Casting

Hey folks,

I'm a fairly new visitor to the CoH2.org site and must say I am loving the Replays section as a resource.

I am attempting to improve my casting for the game and in general and would love any feedback and critiques that could be shot my way as I can really only get better, when things are pointed out to me.

So please check out my casts so far and let me know how I get on!

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdomeeuoutGbd2UNavIJojoTdTr2b8qp8

The best cast I've done I think was this one

Thanks folks!

Briggs

Hey there, I've watched some of your casts - great to see more casters! I was thinking about giving feedback, but then I decided I would just write a "how to cast" article at some point, but since you asked, here is some advice. Obviously I'm not some sort of expert or anything, so take everything with a grain of salt, but I've been casting for many years now and I wouldn't be where I am if plenty of the old CoH casters hadn't given me advice back when I started, so I figure I might as well try to help, whether or not I actually am helpful.

I like how you call the Victory Points "Stars" - that's endearing

Often you'll say something is "interesting" but you won't say why. I think one reason many people watch shoutcasts is to understand the game better, so if there's something interesting going on in the game, it often helps to comment on why you find it interesting. That helps explain the game to people so they know what they are watching. Just saying that something is interesting, and not adding anything else, doesn't really add much, in my opinion.

It's a little hard to tell how you're using "brilliant" sometimes - in America it just means "smart" but I know in other parts of the world it's also slang for something like "awesome" - but it seems to me like sometimes you're calling something a player does "brilliant" to say that it's an innovative tactical choice they've made, like when Cataclaw sticks his Guards Rifle in the Scout Car. Since sticking Guards in the Scout Car is pretty much old hat, I'm not sure that counts as brilliant, so I was thinking maybe it would help just to watch even more replays to get an idea of what's popular and stuff. I wouldn't call using an MG-42 to suppress people "brilliant" since that's bread and butter CoH 2, for instance, so for the same reason I wouldn't call putting Guards Rifle in a Scout Car "brilliant." But then again you might just mean brilliant in the sense of "awesome" so maybe I'm totally off-base. I just found it a little confusing personally so I thought I'd let you know.

My old-fashioned proclivities are probably showing, but unless you get a lot of viewers when you livestream, you might consider casting the traditional way by recording footage locally then uploading it. You get better video quality and you can skip the loading screen, which right now I guess you have to wait for because people in your stream have to wait for it, so you end up talking on the screen and then people have to watch that on YouTube.

Really, though, that's all small potatoes. Here is the big tip (and the reason I was mostly saving my feedback for the article I'll probably write at some point). Try to figure out where your strengths as a caster lie and focus your casts on that. Right now, you casts are quite a bit of play-by-play. There's nothing wrong with that - some of my favorite casters, like Rogers n Pounder or Yoink (or Ami) do a ton of play by play.

And in fact most casters start out with play-by-play because that comes naturally. But not everyone sticks with that forever. Some casters are more tactically-minded: they spend more time analyzing strategies and build orders and making predictions and extrapolating from what has happened and pointing out features of the map and the game so far and so on. Inverse is like this, my casts are often like this, and so on.

Other casters focus more on telling jokes and generally being entertaining - this is what Thirsty Thursday does - less play-by-play, less strategic analysis, more making people laugh. A lot of my old CoH casts were like this.

And of course you can mix all three (which is what I say I do) or co-cast with someone and get a mixture that way.

So the idea is to find out which of these (1, 2, or even all 3) you want to focus on in your casts, and then focus on them. People who do mostly play-by-play make it really exciting or otherwise entertaining: Yoink has a sexy voice, Rogers n Pounder yell at each other and get super excited, and I talk really fast. Right now your play-by-play seems pretty basic - I think something to spice it up would really help. Alternatively you could throw in more strategic stuff, or more jokes, or both. One issue with just straight play-by-play is that if it's not exciting, there's not a lot of reason to watch the cast instead of just downloading the replay yourself.

So, hopefully some or even all of that is helpful. We've got some casters here and most of them have been casting for years (I know Rogers has been casting for longer than me, at least) and we're all happy to share advice.

Nice write up Tycho. Love your casts!

I've been casting DoW2 for the past seven months and only just started casting CoH2 myself. The advice I'm going to give you isn't so much directly a critique of your actual casting, but is probably more important for anyone looking to establish themselves as a caster. The basics of casting are:

1. Do it a lot and do it consistently.
2. Advertise your videos to your intended market.
3. Cast good games with good players.

These become more flexible and less important as your channel grows and you've established yourself as a brand, but when starting out they are all imperative. You've already started doing the first step, so good job on that. One of the reasons people will subscribe to a casting channel and follow it is when they can expect it to regularly produce content.

Putting your work out there is essential and it's almost impossible to get a casting channel up without it. The phrase "if you build it, they will come," doesn't apply here, and probably just isn't true in real life. You need to market your work and market yourself. You need to go out and grab viewers. You've already started doing this by making this thead, but judging by the number of views you're getting on your CoH2 videos (which is in negative disproportion to your number of subscribers), it looks like you need to do it more. The videos section of GameReplays is a nice venue, since you can aggressively market yourself in a non-intrusive way, though it's certainly not the only one.

The third piece of advice I gave you may seem obvious, but I can't count the number of times I've found extremely small channels that don't follow it. They sometimes cast themselves in mediocre games, or cast mostly low- to mid-level play, with no recognizable names of good players for their game. There are two extremely good reasons for doing this.

First of all, there's a higher chance that viewers who come to you will enjoy the time they spent on your channel, and thus also a higher chance that they will subscribe and come back. Secondly, when you haven't yet established and branded yourself as a caster, casting games featuring known good players is a way of attracting viewers to your channel on the brand of those good players. More specifically, for CoH2, if you cast games with people like Symbiosis, Inverse, Aimstrong, etc. you're going to attract more viewers than if you cast games of random players.

I haven't watched all of your casts, but I would suggest rewatching the cast of that 16 minute game, and evaluating whether or not that was really a game worth casting.

Now, if you notice, none of what I said so far has anything to do with the actual commentary involved in casting. That's because, at least in my opinion, the aforementioned things are more important than the actual quality of the cast. That's not to say that the quality of your commentary isn't important at all, especially not when trying to jump into a relatively crowded casting market like Company of Heroes, where you will absolutely need to find a way to distinguish yourself. However, those basics I mentioned are more important.

As for actual commentary advice, right now your vocal expression, your tone and articulation are a bit dry. That's not something that's too bad. Inverse is a bit dry, but he offers a depth of commentary that no other CoH caster does (and frankly very few casters do, even outside of CoH). You may want to consider outside activities like Toastmasters and Improv, which are great for improving vocal expression, and the latter is good for spontaneity and on-your-feet thinking.

This goes a bit on what Tycho said, but over time, by doing lots of casting, you can find and develop your own style, which can become part of your brand, so long as you keep at it. This is where your unique appeal can attract viewers, even when others are providing a similar product. ImperialDane has his silly accent and focus on historical tidbits; Inverse is heavily strategy-minded, but is not very dynamic; TFN has a great co-casting dynamic as well as being very strategy-minded. Personally, Inverse and TFN are right up my alley, while I don't watch other CoH2 casters much. That's not to say there's anything wrong them, and the thousands of subscribers they have are a testament to their success.

Lastly...know the game. This is something I have to work on myself as I am just starting CoH2 (but with relevant foundational experience), but it's very important. And when I say know the game, I mean know the hell out of it. Play it a lot, cast it a lot, and watch casts by other casters a lot.

Now, if you notice, none of what I said so far has anything to do with the actual commentary involved in casting. That's because, at least in my opinion, the aforementioned things are more important than the actual quality of the cast. That's not to say that the quality of your commentary isn't important at all, especially not when trying to jump into a relatively crowded casting market like Company of Heroes, where you will absolutely need to find a way to distinguish yourself. However, those basics I mentioned are more important.

With all due respect, I disagree - if you're casting in order to get lots of viewers and if you think advertising yourself and putting out lots of casts on a consistent schedule is more important than making good casts, then more power to you, but if I had to give advice to casters, it would be about how to make their casts better, not how to get more people to watch them.

Up until a few weeks ago, I never advertised a single one of my videos, and I got 3 thousand subscribers on my YouTube channel - and this is after only casting extremely niche games like Men of War. No matter how consistently you cast and no matter how much you advertise your videos, your casts are always going to be your casts, and whether you have fun making them and whether people have fun watching them has nothing to do with how much they are advertised or how often they come out. My favorite CoH casters are the Thirsty Thursday crew and they release a video once every 7 years, approximately, and they don't exactly advertise. Does it matter? No, their casts are great.

I'm not saying that advertising is a waste of time or anything - I post casts to reddit just like Imperial Dane and Tommy do (plus I post Rogers n Pounders' casts because they never advertise themselves ). And I do enjoy hearing from people who watch my casts, so it helps if more people see them.

But when I started casting CoH 5 or 6 years ago, I told myself that I would cast for as long as it was fun, even if I had literally zero downloads. I think going in with any other attitude is just setting yourself up for grief. Cast because you want to cast, and focus on making the casts you want to make.

You say a lot of other stuff too so I don't want to sound like I'm jumping all over you, but... advertising a cast is not more important than making the cast.

I'd say a good cast/caster includes the following:

1) Good replays
2) Good quality production/editing/audio
3) Personality and own style
4) Humor
5) Encyclopedic stat knowledge
6) Strategic insight
7) Positivity
8) Thick skin

Feedback on a personal level after watching 2 of your casts:
1) Excellent accent and your modulated relaxed voice has a style of its own reminiscent of a golf commentator.
2) You have quite a strong inhale sound before sentences. Minor thing, but something perhaps to pay mind to.
3) Try to make screen movements as fluid as possible. I recommend keyboard scrolling and using the mouse for the minimap, selecting units from unit bar or for highlighting/selecting action on the screen.

Looking forward to more casts from you and welcome!

You are misattributing an opinion to me that I don't hold and don't agree with, though to be fair my wording left room for that ambiguity.

Producing more casts and advertising them is not something I morally value over producing high quality casts. It is just a pragmatic approach to what you need to do to attract an audience. I'm coming from the perspective that attracting an audience and having people watch your videos is taken for granted as something you actually want. Otherwise, there would be no need to upload them to Youtube at all.

You can choose to cast without advertising your work. You can also choose to advertise your work. Instead of thinking in terms of right and wrong, which you seem to be doing a lot, just think in terms of consequences. If you choose to advertise your work, the likely consequence is that you will get noticed and people will watch your videos. If you choose not to, the likely consequence is that you can expect your work to go unnoticed and unappreciated.

Thirsty Thursday may be well liked by the people who have seen it, but I hadn't even heard of it until now. I have however heard of Krebs, Inverse, TFN, Imperial Dane, Ami, Yoink, and even you, Tycho. Coincidentally, all of these casts adhere to my guidelines more so than Thirsty Thursday.

At some point advertising takes care of itself and you can afford to do it less. It occurs by people sharing and liking videos, Youtube recommending your video based on similar videos, etc. basically word of mouth. When you're starting out, you can't count on that though.

There is a variety of attitudes that people have in this world, and it is much too rigid to say that there is only one right attitude to any given thing. I think going in with the attitude of producing the highest quality casts you can and attracting a viewer base is setting yourself up for success. Inverse seems to go in with the attitude of wanting to educate and enlighten his userbase, RnP seems to be more about entertaining, and TFN is a bit of a mix.

You chose to give Briggs advice on how to make his casts better. I chose to give Briggs advice on how to get more viewers, and how to make his casts better. The most proven way to get better at anything is to do it a lot, i.e. practice.

Technically, I guess making the cast really is more important, since you can't advertise a cast that hasn't been made. But if you want people to actually see it, it's pretty important to let them know that it exists, rather than let it stay a secret.

Really enjoy your casts!

Excellent feedback folks! This is the stuff I really need to improve! I will take all this on board!

Appreciate it all!