What is key to being a Good Caster - Page 5

On September 03 2012 19:35 Ero-Sennin wrote:
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.

On September 03 2012 19:48 beesinyoface wrote:

That has absolutely no relevance to watching SC2 matches.

On September 03 2012 19:56 Qikz wrote:
I think the main issue here is the community has completely unrealistic expectations of how much the casters should know. The only reason casters of football (soccer) for example seem to know more about the players than you probably do is they have a massive production team feeding that information.

The casting for SC2 isn't perfect, but the English casting of eSports never has been. You either have as Unstable rightly said casters who have full time jobs outside of casting and also those who cast full time for various tournaments. If they had enough time to be great at the game, they'd probably prefer to actually participate in the tournament themselves.

One thing I've noticed recently is especially among the English casters, there's never any excitement. It's always so stale to listen to and the commentators like Tasteless who are supposed to create excitement just don't. Husky, Day9 and Khaldor (as some examples) really manage to get people hyped for what's going on, even Moletrap does it. Some however make it seem like they're reading from an autoqueue.

The other issue I have is a lot of the time it really feels that casters are ignoring what the observer is showing them. Countless times at the GSL I've seen Legend? Observing really well and because neither of the two casters are looking at the preview screen that we see, they just plain ignore what's going on and talk about something else that's happening when the important thing is being shown by the obs.

On September 03 2012 19:56 Silencioseu wrote:
Was watching TI2 yesterday and TobiWan was pure gold of a caster, and that's what i want to see from sc2 casters, raising the hype, and having good analytical abilities.

On September 03 2012 17:13 Liquid`Ret wrote:
I have been watching starcraft and starcraft 2 for an extremely long time and I almost feel like the casting is getting worse and worse across the board. There are a few exceptions like Apollo, Rotterdam/MrBitter, Artosis (although he was much better a year ago) but with the other ones you can tell they almost never play the game anymore or never have played to begin with.

Starcraft is a beautiful game. There is a very large group of players who have great mechanics and practice a lot, so their builds are very polished and they can all beat each other on any given day. Still some players do better than others, there is a huge mental aspect to the game and slight changes in builds or playstyles that can make all the difference and this is what makes starcraft matches so fun to watch. .

Unfortunately, most casters are not very good at all at recognizing patterns or changes in the metagame, or builds. Infact there are so many occasions where casters who are newbies at the game, judge players and berate them for their mistakes, while they actually don't have a clue what is going on. Of course mistakes are much easier to point out than those little things players change in their play or the mind games that are going on at the top level. But these are the things that make starcraft a brilliant game to watch and follow. I feel like if we had professional casters who actually put the time and effort into delivering the best performance possible, the audience would come much closer to be able to experience starcraft in the same way that progamers experience it. With all the little nuances, mind games, and reasons why someone is doing what they're doing being analyzed and clearly explained.

When I listen to a cast and would be unable to see the screen, I would feel like sc2 is a random slugfest with 2 guys just throwing units at each other. Every game feels the same, and one guy wins at the end. This actually makes Starcraft much less appealing to new people or people who are actually looking for depth, not cheap entertainment. Of course this is exaggerated, but it's still sad to me that there is so little actual skill and knowledge amongst casters. I really hope that eventually (sooner the better) we can go to a model where there is one person doing play by plays and coloring the cast, and one progamer or ex-progamer (who still keeps up his skill and knowledge of all the recent trends) doing analytical casting. We saw some of this when Grubby was casting with apollo/kalearis and TLO/apollo at assembly (and these guys have barely practiced casting). The current casters are actually not helping Starcraft 2 grow in my opinion, they just live off their initial fame and because of how e-sports works twitter followers and popularity is more important than quality, substance. I believe Starcraft 2 is a good enough game to keep people interested, as long as the skill on the screen is translated and well delivered to the audience.

p.s sorry kinda off-topic, but felt like writing my opinion

On September 03 2012 17:35 Akhee wrote:
you shouldnt criticize too much if you are missing most of the things

wolf is probably the best player of the casters right now, if you say he doesnt know what hes talking then... you dont dont know what you talking, he has very cool insights and i would consider him just below artosis as analytical caster

just to add thats not the first time totalbiscuit helps a progamer, he helped BlinG too

On September 03 2012 17:13 Liquid`Ret wrote:
I have been watching starcraft and starcraft 2 for an extremely long time and I almost feel like the casting is getting worse and worse across the board. There are a few exceptions like Apollo, Rotterdam/MrBitter, Artosis (although he was much better a year ago) but with the other ones you can tell they almost never play the game anymore or never have played to begin with.

Starcraft is a beautiful game. There is a very large group of players who have great mechanics and practice a lot, so their builds are very polished and they can all beat each other on any given day. Still some players do better than others, there is a huge mental aspect to the game and slight changes in builds or playstyles that can make all the difference and this is what makes starcraft matches so fun to watch. .

Unfortunately, most casters are not very good at all at recognizing patterns or changes in the metagame, or builds. Infact there are so many occasions where casters who are newbies at the game, judge players and berate them for their mistakes, while they actually don't have a clue what is going on. Of course mistakes are much easier to point out than those little things players change in their play or the mind games that are going on at the top level. But these are the things that make starcraft a brilliant game to watch and follow. I feel like if we had professional casters who actually put the time and effort into delivering the best performance possible, the audience would come much closer to be able to experience starcraft in the same way that progamers experience it. With all the little nuances, mind games, and reasons why someone is doing what they're doing being analyzed and clearly explained.

When I listen to a cast and would be unable to see the screen, I would feel like sc2 is a random slugfest with 2 guys just throwing units at each other. Every game feels the same, and one guy wins at the end. This actually makes Starcraft much less appealing to new people or people who are actually looking for depth, not cheap entertainment. Of course this is exaggerated, but it's still sad to me that there is so little actual skill and knowledge amongst casters. I really hope that eventually (sooner the better) we can go to a model where there is one person doing play by plays and coloring the cast, and one progamer or ex-progamer (who still keeps up his skill and knowledge of all the recent trends) doing analytical casting. We saw some of this when Grubby was casting with apollo/kalearis and TLO/apollo at assembly (and these guys have barely practiced casting). The current casters are actually not helping Starcraft 2 grow in my opinion, they just live off their initial fame and because of how e-sports works twitter followers and popularity is more important than quality, substance. I believe Starcraft 2 is a good enough game to keep people interested, as long as the skill on the screen is translated and well delivered to the audience.

p.s sorry kinda off-topic, but felt like writing my opinion