I think it's great that we have people passionate enough about the game that they are wiling to sacrifice their time and energy and put themselves out there to cast these matches. If you think that they could do better, that's fine, but simply declaring someone inept at casting because of a few mistakes is ridiculous, especially considering it isn't easy to talk for 50 minutes plus with hundreds/thousands (I wish) watching. The type of person (generally) that plays video games at any sort of high level is not really an out-going loud person, so to find people that first of all play said game, and enjoy it so much that they want to talk about it, AND have a nice voice and the enthusiasm to talk for that long, is very difficult.

The TF2 competitive scene is not all that large, so I see no reason why people are so upset when Getawhale casts, I personally enjoy his very much and Gecks too. They have great energy that keeps me into the game and with someone like Marxist, I get tactical knowledge about what is going on. All in all, people here and on reddit seem to think that they can talk shit about casters and their performance, yet they have no appreciation of what it takes to step up and take that responsibility. It's easy to type something; however, if you put any one of them in the same seat with the mic on them for a whole match, almost all will deliver a far worse cast than these guys can.

It's sad to see people trashing the few dedicated members of the community who cast invite matches.
Our community has to grow up, you can't be a picky brat with who talks about the video game you play when the scene is as small as ours. These guys pay money out of pocket to attend LANs and still comments on youtube berate them even after hours of non-stop casting and working.

Consider what you say to these guys who do great work for our small scene and don't try and get rid of the few good casters we have left.

Keep up the good work and only take the actually useful criticism from viewers, because there are many like me who don't see a problem with how you do it and didn't see a reason to speak up, until now.

I think what I'm gonna say has already been said but one of the things i feel you don't do enough is put a lot of emotion into some of the big plays or some of the nice stuff that can happen. An example that i can think of would be the gullywash matches you have casted. I know that gullywash can be a boring map to cast because of all the bus stops it has but when great plays have happened you sometimes come across as a dead fish and don't sound really invested it it.

Tl;DR Please just put more emotion into the huge stuff and the cast and make us the viewers want to be excited as fuck with you to be there.

Edit:I'm blind as fuck.

*nods* Thank you. Kaidus raised that one and I addressed it in post 31. It's definitely big.

Just wanted to note once more, if anyone has specific advice, I'd really appreciate it by either PM or Steam. Thanks to those who have come to me already, and everyone who posted seriously in this thread.

You've gotten a lot better. I know some of our early casts I definitely got the feeling that you were overwhelmed somewhat or perhaps a bit nervous.

The main thing for me is rapport between casters - that's generally all that exists within 2-3 man casting. Everybody does their own thing - if for example, you watch a lot of NBA games, most teams' local broadcast crew consists of 2 people - granted they are listed as "play by play" and "analysis" but those roles are very rarely ever used in practice - the most important thing is the rapport between the casters. This is also the case for things we've done together - as we've gotten used to each other it's gone a lot better from that first process game when neither of us had any idea what to expect from the other person lol. The same goes for e-sports, I've never really played Sc2, and had given up Brood War long before taste-tosis were a thing, but I can listen to them because they've got a good relationship for the most part and can make for interesting viewing as a result.

I personally like keeping catch-phrases alive, for note, Cbear is gone, but something of his time as the caster du jure should be preserved - along with several others. It's good for casters to leave their own mark on the game so to speak, but it's good to keep certain parts of the vernacular alive.

Also the best policy is to ignore all criticism until somebody pays you to do this - that's my approach anyways.

Pay closer attention to detail on the killfeed - look at what the frags are on instead of just the number of frags. eg hyping up the team getting 3 picks on the other when one of those picks is the roamer who dropped the medic.

There's so much I want to say but a lot of it just comes down to having very little experience of actually playing 6v6. It's not a criticism of your casting skills but your understanding of the game, for instance being surprised by and saying its creative to see a medic being body blocked in an uber exchange when it's a fairly common occurrence.

I also don't think it's fair to hide behind being a play-by-play caster, you're casting at the top level of the game with minimal knowledge of how the game is played. I appreciate the time you put in and your enthusiasm and willingness to accept criticism to improve as a caster but like I said, your actual casting skills are good but your understanding is what most people don't like about your casting.

Be British

fuck that.
I only tuned in for this morning, but it seemed like yuki wasn't really meshing well with your casting style.

Yuki is Australian.

For what it's worth, I thought you were a lot better today than I remember at GXL or previous big LANs. I think that with more time and practice, you will become even better.

become maexist

From my perspective (someone that has somewhat called you out in the past I'm sure you recall) this post is entirely what I dislike when you cast. Your voice, charisma, ability to hype, play by play etc are all absolutely fine and some are even great. The issue for me (with any caster) is when a caster like yourself tries to say things that are on the edge of analysis.

Gecks seems to have grasped this really well and you never really hear him trying to analyse a situation. He always keeps it to the very basics in that regard and then immediately throws it to his co-caster who does the proper detailed analysis. It works best this way because no one wants to watch a stream and hear a guy get things completely wrong, act surprised when seeing very common things as if they are outstanding or unique plays (not hype, but just generally seeming clueless) or anything like that.

Stick to what you are good at and try to keep that stuff to a minimum and I for one will enjoy your casts. I had the same problem with Pledge when he used to cast forever ago. I considered him a pretty good play by play but every time he started to try to analyse anything I cringed and it kinda ruined the experience.

Good luck buddy.

Yuki is great - he's a top level soldier and has fantastic insight. But I definitely have a ton of chemistry with Marxist, and cast all my matches this season with him, whereas Yuki and I have only done one and it was a long time ago. I was definitely missing Marxist somewhat. But I do understand they needed him for the second half of the day and tomorrow.

I've gotta nitpick you on this. The last thing I want to be is defensive or whatnot - I've been open and very receptive to feedback and will continue to be. But as soon as I read this I knew I disagreed with your memory of it. This is the moment you're referring to. Now I'm sure I could have said "That's a common occurrence" but I don't think that fits a high energy cast. Instead I called out hey, I liked that, that was neat. Maybe I'm totally crazy but I don't see any fault in that.

Now I'm having the discussion with konr and I will concede that sometimes the words may come out in such a way that sounds dumb, or come out in a dumb way. I have two specific examples, including this one, where the word choice made it sound like I amaaaazed by some play which I actually know is common. That's fair; my words are all I have.

This is an old bumped thread; I would suggest maybe glancing at the earlier posts in here. In them I addressed specifically the situation I'm in and why playing competitive probably isn't going to happen right now in my life as a nearly 30-year-old guy. I've played in the past, but the amount of effort required to play in Open or whatever isn't worth it for me to improve this hobby that I do. That's not a refusal to improve - that's just real. If any of you guys stick around ESEA at 29, let me know, but that's a huge minority and I'm not in it. I'm not getting paid to cast, and I certainly won't make money playing TF2.

I'm not trying to hide behind anything. I have demonstrated a desire to keep learning. If I wanted to hide behind being a play by play only guy, I probably wouldn't have made a thread looking for help.

I am planning to watch ALL VOD's of this LAN - not just my own, but the others as well. I am a perfectionist and am never truly happy with what I've done, as hard as I try and prepare. I am hopeful that after this LAN I will keep moving up. But I am happy to get more feedback - thanks for bumping this thread.

EDIT: I am going to be watching LAN VOD's from gecks, and cbear+whoever from past seasons and paying close attention to the amount and level of analysis to see what I can pick up.

That's fair enough, I don't expect you to take up playing competitive tf2 if that's something that your schedule doesn't allow or if you're not that interested in playing. Though you could maybe watch high level players' streams when they scrim and develop some insight that way since I see you around on a few streams.

When I mentioned 'hiding behind being a play by play', I didn't mean to say that that was an excuse that you're making yourself but rather what a few people have said earlier in this thread, to the extent that I felt they were saying that a caster doesn't need to have a good understanding of the game if they just do play by plays. Which I suppose is theoretically possible but almost never happens and some amount of analysis is often inevtiable

Also the link to the example I mentioned just redirects to this thread, regardless it's very possible that I remembered your exact words incorrectly but I just got a vibe along those lines.

My bad - I fixed the link.

I certainly do have a desire to improve my knowledge of the game. That's a big one on the list and a constant one.

I agree with what Konr said, especially the comparison to Pledge. What I sometimes feel is lacking is tempo. You'll talk about something that happend on mid while teams are gearing up to push last.

I also find that when you are describing or analysing something you get to caught up in formulating the words that you miss things that are happening. Just now during esea lan you missed a medic drop, due to this. You should imo give more room to your co-caster as well and not just for the in-depth analysis part.

These are fair points. I need to let go of points that I want to make after a certain period of time passes.

3

I probably should have been more clear, those were two separate points.

You do a great job getawhale... as someone mentioned, you have often times some of the smoothest transitional statements or closing statements when casting.

I guess the one thing that annoys me a little (but it happens with all casters), is they will often talk about something happening from a random players POV, but we the viewers are watching a completely different camera angle and never get to see it.

Keep up the good work getawhale and other casters! :)

Strangely that's what i like about your style :D

TF2 is so fast paced that keeping up with all the action as a caster is difficult, and sometimes not even needed as the viewers can still view what's happening and understand it despite you talking about something else. And then you bring a whole lot of intel on top of the game instead of just repeating what has happened =)

Ignoring any problems with your casting during the actual games, in my opinion you're one of the best cast hosts. Your introductions/closings/etc are always spot on.

Sorry to bump this with no real feedback but

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYWgaKaSgok

this is one of your casts from S15, I think you've really improved since then! Keep it up!

Gosh - what a time warp. This was either my first or second TFTV cast. It's hard to watch - only just past the first mid and I'm already embarrassed.

Thank you for this - it's nice to be able to look back and see how much I've improved. Thanks for the kind words as well.

someone please tell me im delusional, but doesnt marxist sound exactly like Jello Biafra from the Dead Kennedys????
https://youtu.be/ksKWonVOAgE?t=31s