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Commentators at EVO 2013

N1c2k3

N1c2k3

Smash Lord
Joined
Jan 21, 2005
Messages
1,193
Location
Lynchburg, Va
Wife sounds like a wife.
Lovage talks to fast/unlcear like the rest of SoCal.
Hugz doesn't give enough game insights.
Scar gets too giddy/kiddy.

IMO: Wobbles, Prog/D1 (not both at the same time), possibly Waffles, and definitely someone from outside the community who's a known good commentator and appreciates Melee (UltraDavid/James Chen). We have to really think about what's going to be best for the community in the long run, not who our personal fav's are.
 
Juggleguy

Juggleguy

Smash Grimer
Joined
Aug 16, 2005
Messages
9,354
Location
Ann Arbor, MI
I think the addition of James Chen is going to be very beneficial to the casual Melee viewers watching EVO. He's obviously a seasoned veteran with FGC commentary and he knows enough about Melee to hold his own (but not so much that he'd disparage a top player for any particular gameplay decision). I think the commentary at EVO should resemble almost a conversation type of tone, with a huge emphasis on the context of the top players competing and the Smash community's place at the tournament.

One of the best examples of this can be found with Wife and Pakman's commentary from Zhu vs Darkrain at Pound 4:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1AHY4wxJtc

In the span of just three minutes, Wife does the following:
1. gives viewers an idea of the stakes involved (Pound 4 biggest tourney ever, high-profile losers bracket matchup)
2. provides the bracket context of the match (Zhu lost to Hbox in winners, Darkrain lost to Tope in winners)
3. creates a synopsis of the players competing (Zhu is a slick, technical Falco; Darkrain is an all-American Captain Falcon hero)
4. elaborates further on the players competing (Zhu is a more modern player; Darkrain is old school but still keeps up with new stuff)
5. discusses the pace of the current metagame (one mistake such as a powershield or missed edgeguard leads to a lost stock)

Most importantly, every time Pakman brought up a point, Wife immediately addressed it directly and with the knowledge of a Melee community veteran. Commentators don't do that enough these days from what I've seen -- I can think of several 2013 examples where commentators failed to do any of the above for an entire set. I don't want to hear any more "what stage do you think he banned?" or "what do you think this matchup ratio is like?" because those have been done to death. Instead, let's give the viewers some tournament and community context at EVO.
 
Doomolish

Doomolish

Smash Journeyman
Joined
Jun 30, 2010
Messages
253
Location
Celaya, Guanjuato, Mexico
Juggleguy said:
I think the addition of James Chen is going to be very beneficial to the casual Melee viewers watching EVO. He's obviously a seasoned veteran with FGC commentary and he knows enough about Melee to hold his own (but not so much that he'd disparage a top player for any particular gameplay decision). I think the commentary at EVO should resemble almost a conversation type of tone, with a huge emphasis on the context of the top players competing and the Smash community's place at the tournament.

One of the best examples of this can be found with Wife and Pakman's commentary from Zhu vs Darkrain at Pound 4:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1AHY4wxJtc

In the span of just three minutes, Wife does the following:
1. gives viewers an idea of the stakes involved (Pound 4 biggest tourney ever, high-profile losers bracket matchup)
2. provides the bracket context of the match (Zhu lost to Hbox in winners, Darkrain lost to Tope in winners)
3. creates a synopsis of the players competing (Zhu is a slick, technical Falco; Darkrain is an all-American Captain Falcon hero)
4. elaborates further on the players competing (Zhu is a more modern player; Darkrain is old school but still keeps up with new stuff)
5. discusses the pace of the current metagame (one mistake such as a powershield or missed edgeguard leads to a lost stock)

Most importantly, every time Pakman brought up a point, Wife immediately addressed it directly and with the knowledge of a Melee community veteran. Commentators don't do that enough these days from what I've seen -- I can think of several 2013 examples where commentators failed to do any of the above for an entire set. I don't want to hear any more "what stage do you think he banned?" or "what do you think this matchup ratio is like?" because those have been done to death. Instead, let's give the viewers some tournament and community context at EVO.
Click to expand...
I've been thinking this for a long time, but since I'm a random player people don't take me seriously. Thanks so much to Juggleguy for pointing this out <3
 
xoxo~gossipgirl

xoxo~gossipgirl

Smash Rookie
Joined
Feb 1, 2013
Messages
6
honestly i think the really just casual/personable presentation that Scar brings to commentary is very beneficial to people that don't play and know the game at a really high level. he's explanatory, but not too much so, and he wants to talk alot and keep the commentary running... which i've actually seen a lot of people complain about in stream chats with any caster, but i think that there really should be very little just dead silence. and he gets genuinely excited—which can be a bit silly sometimes, but hype is always like that, and gasps are quieter than most things.

i just think he's a really good co-caster type to pair with one of the more analytical casters like prog.

i also really like the idea of the addition of someone like James Chen who knows FGC stuff and also is interested in Melee. we've been seeing generic fighting game terminology and ideas try to trickle down into Melee casts, but usually pretty poorly—at least from the stuff i've seen. plus someone like that asks questions, which is another good way to keep commentary running and cater to people that don't already know everything.

as far as the cast itself, things i've felt that we don't always get enough of:

good co-casting: picking up mistakes/silences, really responding to each other and keeping a back-and-forth
player matchup histories: have these guys met in tourney recently, and how did that go? also, is either player particularly good/bad at the character matchup in general?
fairness: i don't think enough commentaries do a really good job covering both sides of a match.

obviously, there are player skill differences, but verbiage like "slightly favored", "a little bit of an underdog", etc. come off alot better than just calling players "not that good" or "like a c-tier smasher". and i've seen a lot of matches where the cast will kind of disparage the "worse" player by attributing anything that they manage to do to the "better" player's mistakes. and however accurate that is, it's not really a good commentary because it kinda kills the hype, especially if there's an upset. we might be watching a match that's lower-tier than Mango/Armada, but the commentators aren't supposed to make it feel that way.

and even in matches that don't have an "obvious" winner and loser, caster bias should be mostly kept out. i'm fine hearing each commentator say who they personally are rooting for as long as they don't commentate the match strictly through that lens. i don't like hearing casts that call M2K a robot and complain about him ledgestalling or ones that focus entirely on how amazing Mango/Armada/PP is. there are two players, and Melee is very momentum based, and that momentum can dictate who to focus on. when a player is gaining momentum, talk about it. if they're maintaining it pretty good, maybe talk about what the other player needs to do to get it back.
 
AceDudeyeah

AceDudeyeah

Smash Ace
Joined
Dec 13, 2007
Messages
967
Location
Floridaa!
So is there a finalized stream schedule for top 8 on sunday?
Or will that not be decided until Saturday's over and the progress of each game can be checked?
 
S

smashmachine

Smash Lord
Joined
May 25, 2009
Messages
1,285
^schedule's on the evo info dump page
speaking of which, I see Revven deliberately not mentioning potential Hbox/Armada sets on neogaf when describing average match length ;)
 
D

Dax

Smash Journeyman
Joined
Sep 19, 2003
Messages
400
Location
italy
btw... Nintendo will be definitely be watching this, this time. Hype and screaming are good, but whoever commentates, please try to keep the language in check. I think Nintendo will be happy in the end about their game exposure.
 
D

Dax

Smash Journeyman
Joined
Sep 19, 2003
Messages
400
Location
italy
Yes, but Nintendo won't care about the other games. That's exactly why I'm saying it would be wise to keep the language a bit in check. That doesn't meant they can't jump or scream, just that saying "OOOOOH damn" is different than "he got ****ing ***** man" haha
Btw, it's just an advice. The stream will thankfully happen in any case right now, I was just thinking in perspective.
 
clowsui

clowsui

Smash Legend
Joined
Feb 14, 2007
Messages
10,184
Location
Chapel Hill, NC
ClashTournaments only has salty suite stream. VGBootCamp and srkevo3 will have much/most of the streaming this weekend
 
AceDudeyeah

AceDudeyeah

Smash Ace
Joined
Dec 13, 2007
Messages
967
Location
Floridaa!
Where are they/what youtube channel does he usually commentate for? I look up "Wobbles commentary" and I just get a crew battle.
 
N

noobird

Smash Journeyman
Joined
Dec 22, 2010
Messages
244
All of the big house 2... try koc and koc 2 as well. and a lot of others lol
 
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