Confessions of a “Former” Caster — Part 1 — The Art

Hello, I’m Joshua Warmington known as OnlyJoshinTV and Jose. You may have known me for my CS2/CSGO casting in Oceania, Asia, Europe and North America.

I initially made a document with Zescht on how to be a good caster and the amount of work that you must put in.

Zescht and I discussed this when we were back in the ESEA MDL Broadcasting back in the day. He has gone on to be pretty successful in the Valorant scene as a coach and caster.

Unfortunately, I have lost that document to the sands of time. At this point, it is probably best to start over again.

Casting is a talent where you can describe a game that appeals to the audiences’ senses and emotion. You need a large vocabulary, a wide range of voice pitches and be much more than reading a kill feed.

We’re going to be discussing the art of casting itself. We’ll go through the technology and other parts which also play a key role in a future article.

The Basics

Before we begin, there are two types of casters, and you can draw on a combination of both.

There is the play-by-play caster who is normally the hype man who builds up moment, he puts the building blocks together.

There is the colour caster who adds the quick bit of analysis or extra story to add extra story or even deeper details of the story.

Most casters work in duos to present the game like it is a feature film to your audience. Like it is god damn cinema like the zoomers call it.

The key message is that every map, every series and every round is a blank canvas to paint the story to the audience. Creativity cannot be taught, it comes through your own experiences, dreams and knowledge of a scene.

The Characters

Well, we’ve got the basics out of the way. The next part are the characters otherwise known as the players, the maps, the series and the rivalry. Essentially, it is your game’s key components.

You need to be able to ascertain who your characters are from what they are in the game down to their core.

Key focuses are

- Pronouncing their names correctly

- What they are known for

- What do they commonly use

o The awper/operator, the IGL etc.

- The history of the players, the team, the map, the series and the rivalry

- What impact has the player, team, the map, the series and the rivalry has had so far

- Extra details of the player, team, map, series and rivalry that might not be evident to the audience

o Such as flash assists, pressure, utility damage etc.

- Learning every aspect of the players, maps, series, rivalries and even much more.

The above list isn’t exhaustive either. The more details that you can add including silence can be crucial to building an incredible cast.

If you ever want to get more details on any given area. Talk to the players, talk to the teams, look through Liquipedia, talk to your fellow talent. Every tidbit of information could be a crucial cog to your story. For example, Heccu mentioning that in Spirit’s vlogs that they call donk (Oslik) which is a cute way of saying donkey. You could use that to humanize donk as a player.

The Story-Telling

As the story teller you want to expand from just a simple description of X player killing Y player

You want to expand “Karrigan kills 4 players from G2” into something the audience can feel, taste or elicit some sort of emotion from. How crucial this moment is, how much of an impact has it got on a round.

For example, Karrigan has taken down m0nesy! Can he do more? Hunter might be able to trade out. Nope, Karrigan has got his number too and he gets a bit more. Karrigan mows down nexa and nik0. He has opened up B site on Nuke. What a magnificent flash from broky. FaZe are marching towards to Series Point!

Say it to yourself and identify the areas where your pitch or inflection can make it exciting and when to slow it down as well.

Notice the extra detail of the names of the players, the flash being noted, the team names and the player names.

Also, the positioning being noted so a person listening in without watching can imagine in their head what is occurring.

At the same time, you don’t to overegg the pudding when it is a minor play such as donk killing Jame then is traded out by fl1t.

For example, donk has taken down Jame but fl1t makes it even for Virtus Pro. Avenging his ingame leader. Now Spirit look to reset after their initial entry.

Say it to yourself and identify the areas on what pitch, tone or inflection can be mnade here.

You can see the clear difference between Karrigan’s 4k in what sort of pitch and tone that you want to make. This one is more mellow and softer compared to Karrigan getting a 4k. You just want to calm it down and build up to another play.

The main skill here is to know when a play is extremely incredible and to know when a player is just another run through the motions. The extra layer is able to do both on the fly.

That is enough for today but I hope you future pro casters have taken a lot out of this.