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http://taketv.net/video/279
This is episode 1 of a series of vlogs by ClouD. The topic he speaks about in this episode is something I personally think a lot about. In this video he talks about how he feels that the majority of popular casters right now basically "abuse" the popularity of SC2. He says that the current situation is very sad, because casters get too much money and fame for too little effort. I completely agree with this statements. Casters are not the ones who are truly most passionate about the game, they are not the ones practicing 10h a day to make all this possible. They are never under heavy pressure, because all they have to do is commentate a game. Their career is not affected by win or loss.
I want to compare this to other sports like Football (soccer). The players are the stars there, they earn the most amount of money and they are also the "faces" of the sport. The players stand for the sports pretty much. In SC2 the situation is almost reversed. There are only a handful of players who compare to the popularity of the casters.
The worst part for me and ClouD also mentions that in the video is that many casters don't even try to understand or increase their game knowlegde. I mean they LIVE OFF THIS GAME called Starcraft 2, but apperantly they don't even bother to learn the game properly.
At this point I'd like to talk about iNcontroL, he gets a lot of hate for being a "bad progamer" and many people don't like that he has a lot of support. But the only reason he does get all this hate is that he still considers himself mainly a player and not a "community figure" or a caster. I respect that a lot. He does a lot for the community while he still plays SC2 at a pretty high level. He doesn't make it easy for himself by going fulltime caster. It would definitely make his life a little easier and make a majority of the people hating on him dissappear, but he doesn't choose this way because he still loves the game and for me this is a prove that he is not in the SC2 scene for the money and attention.
I wish the community would show more support for the players "who live for the game". Hard work and practice doesn't get enough credit in this community and after all the proscene only exists because we have people who practice their ass off to entertain you.
I hope the casters start to appreciate their current position a little more and maybe instead of promoting themself all day everyday they should spend a little more time on SC2 and learn the game a little more so that they can give more insights.
Something I also want to speak about is the constant self promotion of casters during tournaments and casts. They say "you can follow us on twitter" between like every set of games. I think when they do it it would also be nice if they also promoted the twitter accounts of the players they currently cast. Its just a small thing but in my opinion it would be appropriate.
Also mad respect to ClouD who addresses this topic. I am extremely sure that many pro gamers think the same way but many don't make their opinion public because they are afraid of negative feedback from the community and of course its also important to have good relations to the casters. He was also the one who created the topic about tournaments not paying prize money or way too late. I appreciate that we have such outspoken members in our community. I remember HuK also spoke a little bit about this in an interview, but other than that I've never seen pro gamers commenting on this.
I would be interested what the community thinks about this topic. I feel like most people don't even realize that such a problem exists, but maybe I am wrong.
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Casters are the cornerstones of the SC2 scene right now. They are the ones conveying excitement and energy to the people watching, this is not a skill everyone has or can learn. On top of that, do you know the schedules from the GSL casters? They work full time. Day9 is always busy with anything SC related. Some casters might not be as good as others but that's why they're not as populair as others. So to say that the casters are leeching off SC2 popularity is plain ignorant.
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Thought about it alot myself. There are so many players which could make they're life easier and get better paid by becoming caster. And so many casters who work a fraction of the time those pro's do and still get better paid.
'Like that ClouD is calling those topics out.
Edit: On May 01 2012 23:43 Silo Phylumists wrote:
Casters are the cornerstones of the SC2 scene right now. They are the ones conveying excitement and energy to the people watching, this is not a skill everyone has or can learn. On top of that, do you know the schedules from the GSL casters? They work full time. So to say that the casters are leeching off SC2 popularity is plain ignorant.
ClouD mentioned that those gsl casters do they're job good. He "blamed" the "foreigner caster" where its obvious that he didnt' exclude the korean speaking caster but the ones living over there.
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On May 01 2012 23:43 Silo Phylumists wrote: On top of that, do you know the schedules from the GSL casters? They work full time.
Do you? and really do they?
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Totally agree with him, except that I think Apollo is by far the best caster(and one of the best observers) right now and I don't like catspyjamas.
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On May 01 2012 23:44 bmml wrote:Show nested quote +On May 01 2012 23:43 Silo Phylumists wrote: On top of that, do you know the schedules from the GSL casters? They work full time. Do you? and really do they?
Think they mentioned it a couple of times on the GSL so.... They do work long hours and try to improve their cast. So let's not have them under appriciated.
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On May 01 2012 23:43 Silo Phylumists wrote:
Casters are the cornerstones of the SC2 scene right now. They are the ones conveying excitement and energy to the people watching, this is not a skill everyone has or can learn. On top of that, do you know the schedules from the GSL casters? They work full time. So to say that the casters are leeching off SC2 popularity is plain ignorant.
If you watched it, you would also know that he isn't talking about the GSL casters when he criticizes work ethic.
Interesting vlog from ClouD, I'm looking forward to seeing more. It may be controversial what he says, but I love his outspokenness.
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On May 01 2012 23:43 amityXixo wrote:Thought about it alot myself. There are so many players which could make they're life easier and get better paid by becoming caster. And so many casters who work a fraction of the time those pro's do and still get better paid. 'Like that ClouD is calling those topics out. Edit: Show nested quote +On May 01 2012 23:43 Silo Phylumists wrote:
Casters are the cornerstones of the SC2 scene right now. They are the ones conveying excitement and energy to the people watching, this is not a skill everyone has or can learn. On top of that, do you know the schedules from the GSL casters? They work full time. So to say that the casters are leeching off SC2 popularity is plain ignorant. ClouD mentioned that those gsl casters do they're job good. He "blamed" the "f oreigner caster" where its obvious that he didnt' exclude the korean speaking caster but the ones living over there.
Ah ok, I can kind of agree with that.
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I highly disagree with this. Not because I don't value the sacrifices that the players make but because I just don't think what they say is true.
The reason casters have become the cornerstone is because they have attracted a huge audience to the e-sport that wouldn't have been there otherwise. SC2 had a lot of people come into the sport that started off with watching HD or Husky on Youtube.
Another thing to take into consideration is that these casters immediatly made it into a business by pushing out a lot of videos and building themselves a personality. It resulted into getting them masses of followers (and in turn: money) who wanted them to be involved in e-sport tournaments. I'd guess that they wanted money to be comparable to what they'd make by not going to said tournament and hence the pay differential started to exist.
Now honestly it appears to me that the players want it both ways: they want the game to be big but not make the sacrifices that come with that (giving the cornerstone position to the casters).
I do agree though that there are a lot of bad casters out there who don't know what they're talking about. Having said that though I only watch major tournaments myself and the only one who does those tournaments and has that problem is HD. Besides that I am personally fine with the casting I get but that's most likely due to what I watch. I would imagine that the lower tier of tournaments have worse casting.
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Well then go be a caster I guess.
"Day9 gives players credit for random shit" that's just true, also viewers give day9 too much credit for casting and saying random shit.
I don't really like Khaldors english casting but he's okay in german.
Don't see why he's giving credit to Total Bisquit, his voice is so fucking annoying. Also he is one of the least knowlagable casters at all, so this is pretty weird.
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I do agree with this somewhat, but I think this is going to be a problem for a while until later on in the games lifespan. In BW everyone knew players and not casters. However I don't think it's anyone's place to judge who should and shouldn't be successful. Working hard is a virtue, but being interesting and promoting yourself is too.
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I can tell you, from the time I did casting, that yes, it's a fulltime job, and yes, you appreciate every gig you get.
Keep in mind, you don't just magically get a good paying job as a caster. You have to put in tons of hours of your own time and dedication, just to be seen and accepted (a tough feat in this scene) I worked full time with a computer job plus tried doing my casting.
As a player, you have to play the game to become better, and hopefully make it pro. Not much is different for the caster.
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On May 01 2012 23:49 Greenei wrote:
Well then go be a caster I guess.
"Day9 gives players credit for random shit" that's just true, also viewers give day9 too much credit for casting and saying random shit.
I don't really like Khaldors english casting but he's okay in german.
Don't see why he's giving credit to Total Bisquit, his voice is so fucking annoying. Also he is one of the least knowlagable casters at all, so this is pretty weird.
Well TB gets the fans excited about the game.
In the infancy of the Esports industry, getting lots of people very interested and entertained by Starcraft is a very good thing.
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Link doesn't load for me, just says can't connect. Happening to anyone else?
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Actually in my opinion the SC2 community is for the most part built by great casters like day[9], tastosis, apollo,tb, khaldor and others. Without these people SC2 wouldn't be half of what it is now I think. There are lots of people who picked up SC2 just because they watched very entertaining cast, casters made them intrigued about the game, people wanted to give it a try to see for themselves how it really is to play SC2. Let's face it, players alone wouldn't have built community as big as it is right now. Most people even though they play some SC2 they wouldn't even understand what is going on in the pro game if the game wasn't commentated. Casters make SC2 people friendly at the highest level. Salaries are other part but there's nothing we can do about it, only players themselves can try to get a better contract, stream to get some money from ads, practice their ass off to win some tournaments etc, they chose to be players and I dont think any of them actually thought it is going to be easy at all, yet they do it because they love the game, competitive part of it, joy of winning, bitter taste of loss and the the amazing feel when they get on the stage and thousands of people are chanting their name, clap their hands.. I bet it is something they wouldn't want to lose even if they got paid for it.
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husky is the best example for that, he doesn t know anything but get s so much attention and so on....
sad, i agree with cloud
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On May 01 2012 23:53 Holytornados wrote:Show nested quote +On May 01 2012 23:49 Greenei wrote:
Well then go be a caster I guess.
"Day9 gives players credit for random shit" that's just true, also viewers give day9 too much credit for casting and saying random shit.
I don't really like Khaldors english casting but he's okay in german.
Don't see why he's giving credit to Total Bisquit, his voice is so fucking annoying. Also he is one of the least knowlagable casters at all, so this is pretty weird. Well TB gets the fans excited about the game. In the infancy of the Esports industry, getting lots of people very interested and entertained by Starcraft is a very good thing.
The difference is also that Totalbiscuit has a career outside of e-sport (a vast majority of his income comes from his general gaming videos on his channel), and he reinvest most of his sc2 money in the community with the shoutcraft invitational, sponsoring Bling etc.
The problem with a lot of player regarding caster seems to be that they feel that caster are "leeching" the industry and get some underserved recognition, which is not the case of TB.
And also he is not trying to be an analytical caster. Having little knowledge is ok as long as you're paired with a good analytical caster. Faking knowledge is very annoying though.
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people who think casters have a tough job that involves a specialized set of skills haven't listened to real pro players do casting
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On May 01 2012 23:48 Silo Phylumists wrote:Show nested quote +On May 01 2012 23:44 bmml wrote:On May 01 2012 23:43 Silo Phylumists wrote: On top of that, do you know the schedules from the GSL casters? They work full time. Do you? and really do they? Think they mentioned it a couple of times on the GSL so.... They do work long hours and try to improve their cast. So let's not have them under appriciated.
I don't know their exact schedules but I do know that the original reason for hiring Code A casters was because it was too large a workload for just Tastosis to cast.
What casters in particular aren't putting in the effort though? I suppose Husky could try a little harder to improve his game knowledge but then again he doesn't cast nearly as many live events as other big names and I think his niche in the community is an important one - he gets the younger/newbier crowd interested in the scene while still being entertaining enough for most everyone to enjoy his casting.
And most of the other prominent casters have sufficient game knowledge or are making an attempt to.
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EPT
