observers in the business), but it occurs quite often that the casters are discussing something and the observer isn't looking at the same area or the other way around: the obs shows something happening and the casters miss it. This can lead to some awkward situations.
Of course, the GSL problem has to do with a language barrier. In a non-GSL setup you can have the obs listen to the casters (via the stream or whatever) while the casters have an audio feed from the obs in their headsets (Obviously the obs should limit what he says to the really crucial things to make sure the casters aren't getting confused by all the information they're receiving). That way the caster(s) and obs can better synchronize that what's being discussed is also what is shown. And while the discussion does not directly relate to what is going on in the game at that moment, the obs can use this spare time to make sure both sides of the game are equally represented.
On March 20 2012 00:12 BicBootyBoi wrote: Personally, I just mute the casters most of the time other than when I watch GSL because tasteless and artosis are so funny to listen to. I've never tuned into a MLG and probably won't be able to because of their PPV, hopefully I'll be able to and hear some good commentating from their casters.
This really has nothing to do with the subject at hand.
More so than your post stating that it has no subject at hand, but if it's that much of a problem that you have to point it out let me elaborate more upon what I mean.
I feel that there is no way to deal with one-sided comentary, as stated from previous posters it's either you watch it or turn it off but, most of the time people will watch just to watch and if so you have so many different options that many have already stated for example watching in different streams, players view where there is no commentary at all.
In the end, there will be no way to completely remove one-sided casters as each caster will have their favourites and all casters have a favourite race they play as well so that bias will always be there. On the other hand, there are casters that are great that don't bring in their bias towards the cast and this is why they're the great casters we know. I mean who would have known Idra could cast so well as we saw during IEM.
Ultimately, I feel there is no solution to one-sided casters. I also feel that the problem is not only because of bias but can be because they are simply human, and cannot view all things in the game at the same time. I mean, it's pretty easy to watch a game and commentate on the players they watch go at it with each other doing so many actions per minute, each right?
They do this because it's what they know best. I'm a zerg player if you get me to watch a TvP and tell you what the players are doing and why, the best I can do is guess.
I think the best way of casting is to dual cast, either one player looking and commenting on things in base and major attacks (new tech, big army clash) and the other is looking for the other possibly less noticible things (drops, hidden expo). Or to try balence the bias, have the casters as the same race as the players so you get the most experiance, PvZ = Husky and HD. Both will get excited about their own race but it will even it out and the rivalry could make things more interesting
Caster bias with race I don't mind so much, since it's probably the race they play on ladder.. (ex: MrBitter plays zerg, favors zerg bias at times) which he can elaborate more on the race so that point is fine imo for any race.
Caster bias on a player is a complete different thing tho :/
That's a flaw in Artosis cast too, i think he's way to biased toward the one he considers the best. I remember quite a few games where i was about to shut off the sound before hating on him as i'm a fan of his cast usually but he usually don't observe so it's not so often.
Observer should be very very neutral. You souldn't be suprised by an army movement or something because the observer was looking at the same person for 5min+.
I don't care if casters are biased in terms of liking one player more than the other, as long as they don't talk down on the other one. I do care if observing is one-sided, that's really annoying because it means keeping important information from me so that I only get to see half the game. A possible solution would be to just wtfm - watch the f'ing minimap.
One thing that gets me quite often is the biased against Z and P vs T. I can't put my finger on one pro caster out there that is a high level Terran player. The casters that comes to mind are all Protoss or Zerg and therefore pretty much all the focus is on P or Z when it comes to timings and responses. You get the standard "Terran opens reactor hellion it's not much to talk about" and then they rabble on about what Zerg needs to do now. From there on you like never get to see the Terran base, gas timings, building swapping, tech lab/reactor timings, tech lab/reactor swapping and the possiblities and timing windows they can create.
The two that actually are close to do this are Apollo and Day9 from what I can remember, and suprise suprise - both of them play random(?) at at least high master/GM level.
I think the main problem the OP has is watching/listening to Husky With that being said - to respond to the opening post I think that everyone shows bias by praising one players play over the other, because no doubt one will win and one will lose - so I don't think this "bias" is hurtful. Especially if one of the players has a really crisp build we have not really seen before The bias that is bad is a caster that only focuses on the point of view of one player and seems to neglect the other - i rarely see this happen execpt with low level casters
On March 20 2012 00:46 Gosi wrote: One thing that gets me quite often is the biased against Z and P vs T. I can't put my finger on one pro caster out there that is a high level Terran player. The casters that comes to mind are all Protoss or Zerg and therefore pretty much all the focus is on P or Z when it comes to timings and responses. You get the standard "Terran opens reactor hellion it's not much to talk about" and then they rabble on about what Zerg needs to do now. From there on you like never get to see the Terran base, gas timings, building swapping, tech lab/reactor timings, tech lab/reactor swapping and the possiblities and timing windows they can create.
It is annoying to guess what a terran is doing, because he can switch buildings and addons around so much, your chance of saying something that is right is just higher if you focus on P and Z.
I mean, how the hell are you supposed to guess whether or not a terran will open banshee or raven or medivacs or more marines or get stim, when he has a fast 2nd cc, and 1 rax, 1 factory, 1 starport (building), and 1 tech lab (building on rax), and one reactor complete ...
Then he throws down a 3rd CC, more rax, 2nd factory, start researching cloak or whatever ... and you can start talking about what this means.
I made a lot of notes about ZvT and ZvP and what the T and P could have at certain times based off build ... there are literally 3 times as many variations, over a much longer time span, for when terran can pressure, and a lot of the builds are pretty much identical from the start - whereas in ZvP the # of gasses and when (if) probes are cut, are very telling when it comes to P builds - and all the timings are between 8:00 and 10:30 pretty much. Terran timings from 4:15 to 13:00 pretty much (though 13:00 and later means a 6:00 3rd OC with fast double upgrades pretty much).
If Husky does one sided commentary on his YouTube channel and you don't like it, get over it. It's his content. He can do what he wants. Now, if that behavior carries over into his MLG casting (and it doesn't), then there is an issue.
I don't care if the casters want a certain player to win as long as they are fair to the cast. For example, on a few occasions, MrBitter stated before a game that he really wanted IdrA to win, but throughout the cast he was entirely neutral only to make a few remarks of disappointment as IdrA lost the first game.
Casters are not Omniscient, if Husky is biased towards WhiteRa's play, it is partially also because he understands how the Protoss race is being manipulated. If I remember correctly, I think that Husky mains Protoss, and I know that Mr. BItter is a Zerg player, also addressed in the OP. I believe that the bias comes from the caster's knowledge of the game due to the race he plays, not just because he/she is a fanboy of any particular player, though admittedly the two might be correlated.
If this is the case, I think that it would be cool if the normative "casting duos" could be turned into "casting trios", like we see in BW casting at times. Have each caster be from a background of being extremely knowledgeable about each different race, and that might fix a lot of problems...Or just have a fail-safe like Artosis, or Day9 in the mix, and you won't have to worry about any of that! xD
On March 20 2012 00:46 Gosi wrote: One thing that gets me quite often is the biased against Z and P vs T. I can't put my finger on one pro caster out there that is a high level Terran player. The casters that comes to mind are all Protoss or Zerg and therefore pretty much all the focus is on P or Z when it comes to timings and responses. You get the standard "Terran opens reactor hellion it's not much to talk about" and then they rabble on about what Zerg needs to do now. From there on you like never get to see the Terran base, gas timings, building swapping, tech lab/reactor timings, tech lab/reactor swapping and the possiblities and timing windows they can create.
The two that actually are close to do this are Apollo and Day9 from what I can remember, and suprise suprise - both of them play random(?) at at least high master/GM level.
That's because the Zerg response to reactor hellions is a lot more important at the time than the timings of gas, or the tech lab/reactor timings, because how the Zerg response to the hellions is giving insight towards his future tech. Obviously if the Terran goes something noteworthy like banshee they would take notice immediately, but there isn't much to watch of a standard hellion expand, whereas you're checking the Zerg (is he going spine heavy, fast lair --> mutas, roach pressure --> fast third, heavy lings with ups --> ling infestor) etc.
That's just for that specific example though, I agree with you on the T hate a bit, but from a casting and viewing perspective, it's quite silly sometimes to see a Terran go all in and pull 30 scvs but it's not all in because he he has triple orbital and catches back up in workers in 3 minutes...
I think removing bias is something all casters strive for, to allow for a more engaging and accurate description of the game for the fans watching. I do agree with you that there are several casters currently that do show signs of bias, but it doesn't bother me too much. One example of bias I've seen however is how a lot of casters always seem to make a joke about Mules whenever they hover over it, like they see 5 Mules mining and are like "Oooooh boy, look at that income" -.- I've heard this like 1000x. It's not funny anymore, casters.
That's just for that specific example though, I agree with you on the T hate a bit, but from a casting and viewing perspective, it's quite silly sometimes to see a Terran go all in and pull 30 scvs but it's not all in because he he has triple orbital and catches back up in workers in 3 minutes...
This is a good example of casting bias. You sound like Incontrol. Every time he sees at a T base he can only say that mules are ridiculous. Luckily he is not casting frequently.
It's mainly a problem with Casters observing themselves... sometimes you really see basically only one players base for the whole game...
omg that really happens? I only watch the gsl mostly and ive never seen anything like that happen. I can put up with biasness in the casting itself (like wolf showing no enthusiasm unless a protoss is involved) but what i cant put up with is bad observing. The observing has to be good enough where you dont even think about it.
On March 19 2012 23:22 kurrysauce wrote: Kinda noticed it during the Lone star clash with mr bitter & his co caster. Especially so in the game between heavenslight and select. Light seem to be playing EXTREMELY greedy in the early game , building 3 roaches to defend against hellions hoping that select doesn't take the risk and just run past the roaches. The casters just kept saying "wonderful , amazing , brilliant , intelligent play by heaven" or something along that lines.
But I guess mr bitter's biasness has been discussed to death anyway. Don't really see obvious biasness in any other caster though
This is different.
Two ways to be biased: (1)praise and congratulate one player more than the other and (2)report what one player is doing more than the other.
(1) is pretty common and has already been discussed quite a bit. I think (2) is what we're talking about here and it's a bigger problem because it prevents the viewers from following the game well. It's like having vision on only one player. These games need to be in the 3rd person perspective. When viewing and talking about only one player's perspective at length, the 3rd person perspective is dropped.
This perfectly summarizes why I can't stand certain casting duos. They actually make the viewing experience worse because of (2). I think hiring a dedicated observer is one of the best things any tournament can do because it at least allows us to see what is happening for ourselves.
EDIT: Though some casters are awesome at observing and talking. Day9, for example, is definitely good enough to not need an observer. He is definitely an exception though.
On March 20 2012 00:12 BicBootyBoi wrote: Personally, I just mute the casters most of the time other than when I watch GSL because tasteless and artosis are so funny to listen to. I've never tuned into a MLG and probably won't be able to because of their PPV, hopefully I'll be able to and hear some good commentating from their casters.
This really has nothing to do with the subject at hand.
More so than your post stating that it has no subject at hand
Except I already replied to the thread with an actual answer. Thanks for now providing something worth reading.
Artosis is probably the best analytical commentator in the world that isn't a pro player, and he's incredibly biased towards players such as NesTea. Bias isn't a problem unless it's paired with an already shitty caster.
From what I have experienced the only two people Husky is biased about are White-Ra and TLO. Because they are the favourite players of many of the viewers this just really hits the target-group in the black. As long as Husky casts unbiased at tournaments I am fine with said two players getting a bit more attention.
Also, a caster should not pay too much attention to obviouis things. If there are special tactics going on I don´t care about a standard hellion opening. If a zerg techs to hive there is not as much to say as about weather a terran is going mech or bio (or biomech as of late, whatever that is).
Lastly there are analytical and there are casual casters. Husky is of course a very casual caster, he rather just commentates on whats going on than predicting what is going to happen. His good friend Day9 on the other hand is doing the exact opposite. You know him. I would love to see more straight casts on Day9s channel btw.
On March 19 2012 23:22 kurrysauce wrote: Kinda noticed it during the Lone star clash with mr bitter & his co caster. Especially so in the game between heavenslight and select. Light seem to be playing EXTREMELY greedy in the early game , building 3 roaches to defend against hellions hoping that select doesn't take the risk and just run past the roaches. The casters just kept saying "wonderful , amazing , brilliant , intelligent play by heaven" or something along that lines.
But I guess mr bitter's biasness has been discussed to death anyway. Don't really see obvious biasness in any other caster though
This is different.
Two ways to be biased: (1)praise and congratulate one player more than the other and (2)report what one player is doing more than the other.
(1) is pretty common and has already been discussed quite a bit. I think (2) is what we're talking about here and it's a bigger problem because it prevents the viewers from following the game well. It's like having vision on only one player. These games need to be in the 3rd person perspective. When viewing and talking about only one player's perspective at length, the 3rd person perspective is dropped.
I could not agree more with you. During the second set of SeleCT vs HeavenS I had no idea what SeleCT was doing based on the commentary. They were so busy in HeavenS base the entire game that they missed 2 drops / attempts... When I watch Day[9] cast a game I feel like both players are the best in the world, he does such a good job praising both players equally.
Something that bothers me more than player bias is casters afraid of being wrong. Lone Star Clash was the best example I can think of, all of the casters were so afraid of saying "here's what's gonna happen". Instead, they suggested that things might happen while being afraid of reading the build wrong and looking less knowledgeable.
I feel that casters stick to talking about whatever subject they're most at ease with discussing. If you have a zerg player commentate, hell probably stick to mentioning tidbits about what the zerg is doing atm. I don't find it that detracting from the overall play as long as the observing is shared between both players, but the great thing about the community is that there are so many fucking casters out there that eventually you'll find one you like, and ideally they'd have enough content to satisfy you for a while.
I think that casters follow the same light as music artists, people have strong likes and dislikes but for me I'll give anything a shot before I jump to a conclusion. A lot of people flamed Axeltoss in the beginning of the LoneStar clash but then praised him by the end of Sunday. On the other hand there are pro casters like DeMu and Machine who were so overtly biased in their broadcasts that it came across satirical and light-hearted, which was very pleasant to listen to. I think it's something people can aim to correct in their casting but I don't think it should be the highlight of what makes a caster "good" or "bad", and honestly, if Husky has as many subscribers as he does he's doing something right, regardless of your opinion ^^
Jesus Christ. Commentary can't be what you want 100% of the time, okay? Consider that there is no perfect commentary or commentator that will satisfy what everyone wants.
Before opening another "Casters should do this" thread, consider: 1. Are you qualified to open this thread? What evidence or personal expertise do you bring to this thread other than you opinion? 2. Is this a big enough problem to warrant a thread? Consider, as I've said, no commentary can satisfy everyone. So knowing that, is this a large enough problem that it affects the average person. Consider that Artosis' Terran bias in TSL1 was actually what made him a famous commentator (among other things, but it was a big part of it). 3. Does your thread offer any solution? In this case, no. You are bringing awareness I guess (which you also could have done with a PM) but we're left with "just don't do it". Okay... I'm sure they're not trying to be bad at what they do purposely... 4. Is this a scene-wide problem? If you are talking about a specific event, consider that there is Twitter and the PM function to contact these commentators directly.
So I answer 'no' to 1 2 3 and give you a 'maybe' to 4. So I don't think this is worthwhile discussing. I'll still leave it open.
Is it even possible to completely remove this kind of commentary from the scene!?
not entirely, with enough experience and if the casters aware hes doing it it can be limited some but casters will always pay more attention to one side then the other
comentating is always biased. you know some players more than others and have therefore details to tell about, that are iteresting for their fans, but not so interesting for the fans of the other player. you know a race better. you like a player more. etc etc. i have no problems with that, i watch the game, and when a commentator does not share my view, i am old enough to understand that. we are human. dont forget that. i'd rather see biased casts, because they are of course more emotional than pale mechanical casts, even when some of them do not accord with my emotions.
think of a soccer world cup vs national league. in the world cup you watch a game of your team, the caster is biased of course, and its very emotional. ever watched an international game in the foreign country of the opponent? i some years ago watched germany vs netherlands in a bar in the netherlands, germany won like 2:0 and we were the only one celebrating every goal. the commentator was of course dutch and biased, the other people were pissed, but we had our fun. what i try to say is: its not the caster, that makes the game fun, its you! so stop whining, bashing and complaining, its not the casters' fault when your player loses.
The issue, it seems to me, the uis best divided into two cases:
1. What casters do on their own Youtube channels, eg Husky, HD, TB Day9 dailies etc.
2. What official casters hired by tournaments to cast a game do, eg GSL, Day9/Husky/HD/TB when casting a tournament.
In my opinion we should only talk about case 2 in this topic, since in case 1 the only obligation the casters have are unto themselves, in case 2 they have an obligation to the organization who hired them.
The Husky example in OP was, if I am not mistaken, case 1 and therefore a bad example. I wonder why he was singled out?
On March 20 2012 01:51 StatorFlux wrote: The issue, it seems to me, the uis best divided into two cases:
1. What casters do on their own Youtube channels, eg Husky, HD, TB Day9 dailies etc.
2. What official casters hired by tournaments to cast a game do, eg GSL, Day9/Husky/HD/TB when casting a tournament.
In my opinion we should only talk about case 2 in this topic, since in case 1 the only obligation the casters have are unto themselves, in case 2 they have an obligation to the organization who hired them.
The Husky example in OP was, if I am not mistaken, case 1 and therefore a bad example. I wonder why he was singled out?
Because it was a pretty clear example. I only chose Husky because he is the most famous caster in the Starcraft 2 scene. (Personal opinion) I don't think I singled out him as I wrote that other commentators also show this kind of behaviour.
But I do understand that case 1 is completely useless to be discussed.
On March 20 2012 01:54 Talin wrote: Clearly you are not familiar with Moderate Temperature casting.
On March 20 2012 01:34 Chill wrote: Jesus Christ. Commentary can't be what you want 100% of the time, okay? Consider that there is no perfect commentary or commentator that will satisfy what everyone wants.
Before opening another "Casters should do this" thread, consider: 1. Are you qualified to open this thread? What evidence or personal expertise do you bring to this thread other than you opinion? 2. Is this a big enough problem to warrant a thread? Consider, as I've said, no commentary can satisfy everyone. So knowing that, is this a large enough problem that it affects the average person. Consider that Artosis' Terran bias in TSL1 was actually what made him a famous commentator (among other things, but it was a big part of it). 3. Does your thread offer any solution? In this case, no. You are bringing awareness I guess (which you also could have done with a PM) but we're left with "just don't do it". Okay... I'm sure they're not trying to be bad at what they do purposely... 4. Is this a scene-wide problem? If you are talking about a specific event, consider that there is Twitter and the PM function to contact these commentators directly.
So I answer 'no' to 1 2 3 and give you a 'maybe' to 4. So I don't think this is worthwhile discussing. I'll still leave it open.
Pretty much agree this is non-issue. Currently Artosis's love of all things mech makes is casting more amusing and enjoyable. As long as the caster is honest about their bias and makes the audience aware, bias is not an issue. The real question is: are you, as a viewer, going to get bent out of shape because a caster is rooting for one player over another? If that ruins your enjoyment of watching a game, there is nothing anyone can really do. The casters are human and are paid to provide some entertainment during the match.
I am from the Boston area, and if you have ever listened to a radio broadcast of a Red Sox game, bias is the kindest word you could use for commentatory during those games. If you are a Yankees fan, you find a way to listen to the New York broadcast. You don't exactly have that option is SC2, but you can just turn down the volume.
On March 20 2012 01:34 Chill wrote: Jesus Christ. Commentary can't be what you want 100% of the time, okay? Consider that there is no perfect commentary or commentator that will satisfy what everyone wants.
Before opening another "Casters should do this" thread, consider: 1. Are you qualified to open this thread? What evidence or personal expertise do you bring to this thread other than you opinion? 2. Is this a big enough problem to warrant a thread? Consider, as I've said, no commentary can satisfy everyone. So knowing that, is this a large enough problem that it affects the average person. Consider that Artosis' Terran bias in TSL1 was actually what made him a famous commentator (among other things, but it was a big part of it). 3. Does your thread offer any solution? In this case, no. You are bringing awareness I guess (which you also could have done with a PM) but we're left with "just don't do it". Okay... I'm sure they're not trying to be bad at what they do purposely... 4. Is this a scene-wide problem? If you are talking about a specific event, consider that there is Twitter and the PM function to contact these commentators directly.
So I answer 'no' to 1 2 3 and give you a 'maybe' to 4. So I don't think this is worthwhile discussing. I'll still leave it open.
Hell Yeah. Tell it like it is, Chill!
Casting and commentary is an incredibly subjective thing, and some people just can't stand that it's not specifically tailored to only them, even though tens of thousands others may watch it. You really should have dropped the hammer down and dispensed indiscriminate justice by closing it though.
I personally hate when the bias is kinda extreme, like in the case of certain already named Z biased caster.
And is not normal, is not "cose a is a human", is not proof of personality. A lot of top casters are NOT biased. I remember for example TLO praising certain P players plays, and he plays Z and T. Not to mention Artosis or Day9, totally unbiased. An Husky is more a funny guy, so is logical that he bias toward most loved players like W-Ra
On March 20 2012 01:34 Chill wrote: Jesus Christ. Commentary can't be what you want 100% of the time, okay? Consider that there is no perfect commentary or commentator that will satisfy what everyone wants.
Before opening another "Casters should do this" thread, consider: 1. Are you qualified to open this thread? What evidence or personal expertise do you bring to this thread other than you opinion? 2. Is this a big enough problem to warrant a thread? Consider, as I've said, no commentary can satisfy everyone. So knowing that, is this a large enough problem that it affects the average person. Consider that Artosis' Terran bias in TSL1 was actually what made him a famous commentator (among other things, but it was a big part of it). 3. Does your thread offer any solution? In this case, no. You are bringing awareness I guess (which you also could have done with a PM) but we're left with "just don't do it". Okay... I'm sure they're not trying to be bad at what they do purposely... 4. Is this a scene-wide problem? If you are talking about a specific event, consider that there is Twitter and the PM function to contact these commentators directly.
So I answer 'no' to 1 2 3 and give you a 'maybe' to 4. So I don't think this is worthwhile discussing. I'll still leave it open.
Did you read Nony and TB's responses to this thread..?
I said having a dedicated observer is a way to get around this. Some casters just aren't physically capable of avoiding focusing on one base, you can tell they get distracted as they're taling (someone like DJ Wheat... sorry bro). Some casters just choose to be fanboys of a certain race/player. Obviously some people like this and others don't.
When people bring up Artosis loving Nestea, or mech, what they ignore is that it doesn't impact the quality of the cast because they are still giving a good amount of time to what the other player is doing. Some casters actually spend less camera and talking time on a player because they love the other player or other players race. This is the problem, not simply having a bias.
I think Tastosis are doing a good job staying un-biased in their casts despite both of them playing Protoss, if anything they wer e and still kinda are all over MVP and Nestea's (who are both not Protosses) nuts, most recently they shifted their focus to DRG.
Wolf is painfully obviously favoring Protoss in his casts.
Khadlor is doing a good job not favoring Zerg in his casts.
MoleTrap....nobody really cares.
Mr. Bitter obviously favoring (foreign) Zergs in his casts.
there's a difference between having bias and acknowledging it and having bias and being ignorant about it. for someone like artosis, its the former. for someone like mr. bitter, its the latter.
Now that I think about it, yes the casting is unbalanced between both the players a lot of the time. Do I care? No, not really. I didn't even notice until now.
Even tastosis does this. When MMA made his debut in Code A vs Ret, they wouldn't shut up about Ret's play. Even though MMA was doing multidrop harass while expanding and pushing behind it which was unheard of at the time. They didn't praise MMA at all in those games even though he sweeped Ret. Such obvious bias.
On March 20 2012 02:42 iYiYi wrote: Even tastosis does this. When MMA made his debut in Code A vs Ret, they wouldn't shut up about Ret's play. Even though MMA was doing multidrop harass while expanding and pushing behind it which was unheard of at the time. They didn't praise MMA at all in those games even though he sweeped Ret. Such obvious bias.
Does it really matter? Did it ruin the game for you? Is it something that we should really talk be discussing?
Or as my father would say: "This? This is what we are going to fight about today? We couldn't find something better?"
On March 20 2012 02:42 iYiYi wrote: Even tastosis does this. When MMA made his debut in Code A vs Ret, they wouldn't shut up about Ret's play. Even though MMA was doing multidrop harass while expanding and pushing behind it which was unheard of at the time. They didn't praise MMA at all in those games even though he sweeped Ret. Such obvious bias.
Does it really matter? Did it ruin the game for you? Is it something that we should really talk be discussing?
Or as my father would say: "This? This is what we are going to fight about today? We couldn't find something better?"
Nobody is fighting about it, its being discussed as it should.
Clearly it bothers enough people to be brought up and makes the viewing experience less enjoyable for some of us. Sponsors are pouring money and people are investing countless hours into these events. Criticism is warranted and can be helpful to improve these events which rely on viewership.....
Yeah I notice caster bias in virtually all casters, even Tasteless and Artosis favor specific people. Sometimes you'll hear Mr. bitter's Zerg bias leaking out of him. Same with Rotterdam, moletrap, well like I said pretty much everyone. Not really much you can do about it as I don't think they really do it knowingly for the most part. But it definitely does get irritating (to me) and I always find myself bringing up the biased commentary to my friends.
Personally, I don't mind commentators that explain builds or give knowledge on their race of expertise, i.e. Artosis describing Protoss builds in detail and what their strengths, weaknesses, or timings are. I am ok with this b/c most of your casters will not have this level of detail about other races, and that is fine for me.
HOWEVER, I do get irritated when the commentators clearly don't recognize high level play from other races b/c they are too busy watching the race or player that they want to win. The reason people like Artosis or Wolf don't bother me (and I do not play Protoss) is because they STILL give fair commentary and fair praise/criticism where it is due. If a Protoss player is playing a Terran player, and the Terran player has sick bio micro in the early game, these casters absolutely praise the Terran player on his control (and usually Wolf will follow up by talking about how poorly the Protoss played that engagement haha! Wolf makes me laugh).
But when these casters only praise their race of choice or the skill of the player they want to win, it is a little deflating and, quite honestly, distracting from the quality of the product, which is an incredible tournament or game.
TLDR: Every caster will have more knowledge about the race they actually play, and it is perfectly fine for them to drop that knowledge in their casting. It only becomes distracting for me when the caster focuses solely on that race or player throughout the entirety of the match, and does not even recognize high level play from another race or player when it's right in front of him.
I really couldn't give less of a shit if someone like Mr Bitter gushes about zerg players. And tbh, I can't comprehend why anyone does care. Casters have opinions. I'm pretty ok with this, and pretty ok with them being expressed to a certain degree. If you force them to be completely impartial I just feel that it's flavourless and dull...like the only reason I put up with football commentary is so I can tell who has the ball when I'm not looking at the screen. In our game right now casters are personalities, too much so many would argue. By making them impartial you reduce that personality imo.
On March 20 2012 02:42 iYiYi wrote: Even tastosis does this. When MMA made his debut in Code A vs Ret, they wouldn't shut up about Ret's play. Even though MMA was doing multidrop harass while expanding and pushing behind it which was unheard of at the time. They didn't praise MMA at all in those games even though he sweeped Ret. Such obvious bias.
Does it really matter? Did it ruin the game for you? Is it something that we should really talk be discussing?
Or as my father would say: "This? This is what we are going to fight about today? We couldn't find something better?"
I am definitely stealing your fathers phrase for everyday usage.
Gotta hand it to Artosis, at least he changed race and is now biased towards toss instead of zerg ;P
Na but in all seriousness, I don't think this is an issue often enough for it to be brought up, however Mr.Bitter was a tad over the top at lone star imho.
I've noticed it too, when casters focus on the play of only one player. It's a bit annoying as long as you don't have the same bias of the casters, for example in the polt v stephano series, i don't remember them seeing polt's base and builds a lot but i didn't care cus all i wanted was to watch stephano :D.
but yeah it's wrong and shouldn't happen, i guess it's hard to avoid doing it.
Casters are human beings. They are gonna have their own favourites and biases towards them. I don't really think this is a bad thing..it creates a bit of hype, and overall that's good for the scene. Harshly badmouthing players because you like the other one more however is unacceptable.
Some people said you need a dedicated observer in the game, because the caster is only following his own favorite player. No you don't. Tell your caster to stop following only him. Look at someone like TB, he has no problem following the game where the interesting things are happening, instead of just following his favorite player building a supply depot.
Of course every caster will have his favorite player/matchup/race and won't be able to deny it all the time. But the question is how extreme he communicates his bias towards his audience. If you see a caster bashing towards one of the players for a non existing or minor reason, it's way too much. If you see a caster overdoing the praise of one player for doing just normal things, it way too much too. There are some caster who are very good at hiding their bias, as mentioned Day9, Khaldor and DJWheat.
There are others, WHO HAVE TO IMPROVE AT THIS POINT DAMMIT!!! Please casters, take this topic serious, or you just might fall out of the food chain one day.
It seems like there's always a new thread opened about "How can we make e-sports more robotic and purge bias opinions" in some form or another. Casters are people too, let me have/talk about their favorites.
On March 20 2012 02:42 iYiYi wrote: Even tastosis does this. When MMA made his debut in Code A vs Ret, they wouldn't shut up about Ret's play. Even though MMA was doing multidrop harass while expanding and pushing behind it which was unheard of at the time. They didn't praise MMA at all in those games even though he sweeped Ret. Such obvious bias.
Does it really matter? Did it ruin the game for you? Is it something that we should really talk be discussing?
Or as my father would say: "This? This is what we are going to fight about today? We couldn't find something better?"
Nobody is fighting about it, its being discussed as it should.
Clearly it bothers enough people to be brought up and makes the viewing experience less enjoyable for some of us. Sponsors are pouring money and people are investing countless hours into these events. Criticism is warranted and can be helpful to improve these events which rely on viewership.....
It a phrase, to be applied to a specific argument or discusssion. Fighting, verble or otherwise is not required. And I am not saying it does not bother people. I am saying that the casters shouldn't care as long as they are not openly bashing the other race. Mr. Bitter is bias towards zerg, but does that really matter? There are other things I would rather they worry about than if they are upsetting the small group of people who are upset the casting is not 100% un-bias. I would rather they focus on other, more awesome stuff, like Picture in Picture. Or instant replay. Rather than making sure there are no threads on TL made by people who are upset about the casting.
On March 20 2012 02:42 iYiYi wrote: Even tastosis does this. When MMA made his debut in Code A vs Ret, they wouldn't shut up about Ret's play. Even though MMA was doing multidrop harass while expanding and pushing behind it which was unheard of at the time. They didn't praise MMA at all in those games even though he sweeped Ret. Such obvious bias.
This is true, and I agree with you. However, I think in this case there was another factor in play, and that is the foreigner vs Korean competition. Whenever Ret plays, the foreign casters generally use that game as an opportunity to talk him up for a few reasons: 1) It is widely accepted that MMA and other Korean pros are at an incredibly high level. 2) Many casual Starcraft 2 viewers may not even know who Ret is or not get many opportunities to see him play. Therefore, they may not know at the time what strengths Ret has in his game.
Ret's strengths are insane macro mechanics and an extremely fast 200/200 (among others, I'm sure). So I believe Tastosis was just trying to make the viewer recognize the incredible skill Ret has in SC2 even if he does lose to MMA, because the viewer may not get to see Ret again soon. MMA will always be around. Also, most of the viewers of Tastosis are totally pulling for the foreigners to get to the level of the Korean players. And I'm saying this as a Terran player whose favorite players are MMA and MvP haha.
A good example of the original topic for me is, again, the difference in the last GSL season between Tasteless and Artosis. Tasteless used to always be my favorite in this casting archon because of his humor and personality. However, now Artosis is by far my favorite because he is way more knowledgeable about the Korean meta-game and his bias doesn't blatantly show like Tasteless' does. While Tasteless and Day9 will always claim to be random players, it was so clear in last GSL that Tasteless is a Protoss player when he made comments such as "I honestly hope [X Protoss player] wins, so I can steal this build, man." This bothered me because the Protoss player should not have to win to make his build a viable one. Whether he wins or loses, a code S Protoss player's build is PROBABLY PRETTY GOOD! Also, Tasteless flat out admitted who he was rooting for. Artosis never does this, and it makes his commentary feel WAY more professional and refreshing compared to some other casters.
This is NOT to bash on Tasteless! Tasteless and Artosis will always and forever be my favorite casters!
I could see this being a problem in solo casts but since most tournaments are dual casted I don't run into this problem as ofter or ever. Now that this has been brought to my attention I think that I'm going to keep an eye out for this sort of thing happening, just to see if it actually does since I've never noticed it before.
On March 20 2012 03:10 peekn wrote: I could see this being a problem in solo casts but since most tournaments are dual casted I don't run into this problem as ofter or ever. Now that this has been brought to my attention I think that I'm going to keep an eye out for this sort of thing happening, just to see if it actually does since I've never noticed it before.
Well you see this kind of things by Tastosis casting, since tasteless seems to share Artosis oppinion in 99% of the cases.
On March 20 2012 02:42 iYiYi wrote: Even tastosis does this. When MMA made his debut in Code A vs Ret, they wouldn't shut up about Ret's play. Even though MMA was doing multidrop harass while expanding and pushing behind it which was unheard of at the time. They didn't praise MMA at all in those games even though he sweeped Ret. Such obvious bias.
Does it really matter? Did it ruin the game for you? Is it something that we should really talk be discussing?
Or as my father would say: "This? This is what we are going to fight about today? We couldn't find something better?"
Nobody is fighting about it, its being discussed as it should.
Clearly it bothers enough people to be brought up and makes the viewing experience less enjoyable for some of us. Sponsors are pouring money and people are investing countless hours into these events. Criticism is warranted and can be helpful to improve these events which rely on viewership.....
It a phrase, to be applied to a specific argument or discusssion. Fighting, verble or otherwise is not required. And I am not saying it does not bother people. I am saying that the casters shouldn't care as long as they are not openly bashing the other race. Mr. Bitter is bias towards zerg, but does that really matter? There are other things I would rather they worry about than if they are upsetting the small group of people who are upset the casting is not 100% un-bias. I would rather they focus on other, more awesome stuff, like Picture in Picture. Or instant replay. Rather than making sure there are no threads on TL made by people who are upset about the casting.
I don't understand why you are even posting in this thread because if your really don't care and it doesn't bother you one way or another. Why do you even put in your two cents since it doesn't bother you one way or another?
Also you keep asking "does it really matter?".
Get it through you thick skull, it apparently does matter to some. I am not going over it again as I already stated why it does matter in my previous post.
And the the things you bring up are added features which are great. Those are things that are lacking though, we are discussing things that are current and presenting a problem.
It also has nothing to do about being 100% unbiased, which is probably impossible. He is not anywhere near that percentage and swings vastly in the other direction enough that a lot of the viewers notice it.
I don't watch that many games with casters, but I felt the guys at Lone Star Clash did a really good job recently!
However, most people in the scene have their "own" race and will identify more strongly with it. Some of them are important players as well, with high stakes on the line. Losing a game to what they feel is imbalance must be quite frustrating. So there will be biased comments. I think there has been some of that in SOTG - especially if their crew is incomplete. We need all of them to balance it out, and for maximum amounts of fun
It depends on who and where is the caster, for example husky as a youtube commentator/player has the right to be baised and have favorite players, day9,Tastosis,TB or Djwheat as "event casters" don't have the right to do so if they want to fulfill there jobs. I never saw Bitterdam being to "1 sided" considering there experience, not sure about bitter alone, only time i can complain about bitterdam is in tvx matches when they sometime used to focus on x more since x is the race 1 of them played but i don't see it that much anymore. And as a side not: If white ra is in the match, i don't care ho you are, what race you play, what nation you are, what religion you have and what hobbies you partake in, you are cheering for white ra and you want to see white ra !
obvious bias is bad. However I cannot blame husky for watching white-ra's base. Husky himself is a protoss after all, He can offer more insight on protoss mechanics than he can on on terran or zerg. Sometimes he does it because he simply doesn't have anything to say about the other player.
On March 20 2012 03:34 Poehalcho wrote: obvious bias is bad. However I cannot blame husky for watching white-ra's base. Husky himself is a protoss after all, He can offer more insight on protoss mechanics than he can on on terran or zerg. Sometimes he does it because he simply doesn't have anything to say about the other player.
On March 20 2012 01:34 Chill wrote: Jesus Christ. Commentary can't be what you want 100% of the time, okay? Consider that there is no perfect commentary or commentator that will satisfy what everyone wants.
Before opening another "Casters should do this" thread, consider: 1. Are you qualified to open this thread? What evidence or personal expertise do you bring to this thread other than you opinion? 2. Is this a big enough problem to warrant a thread? Consider, as I've said, no commentary can satisfy everyone. So knowing that, is this a large enough problem that it affects the average person. Consider that Artosis' Terran bias in TSL1 was actually what made him a famous commentator (among other things, but it was a big part of it). 3. Does your thread offer any solution? In this case, no. You are bringing awareness I guess (which you also could have done with a PM) but we're left with "just don't do it". Okay... I'm sure they're not trying to be bad at what they do purposely... 4. Is this a scene-wide problem? If you are talking about a specific event, consider that there is Twitter and the PM function to contact these commentators directly.
So I answer 'no' to 1 2 3 and give you a 'maybe' to 4. So I don't think this is worthwhile discussing. I'll still leave it open.
Here's what bothers me. And it's been brought up before.
Point #1. The whole "qualified to talk about something". If we make this the rule and firm law, can we imagine what'll happen to the forums? It'd be just a few VIP members talking, and everyone else silenced because our qualifications are not proven, and cannot be proven unless we scan a copy of our BA, PhD, or Masters degree, and send it to you to "prove" ourselves to you. Or our resume.
You probably want an example from me, so I'll provide one. There is a website called elitistjerks.com which discusses min/maxing on the game World of Warcraft. The moderators there are very strict and quick to anger. They ban users even for the slightest, smallest little thing they say that isn't professor-level intelligence. As a regular user, you can't even ask a question, because well, it's automatically assumed that your question is a stupid one, unless you bring in entire spreadsheets proving or disproving the VIP member's theory.
Yet when you see the VIP members there, they can get away with saying "oh thanks" when it's "not constructive towards the thread". Let's be real with ourselves. For my part, I like seeing people talking about what they love or what they hate about casting. It gives me a good laugh because I see exactly what they're talking about, and understand where they're coming from. I daresay it's community building for us to talk about it, too.
Point #2. I believe in the people having something to say. However I'll take your side, and state that this is a repeated topic. I think maybe if we have a stickied thread so any future issues with casting can be merged or consolidated into one place. I think that would probably satisfy both forum moderators AND customers(the forum people).
Point #3 and #4. Problems and solutions. The people are bringing up what bugs them, in a central location. Versus hundreds of people tweeting or PM'ing the casters and possibly overwhelming them. Also when the casters receive all this reply overload from strangers and otherwise people they don't know, it's easy to just dismiss all these guys as trolls or immediately get defensive. Whereas when it's all in one place, the caster can come here at his leisure when he's in a more relaxed frame of mind.
For example in the group stages fo a tournament I appreciate it a lot when the commentators are for example pro White-Ra, focus more on him and even root for im in engagements. The key is to not hide the bias and make the game more entertaining that way. Obviously only as long as they don't badmouth his opponent but I don't think that ever happened.
On the other hand in a GSL semis or MLG finals or something big like that a bias would be horrible. That shit is too serious.
Yes, i often root for the underdog, mb cuz i know him from wc3 background or just like his style for other reasons. Yet all i get to listen to is the fan favourite and more accomplished player just being hyped.
Also another thing, this doesn't have much to do with the casting, but often u get to see like 3 Idra series in a row, even though it's mb a 16 player bracket tournament and if you just don't like the player, it's kinda annoying.
On March 20 2012 02:42 iYiYi wrote: Even tastosis does this. When MMA made his debut in Code A vs Ret, they wouldn't shut up about Ret's play. Even though MMA was doing multidrop harass while expanding and pushing behind it which was unheard of at the time. They didn't praise MMA at all in those games even though he sweeped Ret. Such obvious bias.
Does it really matter? Did it ruin the game for you? Is it something that we should really talk be discussing?
Or as my father would say: "This? This is what we are going to fight about today? We couldn't find something better?"
Nobody is fighting about it, its being discussed as it should.
Clearly it bothers enough people to be brought up and makes the viewing experience less enjoyable for some of us. Sponsors are pouring money and people are investing countless hours into these events. Criticism is warranted and can be helpful to improve these events which rely on viewership.....
It a phrase, to be applied to a specific argument or discusssion. Fighting, verble or otherwise is not required. And I am not saying it does not bother people. I am saying that the casters shouldn't care as long as they are not openly bashing the other race. Mr. Bitter is bias towards zerg, but does that really matter? There are other things I would rather they worry about than if they are upsetting the small group of people who are upset the casting is not 100% un-bias. I would rather they focus on other, more awesome stuff, like Picture in Picture. Or instant replay. Rather than making sure there are no threads on TL made by people who are upset about the casting.
I don't understand why you are even posting in this thread because if your really don't care and it doesn't bother you one way or another. Why do you even put in your two cents since it doesn't bother you one way or another?
Also you keep asking "does it really matter?".
Get it through you thick skull, it apparently does matter to some. I am not going over it again as I already stated why it does matter in my previous post.
And the the things you bring up are added features which are great. Those are things that are lacking though, we are discussing things that are current and presenting a problem.
It also has nothing to do about being 100% unbiased, which is probably impossible. He is not anywhere near that percentage and swings vastly in the other direction enough that a lot of the viewers notice it.
I've noticed his name popping up a lot recently, I think he just argues to be argumentative, and he like to just shoot down other people posts and chalk it up to superiority. Discussion on caster bias is more than warranted, and should bother some people.
Back to topic, I agree with the OP so some extent, it is noticeable with MrBitter, where he will focus quite a bit more on a Zerg player rather than his opponent. I think it'd be nice if casters at least made a point to describe in detail the openers each player used. Because sometimes they get so engrossed in one player, that you are completely in the dark as to what another player is doing.
Honestly I think Bitter improved a lot on his Zerg bias since he started, maybe thanks to the shows he did with RotterdaM where he played a bit of the other races. When he was casting for the NASL, it was all "Zerg is now in an unwinnable position" if he lost like 3 drones. Lately it didn't bother me. There is still a slight "foreigner" bias in BitterdaM, but it's fine imo, they're probably my favorite casting pair, tied with Tastosis.
On March 20 2012 03:34 Poehalcho wrote: obvious bias is bad. However I cannot blame husky for watching white-ra's base. Husky himself is a protoss after all, He can offer more insight on protoss mechanics than he can on on terran or zerg. Sometimes he does it because he simply doesn't have anything to say about the other player.
That sounds like a greater flaw than a reason.
yeah well, good luck asking an economist about quantum physics... You can't expect someone to know everything, not even the pro's do. So you can't even remotely expect it from the casters, considering they're often diamond at best.
It happens. Watch a UFC fight that Joe Rogan casts with say a fighter like Jon Jones or Shogun Rua. Bias will always be there, people find players they like more then others, it's a basic concept of E-Sports.
On March 20 2012 03:34 Poehalcho wrote: obvious bias is bad. However I cannot blame husky for watching white-ra's base. Husky himself is a protoss after all, He can offer more insight on protoss mechanics than he can on on terran or zerg. Sometimes he does it because he simply doesn't have anything to say about the other player.
That sounds like a greater flaw than a reason.
yeah well, good luck asking an economist about quantum physics... You can't expect someone to know everything, not even the pro's do. So you can't even remotely expect it from the casters, considering they're often diamond at best.
I sure as hell can expect casters to know what they're talking about, that's their job. Your analogy isn't remotely relevant.
On March 20 2012 03:34 Poehalcho wrote: obvious bias is bad. However I cannot blame husky for watching white-ra's base. Husky himself is a protoss after all, He can offer more insight on protoss mechanics than he can on on terran or zerg. Sometimes he does it because he simply doesn't have anything to say about the other player.
That sounds like a greater flaw than a reason.
yeah well, good luck asking an economist about quantum physics... You can't expect someone to know everything, not even the pro's do. So you can't even remotely expect it from the casters, considering they're often diamond at best.
I sure as hell can expect casters to know what they're talking about, that's their job. Your analogy isn't remotely relevant.
Of course, all commentators should persue the story from both points of view to follow the game's flow and build-up. There may be moments where focusing on a specific player is going to happen because their choices are going to directly effect the outcome of the game the most. The commentators with the best game sense of this and overall knowledge of the game should be providing the kind of commentary you're looking for. You will have commentators who are more focused on their favorite or the crowds favorite due to the automatic thought of them being the main person the game should be following. If you feel that some casters do the right things better let it be known, and give examples and reasons why what they did should be changed. It's also just the need for specific casters to not partner with each other due to chemistry.
For example, the Lone Star Clash, in my opinion Axeltoss' personality doesn't flow well with MrBitter's or Rotterdam's. Not saying that they don't get along just that their commentary reflects their personality traits in a way that doesn't help the game flow smoothly in a audience's eyes. Mr. Bitter and Rotterdam's commentary between each other is a bit better though probably because they have been working together for long enough to know when each other needs to talk and where they should be looking.
I think bias actually makes the strongest casting, as long as it isn't one-sided.
All the PvZs at Lone Star Clash were great last weekend, because we had Mr.Bitter representing Zerg well and Rotterdam representing Protoss well. The playful rivalry between the two casting personalities matched the action happening on screen very nicely. I actually prefer this kind of commentary to the relatively unbiased commentary of random/nonplayers such as Day9, JP, TotalBiscuit, and Catspajamas. (Not that any of those casters are bad, I enjoy all of them, I just prefer a different casting style)
But the problem at LSC was that whenever a Terran game came up, there was nobody there to represent them. So the Terrans naturally got a disproportionate amount of hate. I can tolerate the gazillion mule cracks, but there needs to be something to balance it out on the other side.
I wish more tournaments would experiment with 3-man casting teams. That way every mirror matchup would have at least 1 specialist, and every non-mirror matchup would have 2 specialists. And then the third man out could be the dedicated observer.
On March 19 2012 23:14 Felnarion wrote: But to your point, if you don't like it...Just don't watch it? He can do whatever he wants, why does it matter?
Very deep and reasonable response. Since, everyone can do whatever wants, lets just be shitty and dont care about anything.
On March 20 2012 03:34 Poehalcho wrote: obvious bias is bad. However I cannot blame husky for watching white-ra's base. Husky himself is a protoss after all, He can offer more insight on protoss mechanics than he can on on terran or zerg. Sometimes he does it because he simply doesn't have anything to say about the other player.
That sounds like a greater flaw than a reason.
yeah well, good luck asking an economist about quantum physics... You can't expect someone to know everything, not even the pro's do. So you can't even remotely expect it from the casters, considering they're often diamond at best.
I sure as hell can expect casters to know what they're talking about, that's their job. Your analogy isn't remotely relevant.
Those that can't play... you get the point...
Big difference between 'don't have the skill to play professionally' and 'can't explain common builds'.
But otherwise, you're right - which is why ex-players (or active players not playing at that moment) tend to make the best casters once they have some practice at commentating.
Anyone watch MLG Providence? Mr. Bitter and even DJwheat(who's gotten a lot better at not doing this) were so zerg biased in this commentary it seemed they even got the crowd to be anti-terran towards the end of the tournament. That was some obnoxious commentary. You had great players like IMmvp who at the time was probably in his prime not get much attention or credit for anything during the games because the casters either played protoss or played zerg.
Rotterdam(I think he's pretty unbiased for the most part) is Protoss Mr Bitter is Zerg Artosis(I think he's very biased at times for certain players or even races, particularly zerg) is Protoss Tasteless is Protoss DJwheat is Zerg Husky is Protoss Apollo I believe is either Zerg/Protoss
On March 20 2012 05:00 yarkO wrote: Caster bias leads to bad casting, such as the Grand Finals of the Lonestar Clash (player and results spoiled below)
Stephano right clicks 8 Infestors to their death, many with high energy, and is heralded for his amazing, brilliant control.
He then goes on to win the tournament
LOL
Seriously. But for the most part Stephano played the best zerg I've ever seen in my life, better than Nestea, DRG or any other zerg play, though that's my opinion. At the same time I think Mr. Bitter tries not to be biased but he's not good at it. I really think Stephano exposed how amazing late game zerg can be against late game Terran. It seems late game terran is lacking. Ghosts were nerfed too much, Ravens aren't as good as people think to be effective enough.
If I really wanted to know PURELY what build was happening, I look at production queue. When action happens its between both players, regardless of what the casters are saying I can actually see what's happening. They can't deny whats happening on screen in a fight so.. no bias when it counts.
Bias develops from passion for a player. That passion for a player is the same passion they have for the game. The passion for the game is what makes these guys want to cast and commentate.
I'd rather they were passionate instead of mindless drones.
On March 20 2012 05:33 Tristran wrote: If I really wanted to know PURELY what build was happening, I look at production queue. When action happens its between both players, regardless of what the casters are saying I can actually see what's happening. They can't deny whats happening on screen in a fight so.. no bias when it counts.
Bias develops from passion for a player. That passion for a player is the same passion they have for the game. The passion for the game is what makes these guys want to cast and commentate.
I'd rather they were passionate instead of mindless drones.
You know is possible to be both analytical and passionate while casting without letting bias/passion for player and/or race get in the way....
For MrBitter, it seems to be: Foreigner > Korean living in EU/US > Korean on foreign team > Korean on Korean team.
Between two foreigners, he roots for the "stronger" foreigner to win, for two koreans, he roots for the "weaker" korean to win. I guess that will give the foreigner a better chance in the later rounds.
I don't mind the bias, it's pretty funny, but I do wish they would give equal camera-time to the players.
You can't really stop it anyways. When Boxer lost to MKP in the final game of a grueling set that he should've won in the Iron Squid tourney, Totalbiscuit said something along the lines of "I'm not even going to pretend to not be disappointed by that...I'm depressed now man. In tournaments, I'm not supposed to play favorites but I will anyways I wanted to see Boxer go through. But feelings and emotions don't factor into this. We have to be robots..." Casters love the game and especially the players, you can't really expect them to be not show any bias. In fact, there was another thread like this some years ago - this thread. If you really want a completely neutral commentary...this is what you're looking at.
On March 20 2012 05:46 Whatson wrote: You can't really stop it anyways. When Boxer lost to MKP in the final game of a grueling set that he should've won in the Iron Squid tourney, Totalbiscuit said something along the lines of "I'm not even going to pretend to not be disappointed by that...I'm depressed now man. In tournaments, I'm not supposed to play favorites but I will anyways I wanted to see Boxer go through. But feelings and emotions don't factor into this. We have to be robots..." Casters love the game and especially the players, you can't really expect them to be not show any bias. In fact, there was another thread like this some years ago - this thread. If you really want a completely neutral commentary...this is what you're looking at.
oh damn i was just going to say something about moderate temperature...
biased casting is fine- i mean artosis casting Nestea? those are great casts but...
On March 20 2012 05:41 YMCApylons wrote: For MrBitter, it seems to be: Foreigner > Korean living in EU/US > Korean on foreign team > Korean on Korean team.
Between two foreigners, he roots for the "stronger" foreigner to win, for two koreans, he roots for the "weaker" korean to win. I guess that will give the foreigner a better chance in the later rounds.
I don't mind the bias, it's pretty funny, but I do wish they would give equal camera-time to the players.
An easier way to say that is that Mr.Bitter roots for the underdog. Which I think is a good thing, it's one of the things I like the most about his casts. He does the same thing in Korean vs Korean and Foreigner vs Foreigner games, unless his Zerg bias trickles in. (which is good as long as there's somebody else there to counterbalance it)
On March 20 2012 05:46 Whatson wrote: You can't really stop it anyways. When Boxer lost to MKP in the final game of a grueling set that he should've won in the Iron Squid tourney, Totalbiscuit said something along the lines of "I'm not even going to pretend to not be disappointed by that...I'm depressed now man. In tournaments, I'm not supposed to play favorites but I will anyways I wanted to see Boxer go through. But feelings and emotions don't factor into this. We have to be robots..." Casters love the game and especially the players, you can't really expect them to be not show any bias. In fact, there was another thread like this some years ago - this thread. If you really want a completely neutral commentary...this is what you're looking at.
LOL i just watched the neutral commentary. so funny!!!!
Yes it's annoying, no i don't like it - so the solution is pretty clear. If you don't like it, don't watch it - there is so much content out there anyway; if it's a tournament you want to watch then hit the mute button and enjoy the games with some music in the background.
On March 20 2012 06:10 bkrow wrote: Yes it's annoying, no i don't like it - so the solution is pretty clear. If you don't like it, don't watch it - there is so much content out there anyway; if it's a tournament you want to watch then hit the mute button and enjoy the games with some music in the background.
But this is TL, where we must find fault with every tournament and caster, not matter how minor. We must iron out every flaw they have until they are perfect. No bias when casting, no misreads on builds and no bad puns. Anything else is unacceptable.
I think its horrible, really, when Artosis and Tasteless are casting Korean games they're always moving from one base to another, when they cast a Korean vs a Foreigner, they keep talking about how the player can win or counter the korean's build, same goes for pretty much every game with White-Ra. Take for instance Tte. White-Ra vs x6. Sleep on this the Lone Star Clash, they never went to see if Sleep was switching techs, some hatcheries went completely unnoticed several times, and they were always focusing on white-ra's base and army...the bias is showing, and it is annoying.
i think everyone's missing the point here, and nony hit it right on the head on page one. it's not so much about casters having favorites players, i think the op is talking about when a caster (or maybe the observer) sits in the terran base all game forsaking everything happening in the opponents base.
the production tab can't tell me what's being chrono boosted or if the zerg is hitting his injects. these are things i care about and the only way to know if they're happening is to look at the other person's base. does no one else notice inject timings when observers zoom through the zerg base to show us saturation, before landing back in the terran base for the next 5 minutes? so many times i'll see larva pop with no inject in the next 5 seconds, then wooosh we're back in the terran base watching them call down mules and construct their supply depot wall. i want to see how much time occurred between the larva pop and the next inject. i want to know if warp gate is being chrono'd, or probes, or +1 weapons, or whatever. i want to see how many workers are in gas geysers.
there is loads of information that is not contained in any of the tabs, that can only be gained through looking at both players bases. it's unfair and somewhat lazy to plop us all down inside the terran base for the near entirity of the early game.
(i referred to mostly TvZ b/c this is always a problem in TvZ)
I think it's annoying when casters only commentate on one players builds, actions, it makes it harder to follow the game and take in information. This probably doesn't occur in sports as often the focus of the game is on a neutral party, the ball, which the observer and casters are forced to focus on.
I think it's difficult to give a balanced perspective on the game, but that's what seperates a good cast from a bad one.
I noticed the caster(s) are usually surprised by something(from the other player) when they are focusing too much on one player. It is almost like they aren`t paying attention to the other player at all. Though I can`t really complain because it isn`t often the case, I just noticed it a lot in that Lone star clash tournament.
There should always be a distinction made between Husky creating a video for his youtube, and a caster that's casting for a tournament.
An ideal cast would focus on what both players are doing, but if one player is playing standard and one is happening to use special tactics, then why would you keep talking about the standard play?
Also, casters have different backgrounds. If MrBitters background is zerg, correct me if I'm wrong, then it makes sense that he has more to say regarding zerg strategy..
I'm glad these sorts of topics get brought up, but if you can cast better then you simply SHOULD CAST. No one is perfect, no cast is perfect.
I do agree that sometimes the cast can feel one sided, but I want to believe that it's typically due to that player either playing better, or less standard and the 1-sided casting is a result. I highly doubt any caster is being biased in this way on purpose, and when they are they typically are joking and comment on that fact themselves.
It's just plain old tunnel-vision. One player is doing some smart stuff, they talk about, he does more ballerness, they talk about it, etc. Casters need to train multitasking (look at screen + minimap + production tab)
Since they are biased, they look at their favourite player's base earlier. Also, they probably have more positive things to say about them.
If Artosis would cast a Bitbybit game, you think he'd talk about the other guy? No, he'd bash Bitbybit all the time, giving the commentary a negative tone. I'd much rather watch a biased-but-in-a-good-way cast.
Every caster has his/her own style. If you are doing it on YouTube then things can be more forgiving: if you like it you'll be back to see more content. If you don't like you won't bother to come again, right? So things aren't that bad.
When you talking about a professional live/pre recorded event, then the organizers have to pick casters with certain qualities that fulfill their expectations for a event that will be seen by thousands of people. Normally in this situation things are mostly maintained in professional parameters.
On March 20 2012 06:43 mrafaeldie12 wrote: I think its horrible, really, when Artosis and Tasteless are casting Korean games they're always moving from one base to another, when they cast a Korean vs a Foreigner, they keep talking about how the player can win or counter the korean's build, same goes for pretty much every game with White-Ra. Take for instance Tte. White-Ra vs x6. Sleep on this the Lone Star Clash, they never went to see if Sleep was switching techs, some hatcheries went completely unnoticed several times, and they were always focusing on white-ra's base and army...the bias is showing, and it is annoying.
p.s: I love rottie.
Yeah I noticed it too. Anytime you have a foreigner in the mix, suddenly all the attention going to the foreigner and how everyone wants the foreigner to win. Maybe they are trying their best to sell an underdog story in the making.
But at the same time it's not hard to understand why. All the casters we're concerned with are part of the same group as many of us...the foreigners...and as such they'd be rooting for their own kind to win. The default is typically for the Korean to be favored, and everyone's hoping the foreigner might win. That might be where the bias is coming from.
On March 20 2012 06:44 GrimReefer wrote: i think everyone's missing the point here, and nony hit it right on the head on page one. it's not so much about casters having favorites players, i think the op is talking about when a caster (or maybe the observer) sits in the terran base all game forsaking everything happening in the opponents base.
the production tab can't tell me what's being chrono boosted or if the zerg is hitting his injects. these are things i care about and the only way to know if they're happening is to look at the other person's base. does no one else notice inject timings when observers zoom through the zerg base to show us saturation, before landing back in the terran base for the next 5 minutes? so many times i'll see larva pop with no inject in the next 5 seconds, then wooosh we're back in the terran base watching them call down mules and construct their supply depot wall. i want to see how much time occurred between the larva pop and the next inject. i want to know if warp gate is being chrono'd, or probes, or +1 weapons, or whatever. i want to see how many workers are in gas geysers.
there is loads of information that is not contained in any of the tabs, that can only be gained through looking at both players bases. it's unfair and somewhat lazy to plop us all down inside the terran base for the near entirity of the early game.
(i referred to mostly TvZ b/c this is always a problem in TvZ)
This is exactly what I meant with the OP. Casters often only look inside one player's base and never comments about the build or even glances at the base of the opponent.
The thing about praising is a whole another story and should be encouraged. Phrases like: "Beautiful fungals!" "Amazing forcefields!!" "EMP carpet bombs!" Makes everything more exciting because the tempo of the game and casting gets higher.
I really dont find biased casters to be a problem. Often they just add more interest to the cast and get more excited than a more neutral and formal caster.
On March 20 2012 07:06 TORTOISE wrote: I really dont find biased casters to be a problem. Often they just add more interest to the cast and get more excited than a more neutral and formal caster.
The thing that annoys me about caster bias can be seen when Rotty and Mr Bitter cast together;
Unnamed zerg player a-moves infestors into tank lines;
Rotterdam: "Oh my god! What terrible infestor control, what is he doing!?" Mr Bitter: "It's not that big a deal - he is probably just freeing up supply"
This is just an example; i like mr bitter - a lot, he seems like a really cool guy but sometimes i just feel he goes out of the way to favour the zerg player :p and i can't just mute him because Rotty is way to cute. Like i said - the solution is watch something else or press mute
On March 20 2012 07:06 TORTOISE wrote: I really dont find biased casters to be a problem. Often they just add more interest to the cast and get more excited than a more neutral and formal caster.
The thing that annoys me about caster bias can be seen when Rotty and Mr Bitter cast together;
Unnamed zerg player a-moves infestors into tank lines;
Rotterdam: "Oh my god! What terrible infestor control, what is he doing!?" Mr Bitter: "It's not that big a deal - he is probably just freeing up supply"
This is just an example; i like mr bitter - a lot, he seems like a really cool guy but sometimes i just feel he goes out of the way to favour the zerg player :p and i can't just mute him because Rotty is way to cute. Like i said - the solution is watch something else or press mute
It is easy to avoid them yes, but having these sort of people casting in the first place is silly.
In my opinion it should be handled similarly to the fighting game community. If you've ever watched WNF or anything on spooky's stream, they just bring in pro players who are already out of the tournament to commentate. Sure, some players aren't enthusiastic enough to make it super exciting but I'd still rather listen to them than hear PERFECT FORCEFIELDS over and over. No offense to the people who are only part of the community as casters but I don't see how we can expect them to have really good commentary.
On March 19 2012 23:10 Sea_Food wrote: I think its fine. Gives a bit personality.
Not fine. Opposite of fine. It's bad.
Heck I remember LSC 2 days ago the casters kept talking about Stephano and ignore polt's upgrade. The whole time they mentioned stephano's 2/2 upgrades and how polt had 0/0 when in fact polt had 3/3. They need to look at all sides to give the viewer the bigger picture of the battle. This isn't a book that you're supposed to fill in the blanks, you should be able to understand the commentary without having to look at the screen. That's the sign of a high-level caster.
I really like MrBitter when he is casting with Rotterdam, cause Rotterdam is giving him contra for the zerg bias and corrects Bitter when he's talking shit and most of the time it just turns into a really interesting and funny cast. But MrBitter casting with anyone else really gets on my nerves sometimes, yeah.
More annoying for me is Tastosis' korean bias when they're casting foreign tournaments, so I try to avoid them as much as possible (Artosis is a good caster tho, Tasteless not so much.)
I don't watch boring prerecorded stuff on youtube so I don't watch Husky, ever.
On March 20 2012 07:06 TORTOISE wrote: I really dont find biased casters to be a problem. Often they just add more interest to the cast and get more excited than a more neutral and formal caster.
Agreed. If anything I enjoy biased commentary more. Obviously I don't mean I'd enjoy it if the caster was openly bashing the other player in a harsh way, but I think being overly positive towards one is totally fine. My main point is that I enjoy energy and enthusiasm in commentaties I'm listening to. If the commentator is rooting for one of the players, they're naturally going to be more enthusiastic about the game.
Also, I get the argument that it negatively affects the career of the player being ignored by the caster. That's probably true in some cases but I'm not really thinking about that while I'm watching. Speaking only from the enjoyment factor I get while watching the game, I actually prefer biased commentary.
On March 20 2012 01:34 Chill wrote: Jesus Christ. Commentary can't be what you want 100% of the time, okay? Consider that there is no perfect commentary or commentator that will satisfy what everyone wants.
Before opening another "Casters should do this" thread, consider: 1. Are you qualified to open this thread? What evidence or personal expertise do you bring to this thread other than you opinion? 2. Is this a big enough problem to warrant a thread? Consider, as I've said, no commentary can satisfy everyone. So knowing that, is this a large enough problem that it affects the average person. Consider that Artosis' Terran bias in TSL1 was actually what made him a famous commentator (among other things, but it was a big part of it). 3. Does your thread offer any solution? In this case, no. You are bringing awareness I guess (which you also could have done with a PM) but we're left with "just don't do it". Okay... I'm sure they're not trying to be bad at what they do purposely... 4. Is this a scene-wide problem? If you are talking about a specific event, consider that there is Twitter and the PM function to contact these commentators directly.
So I answer 'no' to 1 2 3 and give you a 'maybe' to 4. So I don't think this is worthwhile discussing. I'll still leave it open.
By your logic nothing should be discussed on TL unless you are pro player, manager, caster etc because you are clueless otherwise.
On topic yes if you put 2 zerg casters to cast TvZ or ZvP its terrible and you shouldnt do it because that will make it unwatchable for viewers, thats why you have 2 casters and perfect combo casting PvZ is Rotti and Mr.Bitter.
Overall Rotterdam is probably best non-biased caster and always says when P/Z or T do really bad mistake or talking about races in general. Even if he doesnt know super in depth terran play he will talk about builds in game from his PvT PoV and even tho he maybe doesnt understand terran PoV he's still able to explain very good and thats much better than casters saying "wow i have never seen this build before" it makes me facepalm so hard because 99% of times its standard TvX build.
EDIT: this is about casters in general not the ones mentioned in OP, like someone mentioned casters REALLY need to be careful what they are talking about new players once they cast their games, if you go negative on them (especially if you are well known caster) people will take your words for granted and will always see that player as bad player which will seal his reputation from start - same thing can happen other way, hype him too much and you hurt him in the end when he doesnt live up to expectations (we all saw this before and still seeing it happen).
1 sided commentary is fine for the youtube videos but in a major tournament there usually isn't a lot of bias except for the rooting of foreigners of course, but they don't ignore the better player (korean).
but youtube bias is how i learned zerg, i listened to bias casters who played zerg and it helped me a ton. I wouldn't be nearly as good at this game if I didn't listen to people like HD or Artosis who only talked about zerg during the beta in their youtubes.
If your observing while talking about a game you most likely talk most about the areas you have a clue about what is happening or your interested in because that actually makes sense. I mean.. If a caster is "guessing" a build he naturally will check again and again and again if the build is actually happening making it the focus point of it's attention. If a caster is talking about Mutaharass/Defense he most likely will either follow the Mutas like crazy or jump around the Protoss base to show weaknesses/openings... And most likely neglecting the Zerg base...
Stuff like this happens VERY often...
The solution is simple: The Observer and the (color) Caster should not be the same person..
I feel that DeMusliM casting Delphi vs. DeMusliM in the EG MCSL was the perfect picture of caster neutrality and that every caster should strive to be like this.
It's not that bad, really. There's bias in every commentator in everything. It's not something you're gonna fix. I don't think it's nearly as bad in sc2 as in sports. I'd even go as far as to say not having bias is boring. "Everyone's a winner" mentality, and no connection between the caster and the fans. Yes, even casters can be fanboys of fan favorites, how is this wrong? This is what people want to listen to. Someone who holds the same opinion. Let's say MMA or Stephano were facing some scrub. Should we not bias that to say how awesome both of them are?
If Husky casts a replay on his own time, or through his own channel, dont get mad at him for casting biasly. If he is casting a tournament or something where he is trying to attract fans from both sides, I think he should be aware of what the 2 teams are doing, even though he can and should state who he is rooting for.
Grubby is an example of a great analytical caster who is not biased.
When he commentated/co-casted Feasts PvP games he remained neutral even though he is mentoring him. Can't remember what tourney this was but it was recent.
On March 19 2012 23:25 Noocta wrote: I'm pretty sure you can email Husky to give him quality feedback ( like, not saying bla you're bad obviously ) and he will read it. Husky is pretty responsible for that.
Some other caster are biais and it's the way it is. In the end, TB support Bling more if he plays, Bitter support Foreigner zerg player more, etc Deal with it. It put some diversity into the game. I think the main problem with it is when the caster is the observer too. In GSL, Artosis could fantasm as much as he want for Clide, but ST_Legend will do a good job not sticking to Clide base for example.
good point. having seperate observers and casters help stop stop this.
I've never had a point where I really cared. Even if it's one sided, that's fine, some other caster will probably be one sided towards the other side and it evens out in the end. Focusing only on a zerg in a zvt, for example, can give me a more in depth view of how a zerg pro plays, which isn't bad at all. And when it happens to focus on the terran for a game, cool stuff.
As long as the bias doesn't cause the casters to overlook important decisions and actions in the game, and the bias isn't specifically playing down one player's skill, I have no problem with it. A little bit of bias is fine, and gives some personality. After all, would people really prefer this? (sorry if it was linked before):
On March 20 2012 08:30 Haydin wrote: As long as the bias doesn't cause the casters to overlook important decisions and actions in the game, and the bias isn't specifically playing down one player's skill, I have no problem with it. A little bit of bias is fine, and gives some personality. After all, would people really prefer this? (sorry if it was linked before):
All this shows is Chill's ability to be a sarcastic douchebag and isn't even remotely humorous.
In my opinion, all of the casters CAN and SHOULD aspire to achieve neutrality in how they describe actions, builds, etc. but can still use their expertise on said race to educate viewers. In my opinion, Artosis is a perfect example. Early in beta and release, Artosis was a zerg player, and his zerg bias came out SO STRONG. I mean, it was difficult to even watch some of the games b/c of Artosis' comments on how difficult everything was for zerg and how impossible x matchup was.
Since then, Artosis switched to Protoss and (in my opinion) made a strong effort not to be so biased against any race. Instead, he worked very hard on learning every build and every opener from all three races and learning the Korean meta-game. Now, he is the most informed, knowledgeable caster in E-Sports, and it is b/c he took the criticism and made the effort to know all three races to a very high degree of detail and still make his casting humorous and enjoyable. I don't play either Protoss or Zerg, but I find Artosis' commentary much more enjoyable lately b/c I believe he made a conscious effort to be less biased and/or whiny about balance.
And I don't think ANYONE can say Tastosis' commentary is boring and flavorless........
Edit: I edited to say that I still LOVE when casters show emotion and passion for the big moments of the game. For instance, as a terran player, if a zerg lands huge fungals, I am perfectly ok with the casters saying "AND OMG HUGE FUNGALS ON ALL THE BIO OF [X PLAYER]!!!!" b/c they were, in fact, huge fungals. Even as a Terran player, I can recognize the difficulty in landing big fungals or the terran player's inability to keep his bio spread.
I like small biases, they usually result in better jokes. But only if there is a co-caster to keep the biased one anchored. In a solo cast, bias really hurts the viewing experience + Show Spoiler +
and ESPORTS
because it is like seeing the game from the perspective of only one player
It annoys the hell out of me when I see this on TV, especially during the World Cup or Olympics. Ex: Soccer player takes a dive and commentators berate him. American soccer players takes a dive: "Good for him, embellish it a little and get the foul, let your teammates get a breather"
On March 20 2012 01:34 Chill wrote: Jesus Christ. Commentary can't be what you want 100% of the time, okay? Consider that there is no perfect commentary or commentator that will satisfy what everyone wants.
Before opening another "Casters should do this" thread, consider: 1. Are you qualified to open this thread? What evidence or personal expertise do you bring to this thread other than you opinion? 2. Is this a big enough problem to warrant a thread? Consider, as I've said, no commentary can satisfy everyone. So knowing that, is this a large enough problem that it affects the average person. Consider that Artosis' Terran bias in TSL1 was actually what made him a famous commentator (among other things, but it was a big part of it). 3. Does your thread offer any solution? In this case, no. You are bringing awareness I guess (which you also could have done with a PM) but we're left with "just don't do it". Okay... I'm sure they're not trying to be bad at what they do purposely... 4. Is this a scene-wide problem? If you are talking about a specific event, consider that there is Twitter and the PM function to contact these commentators directly.
So I answer 'no' to 1 2 3 and give you a 'maybe' to 4. So I don't think this is worthwhile discussing. I'll still leave it open.
By your logic nothing should be discussed on TL unless you are pro player, manager, caster etc because you are clueless otherwise.
On topic yes if you put 2 zerg casters to cast TvZ or ZvP its terrible and you shouldnt do it because that will make it unwatchable for viewers, thats why you have 2 casters and perfect combo casting PvZ is Rotti and Mr.Bitter.
Overall Rotterdam is probably best non-biased caster and always says when P/Z or T do really bad mistake or talking about races in general. Even if he doesnt know super in depth terran play he will talk about builds in game from his PvT PoV and even tho he maybe doesnt understand terran PoV he's still able to explain very good and thats much better than casters saying "wow i have never seen this build before" it makes me facepalm so hard because 99% of times its standard TvX build.
EDIT: this is about casters in general not the ones mentioned in OP, like someone mentioned casters REALLY need to be careful what they are talking about new players once they cast their games, if you go negative on them (especially if you are well known caster) people will take your words for granted and will always see that player as bad player which will seal his reputation from start - same thing can happen other way, hype him too much and you hurt him in the end when he doesnt live up to expectations (we all saw this before and still seeing it happen).
Point 1 that Chill made is one of the most basic rules of teamliquid. If you don't have the prestige of having proven you know what you're talking about, you are supposed to bring evidence. It has nothing to do with only people in the scene discussing things on TL, but the quality of the discussion that goes about here. The OP wasn't really that good to begin with, so Chill called him out on it. You do make an excellent point on how much casters influence how a player is viewed though, certainly something important for casters to consider.
I'm not going to try to argue whether or not some caster's are biased. But frankly, for you to expect caster's to NOT be at all is just silly. Sure you can argue "Oh they should be completely neutral and professional", but when people are from different countries or are a huge fan of someone it's GOING to leak through sometimes. Some casters are definitely worse than others about it. yes it's fucking annoying. Other than keeping working on it there's not a lot they can do other than be aware of it.
As for focusing on one player...Yeah sometimes that MIGHT be a bias thing, but frankly more often than not it's because it's just fucking easier. Whether that turns into tunnel visioning or forgetting or focusing too hard on one player at the wrong time and then the audience and community just getting mad after misinterpreting it because that's all half the community is capable of doing probably varies a great deal from caster to caster.
Again, everyone can always get better, and hopefully they're trying to always. But this is just silly.
Glad to see the Chill neutral commentary video be useful again. You people will find anyhting to whine about.
I'll take authentic personal perspectives from casters over blind praise of every player. Does anyone remember Joe Theisman from when ESPN did Sunday night football ? Yeah. Exactly.
I think it's impossible to completely bias free and if someone like husky or HD or whoever else is being biased on their own youtube channel that is fine in a tournament setting casters should strive to have minimal bias of course if someone is a clear fan favourite i.e. whitera vs generic player A then I would expect their to be more focus on whitera since there isn't much to be said about generic player A and the standard viewer would be more interested in whitera.
I don't really care about commentary bias. Too much of it can get a little annoying if I'm cheering for the opposing player. But usually I'm not, so I don't care.
Why is it necessary for the OP to provide more "evidence" than he already has? The whole point of this thread was to gauge how the community felt about biased casting in general, and a person doesn't need to be grandmaster to make valid points about casting (I mean the average gamer is the target audience; why the hell should his opinion matter less than a pro's?).
Commentator bias is without a doubt something that can detract from the viewing experience, so I don't see why having a discussion about it wouldn't be worthwhile. I feel like there's a lot of room for improvement, as I don't think there are many casters who can provide deep analysis of a match up that doesn't involve the race he/she plays, and I think that's a problem. Pro sports commentators are expected to do research on both teams playing to provide information that the average viewer doesn't have, and it seems to me like few commentators are prepared the way Day9 and Tastosis are.
On an unrelated note, I also wish some casters sometimes cut on the playful banter as it can sometimes go on for too long and often isn't really interesting to anyone other than the casters themselves.
I don't see this as a problem in the slightest. I feel as though there is a difference between casting a game and featuring a player in a game. Allow me to explain.
In news, we hope to see an unbiased approach to reporting and as we should. However, sometimes people DON"T look for that....some people want news that tilts a little more to their views. This is why we see the success of the far left and far right television programs.
More accurately, let's say we are watching a documentary. The feature of the documentary is a specific Superbowl. That documentary should be totally unbiased as the focus of the show is not on any specific player or team but the event overall - that documentary should seek to capture the show in its entirety and work to convey all angles of the action and importance of the event as a whole to the viewer.
Now let's say we are watching a documentary. This one features a specific team in a specific Superbowl. One would not expect this documentary to be "unbiased" in the truest sense of the word as the focus of the show is not necessarily the Superbowl but more pointedly the featured team - this documentary would be perfectly fine leaning toward, let's say the Greenbay Packers, if that is the team that is being followed. This documentary would be for a more targeted audience...one that cares specifically about the trials and tribulations of the Packers and what the players are going through during the event, not a more broad audience which values a more macroscopic view of the event.
This is how I feel about Husky and Whitera. If Husky is casting a live game at a tournament and Whitera is involved, I feel that Husky would do the professional thing and be as unbiased as possible. However, the reason that Husky casts so many Whitera games is that Husky's fans and Whitera's fans are specifically asking for those games. The name of the segment is Special Tactics. Of course the focus here is Whitera. I feel like complaining that Whitera gets too much attention in a segment named for him is like saying that the police are too much the focus of Cops.
On March 20 2012 03:10 peekn wrote: I could see this being a problem in solo casts but since most tournaments are dual casted I don't run into this problem as ofter or ever. Now that this has been brought to my attention I think that I'm going to keep an eye out for this sort of thing happening, just to see if it actually does since I've never noticed it before.
Well you see this kind of things by Tastosis casting, since tasteless seems to share Artosis oppinion in 99% of the cases.
Both of them are also wearing yellow socks at the moment.
For people to be non-bias and show an amazing game casted for both sides you need an observer like GSL. They do this to avoid the bias and to provide better casting from the casters so they only focus on casting and not observing things too. This could be a problem, not sure. Such as bitter is analyzing a foreign zerg and having to observe, I know as a player talking and observing is kind of hard, or playing as some peoples multi-taking isn't as good as others. There are many things you have to take into consideration imo.
Solution: Get non-biased observer like GSL, and cast-a-way, the only thing that opposes this is the caster still over-analyzing their biased side, this imo is going to be VERY hard to get away from the scene.
I think Husky is fine. He is full of energy and is funny. I like when co-casting with day9 or whatever ))
What I think is the most annoying with casters is when they whine about personal stuff like "My throat hurts after all this talking" "Im tired" "This has been a long day can this game please end already" blablabla, i mean its their job they should shut up, im sure their salary makes up for them being tired at work
On March 20 2012 01:34 Chill wrote: Jesus Christ. Commentary can't be what you want 100% of the time, okay? Consider that there is no perfect commentary or commentator that will satisfy what everyone wants.
Before opening another "Casters should do this" thread, consider: 1. Are you qualified to open this thread? What evidence or personal expertise do you bring to this thread other than you opinion? 2. Is this a big enough problem to warrant a thread? Consider, as I've said, no commentary can satisfy everyone. So knowing that, is this a large enough problem that it affects the average person. Consider that Artosis' Terran bias in TSL1 was actually what made him a famous commentator (among other things, but it was a big part of it). 3. Does your thread offer any solution? In this case, no. You are bringing awareness I guess (which you also could have done with a PM) but we're left with "just don't do it". Okay... I'm sure they're not trying to be bad at what they do purposely... 4. Is this a scene-wide problem? If you are talking about a specific event, consider that there is Twitter and the PM function to contact these commentators directly.
So I answer 'no' to 1 2 3 and give you a 'maybe' to 4. So I don't think this is worthwhile discussing. I'll still leave it open.
By your logic nothing should be discussed on TL unless you are pro player, manager, caster etc because you are clueless otherwise.
On topic yes if you put 2 zerg casters to cast TvZ or ZvP its terrible and you shouldnt do it because that will make it unwatchable for viewers, thats why you have 2 casters and perfect combo casting PvZ is Rotti and Mr.Bitter.
Overall Rotterdam is probably best non-biased caster and always says when P/Z or T do really bad mistake or talking about races in general. Even if he doesnt know super in depth terran play he will talk about builds in game from his PvT PoV and even tho he maybe doesnt understand terran PoV he's still able to explain very good and thats much better than casters saying "wow i have never seen this build before" it makes me facepalm so hard because 99% of times its standard TvX build.
EDIT: this is about casters in general not the ones mentioned in OP, like someone mentioned casters REALLY need to be careful what they are talking about new players once they cast their games, if you go negative on them (especially if you are well known caster) people will take your words for granted and will always see that player as bad player which will seal his reputation from start - same thing can happen other way, hype him too much and you hurt him in the end when he doesnt live up to expectations (we all saw this before and still seeing it happen).
Point 1 that Chill made is one of the most basic rules of teamliquid. If you don't have the prestige of having proven you know what you're talking about, you are supposed to bring evidence. It has nothing to do with only people in the scene discussing things on TL, but the quality of the discussion that goes about here. The OP wasn't really that good to begin with, so Chill called him out on it. You do make an excellent point on how much casters influence how a player is viewed though, certainly something important for casters to consider.
If that were the case, then almost everyone would be constantly breaking it. On topic, Mr.Bitter used to bother me a lot, and so did many other casters, even Tastosis(because they do in fact focus more on protoss players in detriment to their terran counterparts, to the point where they never gave due credit to many Terrans, MMA among them).Nevertheless, it has been long since I stopped caring about it, because it's just a waste of time when I should be just trying to enjoy myself, so just let it go if you know better. Still, it's especially bad if new players' careers suffer, one way or another, due to biased commentary, so it would be very good if casters paid attention at least to that.
You guys are going to complain until some mad scientist creates a truly neutral caster that bores thousands to death with his objectivity. If (and that is not always the case) the casters are actually controlling the camera and don't show everything essential that is one thing. But the times I've seen that happen are minimal. What you're complaining about is personal bias i.e. the casters not liking your favorite player as much as you do. Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.
Euro 2012 Soccer championship coming up this summer. Let's see all that non biased, "professional" casting there!
On March 20 2012 19:55 Monsen wrote: You guys are going to complain until some mad scientist creates a truly neutral caster that bores thousands to death with his objectivity. If (and that is not always the case) the casters are actually controlling the camera and don't show everything essential that is one thing. But the times I've seen that happen are minimal. What you're complaining about is personal bias i.e. the casters not liking your favorite player as much as you do. Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.
Euro 2012 Soccer championship coming up this summer. Let's see all that non biased, "professional" casting there!
*Yawn* Absolutes are fun. Stop pretending that in order to be relatively unbiased, you must also be totally boring and monotonous. They are not the same thing no matter how much you try to make it seem that way.
On March 20 2012 19:55 Monsen wrote: You guys are going to complain until some mad scientist creates a truly neutral caster that bores thousands to death with his objectivity. If (and that is not always the case) the casters are actually controlling the camera and don't show everything essential that is one thing. But the times I've seen that happen are minimal. What you're complaining about is personal bias i.e. the casters not liking your favorite player as much as you do. Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.
Euro 2012 Soccer championship coming up this summer. Let's see all that non biased, "professional" casting there!
Yeah lets compare a european championship in a team sport where every country have their own casters with tournaments that feature one or two sets of english speaking casters and individual players from all over the world.
When i've watched swedish and british soccer casting from the premier league and champions league they've been very professional and kept from focusing too much on one team. And it's still really fun.
On March 20 2012 19:55 Monsen wrote: You guys are going to complain until some mad scientist creates a truly neutral caster that bores thousands to death with his objectivity. If (and that is not always the case) the casters are actually controlling the camera and don't show everything essential that is one thing. But the times I've seen that happen are minimal. What you're complaining about is personal bias i.e. the casters not liking your favorite player as much as you do. Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.
Euro 2012 Soccer championship coming up this summer. Let's see all that non biased, "professional" casting there!
On March 20 2012 01:34 Chill wrote: Jesus Christ. Commentary can't be what you want 100% of the time, okay? Consider that there is no perfect commentary or commentator that will satisfy what everyone wants.
Before opening another "Casters should do this" thread, consider: 1. Are you qualified to open this thread? What evidence or personal expertise do you bring to this thread other than you opinion? 2. Is this a big enough problem to warrant a thread? Consider, as I've said, no commentary can satisfy everyone. So knowing that, is this a large enough problem that it affects the average person. Consider that Artosis' Terran bias in TSL1 was actually what made him a famous commentator (among other things, but it was a big part of it). 3. Does your thread offer any solution? In this case, no. You are bringing awareness I guess (which you also could have done with a PM) but we're left with "just don't do it". Okay... I'm sure they're not trying to be bad at what they do purposely... 4. Is this a scene-wide problem? If you are talking about a specific event, consider that there is Twitter and the PM function to contact these commentators directly.
So I answer 'no' to 1 2 3 and give you a 'maybe' to 4. So I don't think this is worthwhile discussing. I'll still leave it open.
By your logic nothing should be discussed on TL unless you are pro player, manager, caster etc because you are clueless otherwise.
On topic yes if you put 2 zerg casters to cast TvZ or ZvP its terrible and you shouldnt do it because that will make it unwatchable for viewers, thats why you have 2 casters and perfect combo casting PvZ is Rotti and Mr.Bitter.
Overall Rotterdam is probably best non-biased caster and always says when P/Z or T do really bad mistake or talking about races in general. Even if he doesnt know super in depth terran play he will talk about builds in game from his PvT PoV and even tho he maybe doesnt understand terran PoV he's still able to explain very good and thats much better than casters saying "wow i have never seen this build before" it makes me facepalm so hard because 99% of times its standard TvX build.
EDIT: this is about casters in general not the ones mentioned in OP, like someone mentioned casters REALLY need to be careful what they are talking about new players once they cast their games, if you go negative on them (especially if you are well known caster) people will take your words for granted and will always see that player as bad player which will seal his reputation from start - same thing can happen other way, hype him too much and you hurt him in the end when he doesnt live up to expectations (we all saw this before and still seeing it happen).
Point 1 that Chill made is one of the most basic rules of teamliquid. If you don't have the prestige of having proven you know what you're talking about, you are supposed to bring evidence. It has nothing to do with only people in the scene discussing things on TL, but the quality of the discussion that goes about here. The OP wasn't really that good to begin with, so Chill called him out on it. You do make an excellent point on how much casters influence how a player is viewed though, certainly something important for casters to consider.
If that were the case, then almost everyone would be constantly breaking it. On topic, Mr.Bitter used to bother me a lot, and so did many other casters, even Tastosis(because they do in fact focus more on protoss players in detriment to their terran counterparts, to the point where they never gave due credit to many Terrans, MMA among them).Nevertheless, it has been long since I stopped caring about it, because it's just a waste of time when I should be just trying to enjoy myself, so just let it go if you know better. Still, it's especially bad if new players' careers suffer, one way or another, due to biased commentary, so it would be very good if casters paid attention at least to that.
I am pretty sure its only really if you are starting a thread. In which case I am pretty sure you would find that most threads that are opened, and are of a decent quality, either have evidence or are posted by someone who is proven to know what they are talking about.
Clearly you never watched Cholera cast a Reach game or NukeTheStars cast a Stork game. Biased commentaries are some of the most fun things I've ever watched in starcraft.
On March 20 2012 01:34 Chill wrote: Jesus Christ. Commentary can't be what you want 100% of the time, okay? Consider that there is no perfect commentary or commentator that will satisfy what everyone wants.
Before opening another "Casters should do this" thread, consider: 1. Are you qualified to open this thread? What evidence or personal expertise do you bring to this thread other than you opinion? 2. Is this a big enough problem to warrant a thread? Consider, as I've said, no commentary can satisfy everyone. So knowing that, is this a large enough problem that it affects the average person. Consider that Artosis' Terran bias in TSL1 was actually what made him a famous commentator (among other things, but it was a big part of it). 3. Does your thread offer any solution? In this case, no. You are bringing awareness I guess (which you also could have done with a PM) but we're left with "just don't do it". Okay... I'm sure they're not trying to be bad at what they do purposely... 4. Is this a scene-wide problem? If you are talking about a specific event, consider that there is Twitter and the PM function to contact these commentators directly.
So I answer 'no' to 1 2 3 and give you a 'maybe' to 4. So I don't think this is worthwhile discussing. I'll still leave it open.
By your logic nothing should be discussed on TL unless you are pro player, manager, caster etc because you are clueless otherwise.
On topic yes if you put 2 zerg casters to cast TvZ or ZvP its terrible and you shouldnt do it because that will make it unwatchable for viewers, thats why you have 2 casters and perfect combo casting PvZ is Rotti and Mr.Bitter.
Overall Rotterdam is probably best non-biased caster and always says when P/Z or T do really bad mistake or talking about races in general. Even if he doesnt know super in depth terran play he will talk about builds in game from his PvT PoV and even tho he maybe doesnt understand terran PoV he's still able to explain very good and thats much better than casters saying "wow i have never seen this build before" it makes me facepalm so hard because 99% of times its standard TvX build.
EDIT: this is about casters in general not the ones mentioned in OP, like someone mentioned casters REALLY need to be careful what they are talking about new players once they cast their games, if you go negative on them (especially if you are well known caster) people will take your words for granted and will always see that player as bad player which will seal his reputation from start - same thing can happen other way, hype him too much and you hurt him in the end when he doesnt live up to expectations (we all saw this before and still seeing it happen).
Point 1 that Chill made is one of the most basic rules of teamliquid. If you don't have the prestige of having proven you know what you're talking about, you are supposed to bring evidence. It has nothing to do with only people in the scene discussing things on TL, but the quality of the discussion that goes about here. The OP wasn't really that good to begin with, so Chill called him out on it. You do make an excellent point on how much casters influence how a player is viewed though, certainly something important for casters to consider.
If that were the case, then almost everyone would be constantly breaking it. On topic, Mr.Bitter used to bother me a lot, and so did many other casters, even Tastosis(because they do in fact focus more on protoss players in detriment to their terran counterparts, to the point where they never gave due credit to many Terrans, MMA among them).Nevertheless, it has been long since I stopped caring about it, because it's just a waste of time when I should be just trying to enjoy myself, so just let it go if you know better. Still, it's especially bad if new players' careers suffer, one way or another, due to biased commentary, so it would be very good if casters paid attention at least to that.
If you're hankering for some terran bias check out Painuser. He effusively praises everything terran players do e.g. 'Oh my God, amazing stim there!' and basically gives their opponents no credit at all. Probably you would enjoy his commentary.
On March 21 2012 17:39 0neder wrote: Clearly you never watched Cholera cast a Reach game or NukeTheStars cast a Stork game. Biased commentaries are some of the most fun things I've ever watched in starcraft.
My point exactly. Probably my fault that no one gets what I'm trying to say. As long as it doesn't affect the camerawork caster bias is completely fine with me because it conveys emotions. Emotions pull you in, make you invested, make you have more fun.
Now granted, for international football you will always have a caster that shares your own bias simply due to language. We probably won't have separate Z/P/T casters for SC2 so chances are from time to time you'll just have to live with it. What baffles me is how people seem so oblivious to this.
To put it in another way, ask yourselves this:
"Has it ever diminished my viewing experience when a caster was extremely enthusiastic (biased) towards the player I like too?"
Because if not, then you're just salty that your favorite player doesn't get enough love from the caster. Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.
On November 23 2012 19:19 SoundsStarcraft wrote: I don't think u can realy hate on Husky. He's the best thing SC2 has out there promoting it because he's so entertaining even if u know little about the game. That's why he's so successful. If you want more serious commentary there's heaps out there like on GOMTV etc but if you like funny/entertaining commentary then there's Husky and this new dude Soundsstarcraft- www.yoututbe.com/soundsstarcraft - he's pretty entertaining but still covers the strat a fair bit.
Nice advertising for your youtube channel, but event the link is wrong
I think that's one of the reasons why in most cases ppl prefer to have 2 commentators together. Having an analytical caster as one of them will definitely dilute the bias.
You are talking about Husky's youtube casts which are not the same as when he is casting a major tournament. Also, this topic has been brought up a million times.
For youtube casters like husky, I don't mind.He will pick a fun replay to cast and if he thinks one player is more fun than the other than thats fine.
For tournaments though it drives me a little crazy, especially since so many casters seems to love zerg and only focus on them and make sure we know that they'd rather the zerg win. Especially, sorry to say, this is true for the gsl with tastosis, since tasteless mostly repeats what artosis says and he has a huge zerg boner.
Anyway, foreigners fighting huh? I dont mind when casters are biased in FvK.
On November 23 2012 21:05 MooseMasher wrote: Now that this thread was bumped, I'll just sieze the opportunity to say that Artosis needs to work on his objectiveness!
But that would deprive us of that cringe you feel when Artosis tells you that your favorite player is destined for greatness/GSL championships.
On November 23 2012 21:05 MooseMasher wrote: Now that this thread was bumped, I'll just sieze the opportunity to say that Artosis needs to work on his objectiveness!
But that would deprive us of that cringe you feel when Artosis tells you that your favorite player is destined for greatness/GSL championships.
You only cringe when you like that player as well.
My favourite caster by far is Artosis and he is probably the most biased caster out there.
He automatically gives huge props to any player or strategic element related to Broodwar, glorifying the game and it's scene and elevating himself by proxy. You will notice that he is very reluctant to give credit to any player who wasn't part of the scene or, even worse, played Warcraft 3 before.
Yet that doesn't diminish his quality as a caster, it only shows emotional investment and can be really, really entertaining!
I have no problem with this in the sense that expecting someone to have no bias is an unreal expectation. Bias is part of the human nature. As long as the casting is still entertaining, provides good analysis and manages to stay overall enjoyable, i see no issue.
EPT
I dont mind when casters are biased in FvK. 
