SC2SEA.com - Starcraft 2 SEA eSports Community Site

Clear, easy to understand voice and accent is vital unless you're female.


Then theres 2 extremes to go, and you need to know WHERE you sit on this and use it to your advantage.

You can go for a High Analytical cast, with high game knowledge and insight into builds
OR
High entertainment, having a very good voice, getting excited about battles, simply making the game more entertaining.

Obviously you can be a bit of both, but if you're in Plat and you're trying to be Analytical, you're doomed to fail. You can't choose to be any specific type of caster, as it sounds forced, you quite naturally ARE a certain type.

Realize you're a caster to entertain. Getting viewers isnt hard (TL Events gain you ALOT of viewers) but keeping them watching is what you need to work on. Watching people with TL events get 150-200 viewers over a 3-4 hour cast might seem impressive, but its actually pretty bad considering how many hits you actually get.

Cooperating with your co-caster.

Transition between talks and discussions and linking the 2 casters together through questions e.g. " So we see a tech lab on the starport, do you think banshees are coming out?"
Make it slightly humerous and cooperate naturally as a team

Seriously, when some casters dual cast, its like so one sided. One of them will just keep going on and on and on and will forget that he/she is co-casting!
I remember during the sc2seaSL finals, there were 3 casters, kelly, phoenix and glade.
Yes they were highly critical and gave a good humerous yet constructive cast, but i felt when one of them talked, they seemed to go on forever unless 1 interrupts the other or the game ends :P

just a thought, i have no intention of offending anyone, im just giving my opinion

Yeah, I agree with both of the above posts. If you are co-casting, it is important that you work as a team, and one could probably be the stronger analytical type of caster, while the other could be more humorous and entertaining. It is important that you find a medium between these two, and don't stress the point too much as the cast can easily become boring for viewers. I too am looking at getting into casting and getting a bit better, so I'll keep this page up to see everyone's opinions

Paroxysm.

Personally i feel like casting comes naturally, i either like them or i don't once i hear them. (Your voice, hype, accent, etc). If your live streaming casting, i enjoy it when the caster checks the comments on a different screen or once in a while tabs out to interact with the viewers, 1tz g00d.

I feel myself that working with the audience is a great way to keep people coming back,
if you work with your viewers, ask them stuff get them to ask you stuff its fun for everyone and it isnt just they are watching, they are actually apart of it.

I know when I cast I ask my viewers to talk in chat, and last week I was getting them to write jokes for me to read out.

Its fun, and again, keeps the audience's attention, which is the main thing you want

Don't take it too seriously, it's just for fun after all =)

I think it is important for a caster to be constantly on top of what's going on in games. I get very frustrated when I see (or rather, hear) casters miss obvious activity.
Also, with everyone watching the likes of Husky, HD, Psy, there's a tendency to want to imitate, and one thing they always do is talk abit about themselves or about some general event before getting into the game. The thing is, they are famous, so perhaps people want to listen to that. For normal casters, they should just focus on the game and not get carried away talking about random things in-game, when obvious things are going on and they miss it.

One simple example is at the start of the game, where they assume nothing is going on, so they ramble on about something, and they miss it when a Zerg 13 hatches and in their commentary they go "so the zerg is opening standard, a 15 hatch..' or stuff like that. This may be a small matter to others but it annoys me when they miss and get the BO wrong, foreshadowing a different development of the game that what will actually occur.

You can try by talking naturally and be at your normal tone and voice. Also try to throw out something funny about the players or about the poor scout scv at first.. Also dont miss the drops and clashes.. goodluck!

Normally I gloss over threads like this, but I am in the middle of my own post about the semi same subject.

NOTE: If you disagree with me on this thats fine you have your right to an opinion, but i have spent the last 6 months doing more work than anyone in SEA in regards to commentating sc2 and this is what i have learned to be true, call me up myself all you want i dont care.

Before going into specifics of what make casters good i want to touch on a few points

Lesson 1) It is ALOT harder to be a good caster than you think
It really is a hard thing to do, especially by yourself without the backup of a studio EG tastosis with dedicated observer/producer in their ear incase they miss something. Not only do you need to understand the matchups, and talk during dull moments you also need to keep the camera focussed on important areas in the middle of the screen, while ALSO constantly scanning the map for drops etc, while cycling the production tabs and workers on top of all of this you are having a conversation with someone about whats going on aswell. too many people writeoff casters from the start because they might miss something every now and then or they get a detail wrong. lighten up, i would love to see YOU do it better.

Lesson 2) YOU CAN NOT PLEASE EVERYONE DONT EVEN TRY.
You just cant, do you best to improve and learn from mistakes and dont take it too harshly when you get bad feedback.

HOWEVER
DO NOT. IGNORE LEGITIMATE COMPLAINTS. things like accent, pronounciation, strategy errors etc. look at them understand you need to improve and do your best to do it.
A perfect example of this is a caster who shall remain nameless. refused to take any feedback from a certain source, and just called them trolls and ignorant fools and dismissed their issues out of hand. DO NOT DO THIS. yes majority of it might be trolling, but man up and read through it anyway. because there are usually diamonds scattered throughout the crap there. that are very useful

Lesson 3) always try to improve your STRONG points not your weak ones. find a co caster who blends well and you can work off each other.
Better to cut your losses on your weak areas and focus on your strengths.

Lesson 4) expect harsh critisism and mass berating regardless of how good you are.
Beleive it or not, every caster has haters, day9 has his haters tastosis have theirs, they are just the silent subset due to the rabbid fanfare that involves. So understand this and just move on.

Lesson 5) Get yourself a good streaming rig and internet connection
As crappy as it is, 720p is the standard for any real stream these days, you will find yourself not able to keep anything but the fans you already have without it.


Now this next part is more a word to the community about casting.

STOP BEING SO ******* PICKY, NOBODY IS PERFECT
I say this because there is only so long someone can put up with abuse. 99.9% of casters do this for fun, for a hobby, why would they continue to do it if they constantly get berrated about it?

Understand that what you want out of a stream is not the same as the person sitting next to you or even in your group of mates. I can tell you from experience FXOpen understands this and does its best to accomodate all, EG: different languages types of casting etc etc.

and the question you need to ask yourself is this "what happens if/when the casters who are here now give up" The casters we have atm around the place are the hardcore fans of star craft they are paving the way for SC2 commentary, they are the most devoted to their craft. once they are gone the quality goes downhill FAST. and what will this do? it will bring down viewer counts, which brings down sponsorship money which KILLS esports.

So finally onto what it takes to be a caster!

You should get into casting if you are like this:
- Love starcraft
- Have a passion for your craft
- are dedicated to improving under the most harsh circumstances
- have natural talent to begin with
- be prepared to spend thousands of $$ on a streaming setup

You should avoid casting if you are like this:
- cant afford internet or a pc capable of 720p streaming (it sucks but its true, 90% of ivewers will tune out for less than that quality stream)
- just want to get your name out there
- are in it for the fame
- arent willing to spend 10+ hours per week practicing while not streaming/

So not for the nit picky parts

First and foremost. 50% about being a caster is NATURAL TALENT. you need to be able to communicate your sentences and thoughts efficiently and clearly. the following is not beneficial and without putting it harshly, do not waste your time if you have these.
- Strong accents outside of english (unless you cast in a different language)
- Pronunciation that is not spot on
- Cannot clearly form sentences

These 3 things are instant downpoints that you cannot come back from.

The second most important thing is your co-caster and your defined roles. casting works best with 1 analytical caster and 1 play by play.

Analytical casters responsibilities:
- Have a high game knowledge and practices regularly
- Can recognize niche builds to explain them in detail, their pro's cons etc
- Should know the style of the players who are playing at that time.

Play by play casters responsibilities:
- Have a well tuned ability to express things very fast
- be able to make the viewer feel excited
- the ability to quickly disect whats happening on the screen and describe it

Both casters must be able to:
- Be able to play off each other in conversation
- Know the subtleties of each others thought patters so there is no overlap
- be able to have idle conversation during downtime.



Now something that every caster, and viewer has to keep in mind is there are 3 main (but not limited to) types of viewers. they are

The Pro:
The pro is a grandmasters or high masters player who most likely understands the game as well as the analytical caster if not more so. this unfortunately brings in situations where they disagree with the casters causing friction, they also don't like the fact that they are not learning anything or just hearing things they already know on the stream. These players will most likely mute you, and put music on. this is why OBSERVING SKILL IS PARAMOUNT. to keep this type of viewer, nothing you do play by play or analytical wise will likely make them like you.

The Learner
This kind of viewer, LOVES starcraft wants to be better, watches pro matches to get an idea on how they think, the analytical caster plays into their wanted attention, explaining builds will make this player happy, however there are alot of this demographic that you cannot please. EG TERRAN OVERPOWERED STFU etc.. just ignore these and do your best. they only want to watch the most high level matches.


The Kiddy/ The casual (cant think of a better name, they like big explosions and loud noises)
This Viewer is by far the easiest to satisfy, this is where the play by play caster comes in. it is his job to keep the attention of these players and make them feel apart of the cast. Doesnt really matter what type of game this is. it will keep them entertained regardless! macro games make these types of viewers tune out, but keeps the learners and pros in the game.

All in all, the biggest misconception alot of people think about casting is this.

It is not the casters responsibility to GET viewers.
- the tournament
- the players
- TL featured

will get you the viewers. it is KEEPING them that is what you need to work for. dont worry about how many you have at once on the stream. worry about how long they are tuned in for. a good target (i think anyway) for a tournament is 1 hour. thats 3 games. most people will tune out after that long and take a break etc. any less than that and you arent keeping thier attention. things like the casting quality, downtime between games etc all work against this so your production comes into play aswell.

This thread generated some truly excellent replies. Wondering how i can spotlight it and move this to articles.. bah silly forum limitations

MuHAHAAH! I'm a mastermind and I developed a sick thread.

I must say, Unstable's post and everyone's post has been REALLY inspiring. I've found like 1000000 problems and things that I need to work on in the future as a Caster. As Nirvana said, this thread has generated something huge, it's benefited me and benefited a lot others!

Yes Nirvana if you could put this as some cool thread it'll be super! But I think unstable said that he's been working on something similar to this, so we can also just wait for him to put it up as an article!

Thanks for all the great feedback/advice!

Learned a lot from this.

Really liked unstables post.
Pretty awesome to know that everybody is not not loved by everybody and not just me.

Hey I've got a question for those casters/streamers out there:

"- be prepared to spend thousands of $$ on a streaming setup"

What ARE the specific hardware requirements for a computer to do streaming/casting?

At the moment my PC is dying and so I'm getting a guy to build a new one for me, so I will need to know what to tell him. Previously when I tried recording some commentaries of my own, the audio/video always go out of sync, and I'm not quite sure whether it's a hardware/software issue. I haven't bought Fraps yet, but that's because I haven't confirmed if it's a hardware issue.

I'm not sure if I'm capable of going into streaming/casting games like the SC2SEA casters yet, but I just love talking about games and teaching my friends stuff, so I want to be able to at least record my own commentaries (for them). Could any experienced caster help me with that? If there already is a thread in the forums regarding this I apologize in advance, would love the link

(would appreciate specific replies instead of general suggestions like 'a good graphics card/sound card' which ANYONE can say
Also, just give feedback regarding PC stuff, I can't really change my network situation though I think my connection is decent enough)

Is this a requirement?

I just get on skype and call Benji bad, and kinda run with it from there.

I think there are a few opportunities to get creative for casters outside of the usual analytical (discuss build orders, cookie cutter decisionmaking) or entertainment (good voice, fast action calling, good vocab, charisma) archetypes. I am yet to see any good discussion of mind games or the mental position of players, for example. If you can get into the heads of players to a somewhat accurate (or at least entertaining) level and discuss their state of mind or any mind games going on it would be cool. Sometimes this can be more interesting than uneducated predictions about tactics or strategies :P

Also there are no true 'play by play' casters (like TobiWan when he has cast SC2 on occasion) that is closer to sport - note that some casters like TB do 'general' play commentary and try to make it exciting but if you are fast enough I'd like to hear a good play-by-play commentator that goes in to more detail, such as being fast enough to call battles within battles, unit energy count or health, etc. It's a bit hard to explain so I'll use an example. TB might say "and here the vikings engage the colossus and one goes down, two goes down, the protoss firepower will suffer greatly for this but the terran is also losing too many vikings! Storms going off this is bad for the terran!" when it could be something like "X vikings attacking the foremost colossi here taking return fire from blink stalkers, if those stalkers pick off X vikings they won't be able to one shot, the ghosts here have enough energy to emp all the HT here will they pull it off, another colossus goes down, two storms go off but a third is denied and that's the last one that will be denied as the last ghost is taken out by a combination of EMP and blink stalkers.". Not that one style is better (if I successfully illustrated the difference between the types :P) but it's just something I see lacking in casters. I guess you could call it radio style, where people don't have the luxury of seeing the play for themselves :P

There are not enough humour casters, they can really make a real niche but of course it's not something you can train for - if you're not funny your casting is going to sound terrible :P

I am yet to hear stats used well, and this seems to have actually declined since BW commentary days. Having a sheet with a lot of detailed, interesting stats about the players or tournament or map is really awesome. If you want to include something like this, don't just reel them off in the downtime before or between games as people tune out with all those numbers. Add them in one or two at a time during the cast, preferably after some kind of cue that makes them relevant (such as when someone takes a gold you could talk about what that increase means, how it has been used previously by that player, exactly how far ahead will he be, how long will that economical advantage take to kick in etc.). Aside from knowing when to inject some stats or stories, having interesting stats outside of the usual win % and matchup stats for the map would be really awesome. Stats like current win streaks/form, head-to-head records, recent popular builds used by that player, significant matches in this same matchup with those players involved, favoured play style on this map, historical unit compositions, historical expansion timing, etc.

So overall I think while imitating successful casters can be a great way to learn, I'd like to see some variety thrown in! If you think you have found your own style or niche keep at it and don't be discouraged by haters who talk shit because you're not a carbon copy of tastosis or day9.