Time for another guest column, kids! I’ve had some family obligations crop up recently, as well as a dire need to make some deadlines with my other writing, so Hate Speech is going intermittent for a while. I’ll still be posting articles from time to time, but, in addition to that, keep your eye out for these guest pieces as well as some other types of new content coming your way. –Hates
When I was asked to do this piece, the first thing I thought was Day9 or djWHEAT should be doing this. Then I realized that with fighting games there is such a different pacing that the tactics for casting have changed to fit the format. I still think you should look up everything those guys have to say about commentary, but as it's a different format you have to take it with a grain of salt. When it comes to FGC commentary I really feel like S-Kill, Skisonic and the UltraChen duo really know WTF they are talking about, I dunno if they have done anything similar to this... But if they did I would love to read it.
For those of you who don't already know me I'm Bibulus (@BrewtusBibulus) and I have been a part of the FGC for over a decade. The past couple of years I have done a lot of commentary for SCV at majors such as NEC, Winter Brawl, Final Round and most recently MLG Columbus, Fighting Arena and Prizefights. Hates asked me to fill in, so I chose this topic because lately people have been asking me how to level up their commentary games.
Personally I treat it like leveling up in a fighting game, I watch my videos to analyze my mistakes and I am always looking for new ways to improve. This can be pulling move names from other communities or just finding different ways to say the same thing for the 4th time today. The important things to leveling up is to take an honest look at what you've done and critique it. Listen to the haters before you dismiss them, because there might be truth to the hate... Oh and never let what you're doing go to your head.
Understanding Your Audience – You need to be aware of who you're dealing with, how else do you know what they want to hear?
There are 2 types of viewers... The informed and the uninformed. They will always be present and you need to keep a format which brings them both into the game. If you focus too much on one and not the other you will lose one side, so you need to find a happy medium. That happy medium resides at some points in point blank catering towards either side while at most times just dropping hints towards them both.
Examples: If I was casting SF4 and I explained that DP has invincibility frames earlier in the day, I could refer to the wakeup DP in all sorts of ways to highlight that property and draw in the informed and uninformed such as “DP invincibility right through your meaty” or mention it's unsafe “He risked his life with that DP” or just listen to UltraChen... Because they're great at stating things with a reminder of important move properties thrown in.
Just remember you don't always need to remind people of everything that a move brings to the table every time it comes out. You want to throw out a part of the puzzle and over time the uninformed viewer will see the full picture. Also notable that the uninformed viewer is often not going to pick up the DP properties from a 2 minute diatribe about what it can be used for, they will typically take one or 2 things from rants like that... So don't worry about telling them if you can drop those hints as the cast goes on.
Know Your Role: The common dynamic for commentary is 2 people with 1 focused on color and one focused on analysis. I will use this model for the sake of consistency, you can still apply most of this stuff to 3 person commentary if you wish if you just come to an understanding of who does what. There are various roles to be covered like:
Color (Yipes) – This is hard to put into words. The oohs and aahs you speak into the mic which help to add feeling to the match at hand. You can also consider shouting move names, player handles and anything which by itself would just sound strange, but in the context of the game at hand seem ever so relevant.
Analysis (The dude who knows who he's talking about) – This is where you go out of your way to explain the how's and why's of gameplay. In general you want to keep it short, because anything can and will happen in a fighting game. Don't be scared to cut yourself short to talk about what's going on right now or just happened, just try and bring it back during downtime (I actually write that stuff down to make sure I remember to mention it between games).
Play by Play (The Hockey Announcer) – If any of you have ever heard a hockey broadcast, you will notice that it's 90% play by play where the announcer is just helping the people to keep up with the action. This can be important in fighting games as well, but you have to do much more. If you get caught up with play by play you're going to end up saying move names the whole time. IMO the play by play should be used for really clutch moments after color and in general to be dropped once analysis should take place.
Host (The Man Behind the Curtains) – This doesn't have to be a third party, but the ones that let you know where you are in the event, bring you in and out of downtime and help you realize where this stream lies in the event itself. Those are host duties which can be picked up by either commentator and always require someone to feed them information, shout outs to the guys like Spooky and PotatoHead who keep the commentators in touch with the stuff they don't see from inside the box.
As you can see the roles are somewhat varied and often it's not defined who does what. With great commentary teams such as Tastosis and UltraChen they will typically shore off specific roles to one side of the desk, but there are still times where they find themselves in the opposite role. That comes back to the chemistry side of things,
Now that you have an idea of the basic format, here are some rules of thumb:
1 – Don't talk over the guy next to you. This is the #1 rule of “professional” commentary... and it doesn't really apply here if you take it too seriously. You don't want to talk over the guy next to you, but if there is analysis going on and something insane just happened, you can feel free to interject with color. Now if it was a game like Starcraft you can see things coming and have an idea of a timeline where you can wrap up what you were saying, but fighters are paced too differently and one counter hit with the right move can be a huge momentum swing with no warning. Which feeds right into the next point.
2 – Develop a repoire with the guy sitting next to you. There needs to be a feel between the commentators as to where one starts and the other begins, thus creating a back and forth dialogue with minimal downtime. You also need to have a sense of where to stop as the analysis guy and let the color dude fill in because insanity just hit the screen. It takes a bit of experience and chemistry, but it's why commentary duo's are duo's instead of just guys you can pair with anyone for the same results.
3 – Keep the energy flowing. This one is kinda hard to put into words... You need to try and keep the match exciting even when it looks like it could be a blowout. I will typically recant some of the players I have seen the loser make comebacks again or tease that I haven't seen said player make comebacks... Can this be the first? You don't have to salesman it to death, but make sure you remind the viewers that it's not a foregone conclusion. The important thing is the climax of the match should be the end, don't finish early... Also what she said :)
4 – Tell the story... djWHEAT mentions this one a lot and I'm in there with him. You need to use time between games to recant the history of the players involved. The more you can bring the interest of the viewer towards the players themselves and not the game, the more interested they become. Talk about the trash talk that went on last night, the way they played against each other the last time and the history the players have in the scene. Not all at once, but when you cut up all that info into smaller chunks you now have relevant background for the next 5 matches that either player plays. Naturally lean towards the history that puts them both in the spotlight if available.
5 – Downtime is to be avoided at all costs and if it's unavoidable, make it interesting. This covers multiple points, I'm going to start with mid match downtime, ideally someone will be talking for the whole match barring small interrupts. You want to work with the guy sitting next to you where when one stops talking the other picks it up. Easily done, just keep some things to talk about on tap and don't get attached to them. Like if you are really impressed by his use of move x or tactic y and your partner kicks it back to you. Bring it up if there isn't something more pressing to chat about, but if there is something else to talk about then keep it on tap for next time.
Downtime from delays... This can be anything from a console issue to players not found to the guy coming out of losers is throwing up in the bathroom. Whatever the cause, you're in front of the mic and there are no games to watch. Talk about the event, your favorite matches of the day, what you're looking forward to later and the matches coming up. Try and build up the story for the rest of the event, because if you don't keep viewers interested in what comes next they are going to go watch something else out of boredom. Keep them entertained and try to raise interest in the rest of what will happen if they stay tuned.
6 – Be original! As much as I think you should take from other people what works for you and build on it. You need to add originality or turn into carlos mencia, who just ripped off jokes from other comedians... You can steal lines from other guys, but make sure you aren't juts a parrot regurgitating the words of others. If you are then you're always going to be a substitute for the real thing. What you should do is take your own way of saying things and add in color from other people's bag of tricks. Change it, twist it, pervert it or whatever you want to do with it and above all else make the moment yours!
Naturally there is more to is than this, lots more... I just didn't want to go on for ages. I could probably write more about most of the bullet points and even some of the bullet points I got rid of for the sake of brevity. That's about it for now I hope you guys had half the fun reading this as I had writing it. If you have any questions, hit me up on twitter @BrewtusBibulus or check out my stream, because I answer questions from the chat all the time... and remember the first step to streaming is to get it on the air. Just start it, fuck fancy production bullshit and just make it work. You don't need instant replays to make an interesting stream... If you don't believe me check this out because that production quality is shit, but 450+ shows later he's one of the most prominent personalities in StarCraft 2. If you don't start you never get anywhere, so nike it up and just do it!
When I was asked to do this piece, the first thing I thought was Day9 or djWHEAT should be doing this. Then I realized that with fighting games there is such a different pacing that the tactics for casting have changed to fit the format. I still think you should look up everything those guys have to say about commentary, but as it's a different format you have to take it with a grain of salt. When it comes to FGC commentary I really feel like S-Kill, Skisonic and the UltraChen duo really know WTF they are talking about, I dunno if they have done anything similar to this... But if they did I would love to read it.
For those of you who don't already know me I'm Bibulus (@BrewtusBibulus) and I have been a part of the FGC for over a decade. The past couple of years I have done a lot of commentary for SCV at majors such as NEC, Winter Brawl, Final Round and most recently MLG Columbus, Fighting Arena and Prizefights. Hates asked me to fill in, so I chose this topic because lately people have been asking me how to level up their commentary games.
Personally I treat it like leveling up in a fighting game, I watch my videos to analyze my mistakes and I am always looking for new ways to improve. This can be pulling move names from other communities or just finding different ways to say the same thing for the 4th time today. The important things to leveling up is to take an honest look at what you've done and critique it. Listen to the haters before you dismiss them, because there might be truth to the hate... Oh and never let what you're doing go to your head.
Understanding Your Audience – You need to be aware of who you're dealing with, how else do you know what they want to hear?
What is this dude looking to see?
There are 2 types of viewers... The informed and the uninformed. They will always be present and you need to keep a format which brings them both into the game. If you focus too much on one and not the other you will lose one side, so you need to find a happy medium. That happy medium resides at some points in point blank catering towards either side while at most times just dropping hints towards them both.
Examples: If I was casting SF4 and I explained that DP has invincibility frames earlier in the day, I could refer to the wakeup DP in all sorts of ways to highlight that property and draw in the informed and uninformed such as “DP invincibility right through your meaty” or mention it's unsafe “He risked his life with that DP” or just listen to UltraChen... Because they're great at stating things with a reminder of important move properties thrown in.
Just remember you don't always need to remind people of everything that a move brings to the table every time it comes out. You want to throw out a part of the puzzle and over time the uninformed viewer will see the full picture. Also notable that the uninformed viewer is often not going to pick up the DP properties from a 2 minute diatribe about what it can be used for, they will typically take one or 2 things from rants like that... So don't worry about telling them if you can drop those hints as the cast goes on.
Know Your Role: The common dynamic for commentary is 2 people with 1 focused on color and one focused on analysis. I will use this model for the sake of consistency, you can still apply most of this stuff to 3 person commentary if you wish if you just come to an understanding of who does what. There are various roles to be covered like:
Color (Yipes) – This is hard to put into words. The oohs and aahs you speak into the mic which help to add feeling to the match at hand. You can also consider shouting move names, player handles and anything which by itself would just sound strange, but in the context of the game at hand seem ever so relevant.
Analysis (The dude who knows who he's talking about) – This is where you go out of your way to explain the how's and why's of gameplay. In general you want to keep it short, because anything can and will happen in a fighting game. Don't be scared to cut yourself short to talk about what's going on right now or just happened, just try and bring it back during downtime (I actually write that stuff down to make sure I remember to mention it between games).
Play by Play (The Hockey Announcer) – If any of you have ever heard a hockey broadcast, you will notice that it's 90% play by play where the announcer is just helping the people to keep up with the action. This can be important in fighting games as well, but you have to do much more. If you get caught up with play by play you're going to end up saying move names the whole time. IMO the play by play should be used for really clutch moments after color and in general to be dropped once analysis should take place.
Host (The Man Behind the Curtains) – This doesn't have to be a third party, but the ones that let you know where you are in the event, bring you in and out of downtime and help you realize where this stream lies in the event itself. Those are host duties which can be picked up by either commentator and always require someone to feed them information, shout outs to the guys like Spooky and PotatoHead who keep the commentators in touch with the stuff they don't see from inside the box.
As you can see the roles are somewhat varied and often it's not defined who does what. With great commentary teams such as Tastosis and UltraChen they will typically shore off specific roles to one side of the desk, but there are still times where they find themselves in the opposite role. That comes back to the chemistry side of things,
Now that you have an idea of the basic format, here are some rules of thumb:
1 – Don't talk over the guy next to you. This is the #1 rule of “professional” commentary... and it doesn't really apply here if you take it too seriously. You don't want to talk over the guy next to you, but if there is analysis going on and something insane just happened, you can feel free to interject with color. Now if it was a game like Starcraft you can see things coming and have an idea of a timeline where you can wrap up what you were saying, but fighters are paced too differently and one counter hit with the right move can be a huge momentum swing with no warning. Which feeds right into the next point.
2 – Develop a repoire with the guy sitting next to you. There needs to be a feel between the commentators as to where one starts and the other begins, thus creating a back and forth dialogue with minimal downtime. You also need to have a sense of where to stop as the analysis guy and let the color dude fill in because insanity just hit the screen. It takes a bit of experience and chemistry, but it's why commentary duo's are duo's instead of just guys you can pair with anyone for the same results.
3 – Keep the energy flowing. This one is kinda hard to put into words... You need to try and keep the match exciting even when it looks like it could be a blowout. I will typically recant some of the players I have seen the loser make comebacks again or tease that I haven't seen said player make comebacks... Can this be the first? You don't have to salesman it to death, but make sure you remind the viewers that it's not a foregone conclusion. The important thing is the climax of the match should be the end, don't finish early... Also what she said :)
4 – Tell the story... djWHEAT mentions this one a lot and I'm in there with him. You need to use time between games to recant the history of the players involved. The more you can bring the interest of the viewer towards the players themselves and not the game, the more interested they become. Talk about the trash talk that went on last night, the way they played against each other the last time and the history the players have in the scene. Not all at once, but when you cut up all that info into smaller chunks you now have relevant background for the next 5 matches that either player plays. Naturally lean towards the history that puts them both in the spotlight if available.
5 – Downtime is to be avoided at all costs and if it's unavoidable, make it interesting. This covers multiple points, I'm going to start with mid match downtime, ideally someone will be talking for the whole match barring small interrupts. You want to work with the guy sitting next to you where when one stops talking the other picks it up. Easily done, just keep some things to talk about on tap and don't get attached to them. Like if you are really impressed by his use of move x or tactic y and your partner kicks it back to you. Bring it up if there isn't something more pressing to chat about, but if there is something else to talk about then keep it on tap for next time.
Downtime from delays... This can be anything from a console issue to players not found to the guy coming out of losers is throwing up in the bathroom. Whatever the cause, you're in front of the mic and there are no games to watch. Talk about the event, your favorite matches of the day, what you're looking forward to later and the matches coming up. Try and build up the story for the rest of the event, because if you don't keep viewers interested in what comes next they are going to go watch something else out of boredom. Keep them entertained and try to raise interest in the rest of what will happen if they stay tuned.
6 – Be original! As much as I think you should take from other people what works for you and build on it. You need to add originality or turn into carlos mencia, who just ripped off jokes from other comedians... You can steal lines from other guys, but make sure you aren't juts a parrot regurgitating the words of others. If you are then you're always going to be a substitute for the real thing. What you should do is take your own way of saying things and add in color from other people's bag of tricks. Change it, twist it, pervert it or whatever you want to do with it and above all else make the moment yours!
Naturally there is more to is than this, lots more... I just didn't want to go on for ages. I could probably write more about most of the bullet points and even some of the bullet points I got rid of for the sake of brevity. That's about it for now I hope you guys had half the fun reading this as I had writing it. If you have any questions, hit me up on twitter @BrewtusBibulus or check out my stream, because I answer questions from the chat all the time... and remember the first step to streaming is to get it on the air. Just start it, fuck fancy production bullshit and just make it work. You don't need instant replays to make an interesting stream... If you don't believe me check this out because that production quality is shit, but 450+ shows later he's one of the most prominent personalities in StarCraft 2. If you don't start you never get anywhere, so nike it up and just do it!
