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On September 03 2012 17:56 Woizit wrote:
For me, it only matters that the caster talks about what the players are doing on the screen the viewers are looking at, and not what the players are not doing. For the most part anyway.
That's exactly what most casters do though,and it makes it fairly bland.
"He made marauders"
"He's moving out with the marauders"
"He's hitting the front of his opponents base with marauders. Can the Protoss hold this?!"
"Beautiful forcefields! He held the attack!"
Not interesting to me in the slightest. I'm curious what triggered the T to attack, why he went with a certain composition, if the protoss was aware of the attack coming....
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you're summary of each caster is very biased and may i say 'unfair', as this thread is directed to ask the question 'What is key to being a Good Caster'. i disagree on some of your assessments on casters but then again i'm also biased.
the poll
-play by play
-metagame
-passion
-charisma
is extremely vague and doesn't outline everything, especially when you have to specifically vote for the most preferable.
for example (EXAMPLES ONLY, once again stating that these are all personal opinions) these issues aren't addressed:
with khaldor, some people dislike his accent, or likes his lolwhat joke moments.
or wolf, he is either trolling us about hairstyles or he has a fetish which does not need to be shared
or day9, try to convince viewers about certain things that are wrong as if we don't recognise his mistakes
or tasteless "greetings from seoul korea..."
or apollo being extremely zerg biased
or simply i don't like his voice.
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On September 03 2012 18:05 Clarity_nl wrote:Show nested quote +On September 03 2012 17:56 Woizit wrote:
For me, it only matters that the caster talks about what the players are doing on the screen the viewers are looking at, and not what the players are not doing. For the most part anyway. That's exactly what most casters do though,and it makes it fairly bland. "He made marauders" "He's moving out with the marauders" "He's hitting the front of his opponents base with marauders. Can the Protoss hold this?!" "Beautiful forcefields! He held the attack!" Not interesting to me in the slightest. I'm curious what triggered the T to attack, why he went with a certain composition, if the protoss was aware of the attack coming....
100% agreed, this is why I like Artosis very much, I find he's generally quite insightful.
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It's honestly ridiculous how poor most caster's knowledge of the game is. If being a caster is your job, put in the fucking hours. I find it very hard to believe that many of the casters bother to put in close to enough time to be considered working full time.
I'd take the likes of Idra at his most monotone over any of these play by play casters that get "excited" but can say nothing but what any Gold league player notices themselves anyway. Sadly, I don't think we're going to see truly exceptional casting until some good pros retire and decide to actively keep up their knowledge by playing a lot that we'll see a big increase in quality of casting.
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Sometimes you just end up with a caster who has week game knowledge. I think in this case, they don't need to stick to pure play by play. I appreciate casters who enlighten us about the background of particular players, some lesser known facts of tidbits, bring the audience up to speed on tournament results and storylines, and talk about the context of a particular game with respect to how the results will effect the other players.
I feel that there is a lot of ground left uncovered by casters who stick strictly to play by play.
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On September 03 2012 18:05 Clarity_nl wrote:Show nested quote +On September 03 2012 17:56 Woizit wrote:
For me, it only matters that the caster talks about what the players are doing on the screen the viewers are looking at, and not what the players are not doing. For the most part anyway. That's exactly what most casters do though,and it makes it fairly bland. "He made marauders" "He's moving out with the marauders" "He's hitting the front of his opponents base with marauders. Can the Protoss hold this?!" "Beautiful forcefields! He held the attack!" Not interesting to me in the slightest. I'm curious what triggered the T to attack, why he went with a certain composition, if the protoss was aware of the attack coming....
I've got a problem with "He made marauders", no so much with "He's making marauders". Basically, lots of play-by-play keeps swinging back to what has already happened, trying to justify what is happening when that is not the point of play-by-play.
Stating he's moving out with marauders or hitting the front of his opponent's base with marauders is fine by me, I don't see anything wrong with stating the facts, but I think a lot of casters actually fail on something as basic as that believe it or not. How many times did it end up with "Is he going to attack? Uhh... yes... no..?" Instead of simply "He's setting up the attack" or "He's waiting".
Point is, casting can be made a lot simpler and yet more entertaining. Listening to Tobi-wan scream "Enigma!!!" in Dota2 is enough to describe an entire battle with all the hype, yet SC2 fans just want mroe and more analysis on every single thing.
On the same note, BW guys seem to remember the "stormuu" and "reaver, reaver, reaver, reaver" casting more than anything else (other than fangirls of course).
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Three of my main gripes about casters nowadays are --
1 - The constant screams of "OHHHHHH" whenever something remotely interesting happens. It's mind numbingly horrible. The most recent example I can think of was at IEM Gamescom. Both Day9 and Kaelaris would scream "OHHHHHH" multiple times each match.
2 - "He did this!" "He did that!". A lot of casters seem to just describe what is happening on the screen without even stating the name of the player or why they're doing it. I've noticed DJWheat do this more than most casters, but the majority of them do this. It's quite frustrating when, during a ZvP for example, the caster will say something along the lines of "He's moving out with Roaches and he's expanding behind it and.. Oh look! He uses forcefields to trap the roaches!".
3 - Poor calls and overall poor game knowledge. "<Player A> has the decisive lead and the better positioning here.. If <Player B> attacks, he will surely fall behind.. But.. OHHHH.. An amazing attack has meant that <Player B> has somehow taken the lead". It happens all the time. Casters will say one thing and, half the time, the complete opposite thing happens. It's hard to believe anything they say when they make so many poor calls due to their lack of game knowledge.
100% agreed with everything Ret said, too.
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To me, game knowledge is the most important. I don't see the point of commentating a game if you don't know it to the max.
It's so awesome to occasionaly have progamers casting games. They're like "This player probably gonna put down his spire in the next 3 seconds"..And bam, Spire morphing indeed?
I'm glad tournaments invite progamers to cast with normals casters. You get the insight of a progamer, AND the hyped-voice of the caster. Combo.
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That description of something happening on the screen might be a remnant from the good old days, when people castet via online radio and people couldn't see for themselves what was going on.
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Either be really good at one thing and not terrible at anything, or be at least pretty good across the board. Wolf and Khaldor may not be perfect, but when I've listened to them, they've consistently been good, show some enthusiasm and have fun together casting. This kind of seems like a thread you made to bash on Wolf.
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On September 03 2012 18:05 Clarity_nl wrote:Show nested quote +On September 03 2012 17:56 Woizit wrote:
For me, it only matters that the caster talks about what the players are doing on the screen the viewers are looking at, and not what the players are not doing. For the most part anyway. That's exactly what most casters do though,and it makes it fairly bland. "He made marauders" "He's moving out with the marauders" "He's hitting the front of his opponents base with marauders. Can the Protoss hold this?!" "Beautiful forcefields! He held the attack!" Not interesting to me in the slightest. I'm curious what triggered the T to attack, why he went with a certain composition, if the protoss was aware of the attack coming....
That's a pretty good example of POOR play-by-play casting. Which is exactly why it's such an important thing to me. Good play by play would be a little more like this:
"He's going for early concussive shell and maruaders. This is a great way to neutralize stalker speed and kite zealots"
"The mauraders are moving out just before concussive shells is done, it should finish just as he gets to the protoss ramp."
"The terran player catches one stalker out of position but the protoss player now knows the push is coming and immediately warps in a sentry - all he has to do is FF the ramp and he'll be able to hold"
"Perfect FF. He's able to pick off the maurader and the terran player retreats his marines before the stalkers will be able to follow down the ramp"
Again, it's like (what I think is the most important thing) observing. You may not really think about it much when it's good, but when it's bad it completely ruins the experience.
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What I look for in a caster are the following:
- Insight into the game and giving insight on what may happen next (Artosis&dApollo)
- Someone who doesn't do play-by-play casting (DJWheat&Totalbiscuit)
- Someone who knows when to give proper amount of excitement (Artosis is OK - Day9 is not OK)
- Someone who doesn't rely on the other caster for actual&useful information (Tasteless does this all the time)
- Someone who has natural and "fun" charisma without taking too much away from the game and staying on topic
- Someone who thinks the game is about to end when it doesn't ~ "OH THIS SHOULD BE GG FROM PLAYER X" but it never happens (Wolf&Khaldor are a major victim of this)
That's pretty much all of it. It sounds like an extensive list but eh oh well.
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I feel like no matter what caster it is, even if they are reasonably good at analysis, they can start to feel infallible in calling things when they get a lot of praise, even casters like apollo and artosis every so often can make miss calls and then try to stand by it because of their own ego.
That's why I feel like the most important thing as a caster is being humble in your casts, never come across as if you know better than the player, its so irritating listening to a caster who is talking so authoritatively but is completely wrong.
I'd say rotterdam is the least guilty of this because of he has competitive exp of the highest level and understands how intricate a competitive game can be, so he almost never presumes he knows best.
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For me personally the most important thing is game knowledge. It's simply a MUST, nothing more to say.
Second place is for fluency in English and proper enunciation. If the caster does not have a good grasp of the language, i start to get annoyed and eventually mute or stop the stream.
Third place is for sense of humor - being able to exchange good jokes with a co-caster or to come up with funny things to say when solo-casting makes the cast fresh and entertaining.
Honestly, i don't care much about passion. It is very, very difficult to have the right amount of passion. I often feel like casters are overdoing it - for example, Wolf and Khaldor become unbearable for me to listen to when they start drooling and screaming. They practically ruined WCS Korea for me. I don't mean to offend them, i respect them for the time and effort they are putting into the game, but i just cannot stand their excitement, their voices become too screechy. Another example is McDuffs from Imba.tv - when he jumps on the hype wagon at the start of a game, it's already over for me.
So, i'd say that right now the perfect caster for my taste is Grubby.
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The OP strikes me as seriously biased, especially in regards to Wolf. But the comments about the general standard of casting being pretty low is somewhat valid.
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I think passion is the most important, but it doesn't mean you have to scream like a moletrap. You just have to love the game and influence the viewers when you broadcast. Artosis doesn't really scream all that much, but you can tell he loves the game.
*Although he voice completely broke when MVP's BC fleet got vortex-ed.
I think being un-bias is quite important as a caster. I used to like HD's cast but in the last couple casts I saw it was pretty bias against Terran so it is just not as enjoyable to watch.
Game knowledge is a plus but I don't think it is a requirement. I quite enjoy Husky's casting even his knowledge is not on par with Artosis. It is good to have different types of casters. When you want analytical casts, you can tune in to Day9 or ArtosisTv stuff where it is pure analysis. Or you can just have a laugh and casual casting with Husky etc etc...
EDIT: To OP, Wolf actually have pretty good insight of the game, I watch GSL most of the time, don't know why you would think that...
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I would say it depends on the viewer, but I'm going to say that most important part of being a good caster is play-by-play and personality (don't come off as a prick).
If I were to watch a baseball game, the play-by-play man is going to have the most important role. As someone who plays amateur baseball and has coached and instructed people through various levels, I'll also be able to relate to the announcer who has more intimate knowledge of what's going on - or, the game within the game.
Same for football, except I don't know as much about football, I would not be able to explain to you the difference between a nickel defense and dime defense, I know a 3-4 plays with 3 down linemen instead of 4 (with a 4-3), and I know what zone and man-to-man coverages are. That being said, I'm going to relate more with the play-by-play, and have to take what the more in-depth person has to say at face value, whether he's wrong or not, I'm not good enough to judge.
That being said, if you close your eyes (or listen on the radio), if the play-by-play man is lacking, it just ruins it.
Same can be said for SC2 in my opinion. And so I answer the question as to what is the key to being a good caster? They have to have a solid play-by-play man.
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For me the most important aspect is insight in the game. Being able to read incoming plays, pointing out not to obvious weaknesses etc. But also simpler thing like minimap awareness, sporadic drone counts etc.
Not that huge follower of any caster so afraid can't give examples but i can get really annoyed by blatant wrong reads or over enthusiastic casting.
I do think there is balance to befound, I am watching games part to enjoy them and part to learn from them.
Therefore i believe a caster should have a mix of insight, charisma/passion and humor.
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Quick question: if not producing independant content for the community is a criterion of exclusion for Wolf, why is Tasteless considered a community guy in your opinion?
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To be honest, I feel like we lack play by play. The only reason Husky and TB are worth anything as casters is that they are loud and frantic... Something I miss dearly from SC:BW casters. We don't have enough play by play casters who know themselves well enough to stick with what they SHOULD be doing.
Most new casters gravitate towards their most successful examples, but the most successful casters are high masters/GM level players... ergo, they end up doing some kind of terribly thoughtless "analytical" style when the know nothing of the game. Even worse is when casters with serious game knowledge end up being forced into the role of play by play because of other "circumstances". :/
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EPT
