EPTClouD's World #1 - Caster/Player situation - Page 29
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Raid
United States398 Posts
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Iamyournoob
Germany595 Posts
On May 03 2012 02:54 MorroW wrote: putting money aside i think most of us here would agree the room to improve in terms of enjoyment from watching is not from progamers, tour organisers or production (cameras, stage etc), when it comes to discussing those things we mostly see the casters as a failing link the fact that we have so many people saying "i dont like x caster" or says they mute the stream, meanwhile we see players getting stronger and stronger (and more popular overall) and production values of tournaments has gone up tremendously lately aswell as prize distrubution rules format etc. everything has constantly been moving forward this last year improving while casters i feel at least are the ones who are slipping behind. we started out with day9, artosis, tasteless and total biscuit. and after all this time we didnt really get many new casters who became like really, really good. only apollo, mrbitter and rotterdam comes to mind. and in terms of knowledge about the game most of them kinda sit around same skill level and understanding of the game like 1 year ago, like obviously they wont get more funny and likable, so its pretty much just keeping the ball rolling and knowledge of the game they can improve. artosis constantly keeps up with the current flow of the game and latest trends and the new maps etc while in general most casters just seem to be talking about the same general stuff they always do now dont get offended anyone because i only speak about our casters in general is a slacking part in general in sc2, i dont just mean our current casters and about them i also mean about new rising unknown casters in general. when i look at the entire role as a whole and compare it to every other part about watching or following a tournament, thats what is still disappointing me the most but we do have casters who really want to improve and are interested at constantly gathering more information about the game, apollo comes to mind for example. but in general i cant actually picture it in my head that the casters does any work at all when it comes to improving with the exception of actually casting and learning the game while casting to put it in a different perspective. if you look at all the tournaments we have today, theres no tournament that we can really say "well this is just actually THE best tournament" when it comes to production and all this jazz same thing goes for the players. as they are all competing closely with each other and upping their game we see alot of constant movement and improving. but when as far casters know artosis is widely known to be by far the most knowledgeable caster out there, and guys thats not because he is just some super talented caster. its because he on a daily basis follows as many tournaments out there as he can and is constantly learning the game on his free time. so all the casters out there who feel struck when they hear that they lack game knowledge, just whenever u have time just go watch or play sc2 from an improving perspective instead of just watching or playing out of enjoyment and being silly no new casters are appearing these days, and the ones that are unknown or "up and coming" or still learning, well most of them are terribly disappointing and you can already say they wont make it. thats just how i feel This is a different way of putting what I believe to be the issue. SC2 has evolved, casters have mostly not. There needs to be more competition among casters so that they have an incentive to constantly improver their casting AND knowledge. If you as a caster can't be kicked off your throne because you are the holy cow of the community, then this is something to worry about. You can't feed on your past merits for your whole career. Nobody can do that. Everyone has to constantly work his/her ass off to remain competitive, so why should casters be the exception? I don't know how much competitive pressure there is among casters. A few requirements have to be met: 1.) There are enough upcoming casters. 2.) Tournaments have to recognize them and give them a chance to prove themselves. This includes daring to replace casters who gained a certain status. 3.) The community has to give honest and as unbiased as possible feedback. A caster "being around since forever" or "having done a lot for the community" is not enough to allow him to commentate big tournaments. Judgement should be based on current performance. I believe that these things are important to see improvement among casters. | ||
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Misanthrope
United States924 Posts
People like Artosis and Day9 dedicate their entire life to this game and the industry that surrounds it. Not every player puts in a 100+ hour work week, nor does every caster, but the ones on both sides who do WILL see the results of such efforts. This is the reality of our state of affairs. It is not sad at all, merely based in work ethic and economics. In fact, these are good troubles to have, as esports is at a point where we can support such drama. Also TLO vs Cloud showmatch please. | ||
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Carpo
Canada13 Posts
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JitnikoVi
Russian Federation396 Posts
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JimmyJRaynor
Canada16393 Posts
On May 01 2012 23:38 Kaitokid wrote: 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 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. the guys who made the game "make all this possible". and the kind of deal Morhaime has been able to strike with publishers (Activision, Davidson etc) over the years allowing him to fund projects taht take 4+ years to complete and include the kind of post sales support that is very rare in the quick turnover flash in the pan industry video games have become. if a broadcaster can make a game "compelling" to millions of average people the way Bob Costas or Dan Shulman can summarize a tense situation in a baseball game then that is worth a lot. essentially casters are the "salesmen" of eSports... they bring in the cash. The reason pro players need a team and so forth is the same reason championship fighters rely on a promoter to bring in the cash. Generally the promoter takes a huge piece of the purse. Vince Mcmahon, Don King, and Dana White take a lot more from their "athletes" than SC2 casters take from teh over all money pool that is eSports. Cloud needs to get acquainted with the real world. | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland23784 Posts
Now I am aware of the commercial interests of tournaments being reliant on such casters to bring in the viewers, otherwise they'd not shell out the cash for them. I'm not a moron I do 'get it', however it's stifling new blood coming through, imo. In addition fanboys of certain casters don't help either, not necessarily with their support of a figure, but in their dislike of new blood. Now I'm not a massive fan of Orb's casting, but at least he works hard at it and he got thrown under the bus post racism row in a manner that I cannot imagine would ever happen to Day9 et al. Double standards and popularity contests may have grown this community to where it's at today, and continue to keep it on the level, but long term I think it'll lead to a stagnation in the Western scene, I really do. | ||
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ishyishy
United States826 Posts
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theBlues
El Salvador638 Posts
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PersonDudeGuy
Canada47 Posts
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Sub40APM
6336 Posts
Is he worried that the money that goes to the painusers (a caster cloud calls out) of the world should go instead to the Cloud's of the world or that the painusers of the world make it harder for the consumers to appreciate the skills of players? Are there players out there who are 'good' but who get a bad rep from casters? Is the fact that now almost *every* caster calls idra on his rage/early gg/'lack of mental toughness' having any effect on Idra's marketability? Did the fact that Khaldor call out Destiny [in the context that Khaldor believes that some Koreans dont understand how someone as, in their words, "mediocre" as Destiny gets way more viewers than good koreans] somehow diminish the number of viewers Destiny gets? Seems like the caster market was the ultimate free market when the game came out. Tastosis dominated it and day9 built himself up a pretty neat little niche that he extended into a veritable empire of content. And people who were established in other games had a fair shot at getting a popular following as well [thinking roterdam here]. But others had their chance too, so its not like Day9 or Husky somehow use their malevolent powers of manipulation to force anyone to pay them anything to cast games. It just happened to be the case that Husky and HD and some other guys were casting things during beta and that this fame built up carried them forward. Being the first or the first few casters has a tremendous advantage in establishing your fan base. I used to watch a couple of other youtube casters too but in the end I dont have the time/interest to follow them all so whoever happens to be on TL broadcast thingy is the guy who 'gets my business' even though realistically its the content creators, the players, who I watch and I can even watch them on mute. What this really is about is filtering. Lets say you have become rich and you want to make SC2 tournaments. Now you have two options when deciding who will cast it: invite established casters who you can reasonably estimate will bring in their own fans/have shown a degree of competency based on the sheer experience of casting things for the last 2 years, have some sort of open audition system wherein anyone who wants to cast is allowed to cast one game and then the most popular guy moves on or some sort of hybrid. Well, unless you are really dedicated to the development of amazing casters or believe in some sort of ethical standard of fairness that says everyone who wants it should be given a chance you will go with the easiest to implement, which is hiring an established caster. Basically all the 'famous casters' are 'good enough', and its hard to imagine that anyone actually stops watching a game because a 'bad' caster like painuser [ClouD's words] is the one casting. In the end when you are given a choice between watching Stephano vs Korean Player at IPL 5 or watching Tastosis cast round 64 of GSL what will you tune into? Of course it will be painuser! All in all then, is the system of identifying and promoting casters fair? Not really. Does it matter that much? No, not really. As for the purists who demand the best of the best to cast *every* game then here is a simple solution, wait another year or two when incontrol finally gives up the dream of a pro career and switches into casting full time and enjoy. The fact of the matter is for 'novice' viewers, the most important characteristic is charisma. And for the 'expert' viewers, well couldnt they really watch the game without any casting and still enjoy it? | ||
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tadL
Croatia679 Posts
You have to care how you act and and and. As a player? As a foreigner player who wins tournaments? You can act like the biggest asshole (and we have so many of them...just to mention Nainwa) in universe and not many care about it. They will get hyped up cause wining is everything. What is harder? Always watch how you act or just wining games? Trying to make the 5 mio. 4gate vs 4gate interesting to viewers or just play the 4gate as an example. I prefer watching replays and to be serious, I watch all replays from a tournament and i skip a lot if i see simple all Ins, i dont even care if he won or not with it. But as a caster? You have to cast this and make it entertaining, and this is so fucking hard. And what i see, a lot of players who dont have any chance to win something getting sponsored and they are not even in any spot to play for the tournament win. And this is truly amazing! And Cloud is an example for it. He has his point but he forgets the other side i think. If casters make to much, he should just change to caster and lets try it. There are less casters who can live from it then players. And they have to entertain people to get money, players dont have to do this, they have just to win. It does not matter if a guy just 1/1/1 his way to tournament win. He gets fame and money for it. But as a boring caster you are out. Well wrote to much, but i hope people get my point. Just to mention TobiWan, he makes even the most boring Dota2 game absolutely entertaining. And dota is much harder to cast then sc2 in my eyes. Just this added, cant wait to hear about it in all sc2 pod casts on earth. Cloud you should take some money for bringing this up (again). sry for bad english | ||
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TORTOISE
United States515 Posts
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chestnutcc
India429 Posts
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IPA
United States3206 Posts
Artosis, Apollo and Bitterdam are consistently informative, funny and knowledgeable. More or less everyone else comes across as disappointing to me. Kudos to Cloud for making a statement on what is obvious to so many of us. I appreciate how starkly his position is contrasted with the typical "Rah rah, everyone contributing to esports is great" nonsense that is often touted on TL. | ||
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DannyJ
United States5110 Posts
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PH
United States6173 Posts
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dacimvrl
Vatican City State582 Posts
besides, who the hell is cloud? | ||
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Duravi
United States1205 Posts
On May 03 2012 02:54 MorroW wrote: putting money aside i think most of us here would agree the room to improve in terms of enjoyment from watching is not from progamers, tour organisers or production (cameras, stage etc), when it comes to discussing those things we mostly see the casters as a failing link the fact that we have so many people saying "i dont like x caster" or says they mute the stream, meanwhile we see players getting stronger and stronger (and more popular overall) and production values of tournaments has gone up tremendously lately aswell as prize distrubution rules format etc. everything has constantly been moving forward this last year improving while casters i feel at least are the ones who are slipping behind. we started out with day9, artosis, tasteless and total biscuit. and after all this time we didnt really get many new casters who became like really, really good. only apollo, mrbitter and rotterdam comes to mind. and in terms of knowledge about the game most of them kinda sit around same skill level and understanding of the game like 1 year ago, like obviously they wont get more funny and likable, so its pretty much just keeping the ball rolling and knowledge of the game they can improve. artosis constantly keeps up with the current flow of the game and latest trends and the new maps etc while in general most casters just seem to be talking about the same general stuff they always do now dont get offended anyone because i only speak about our casters in general is a slacking part in general in sc2, i dont just mean our current casters and about them i also mean about new rising unknown casters in general. when i look at the entire role as a whole and compare it to every other part about watching or following a tournament, thats what is still disappointing me the most but we do have casters who really want to improve and are interested at constantly gathering more information about the game, apollo comes to mind for example. but in general i cant actually picture it in my head that the casters does any work at all when it comes to improving with the exception of actually casting and learning the game while casting to put it in a different perspective. if you look at all the tournaments we have today, theres no tournament that we can really say "well this is just actually THE best tournament" when it comes to production and all this jazz same thing goes for the players. as they are all competing closely with each other and upping their game we see alot of constant movement and improving. but when as far casters know artosis is widely known to be by far the most knowledgeable caster out there, and guys thats not because he is just some super talented caster. its because he on a daily basis follows as many tournaments out there as he can and is constantly learning the game on his free time. so all the casters out there who feel struck when they hear that they lack game knowledge, just whenever u have time just go watch or play sc2 from an improving perspective instead of just watching or playing out of enjoyment and being silly no new casters are appearing these days, and the ones that are unknown or "up and coming" or still learning, well most of them are terribly disappointing and you can already say they wont make it. thats just how i feel I think the stagnation of new talent in casting is also contributing to the skill of the current casters being mostly at a standstill. There is no pressure from below, Tasteless is a great example of this, if anything his casting has gotten worse over the past year but there is no pressure for him to improve so it is pretty hard to blame him. | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland23784 Posts
On May 03 2012 09:47 Duravi wrote: I think the stagnation of new talent in casting is also contributing to the skill of the current casters being mostly at a standstill. There is no pressure from below, Tasteless is a great example of this, if anything his casting has gotten worse over the past year but there is no pressure for him to improve so it is pretty hard to blame him. Exactly, I mean ok ClouD is doing this Vlog in his usual forthright way so I feel some of the underlying messages have been lost in the hyperbole, but he's primarily decrying the lack of improvement from casters, especially in the analytical sense. Same pool of casters rotated for nearly every event, some natural complacency will ensue. | ||
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