WSVG on CBS - Page 2

Elendril · 07/31/07, 8:22 PM

It takes a while to learn how to best present a game. I used to do internet broadcast coverage for professional Magic tournaments, and it took a while for me to get into a groove for it - and even then I was presenting the game to people who generally understood it. Understanding WoW arena is complicated even for someone who understands WoW in general - making it accessible to the everyman is a feat. The WSVG commentary at least has the luxury to assume some basic knowledge on the part of the audience.

Calantus · 07/31/07, 8:42 PM

The hardest part about WoW coverage is that it is both realtime and doesn't have an obvious focal point. Just about every popular sport has a ball, and all the action happens around it. Who cares what fielder X is doing unless the ball is coming at him? Nobody, so you can just ignore him. In arena every player is doing something all the time. Even something as mundane as drinking is pretty relevant to the match so not seeing it happen you can't appreciate that X team won because Y team ran out of mana first because their healer didn't get to drink and X's did. It's going to take quite a lot of good camera work and commentary to pick up all the relevant details and still not overload the viewer with information. I also think that they'll need to get good with the action replays. One of my favourite things with watching footy is where after a big play they'll replay the clip a couple times showing you how a dummy pass drew in 2 defenders or give you another angle to better see what went on.

kaib · 07/31/07, 8:50 PM

Both teams got a dps target, that should be the focus. Basically commentators need to see who a team's warrior is hitting nad how that guy is doing.

Zifna · 07/31/07, 10:07 PM

Both teams got a dps target, that should be the focus. Basically commentators need to see who a team's warrior is hitting nad how that guy is doing.

Not necessarily. For example, look at a 3v3 with a Paladin healer... the best way to respond to that is by splitting dps because he has no multi-target heals. For another thing, even when you do focus damage, the most interesting stuff is often going on away from that. For example, you might have a Resto Shaman Earth Shock the other guy's healer or have a Priest Mass Dispel Bloodlust off the other guy's team.

sovelis41 · 07/31/07, 10:19 PM

Originally Posted by Calantus

The hardest part about WoW coverage is that it is both realtime and doesn't have an obvious focal point. Just about every popular sport has a ball, and all the action happens around it. Who cares what fielder X is doing unless the ball is coming at him? Nobody, so you can just ignore him. In arena every player is doing something all the time. Even something as mundane as drinking is pretty relevant to the match so not seeing it happen you can't appreciate that X team won because Y team ran out of mana first because their healer didn't get to drink and X's did. It's going to take quite a lot of good camera work and commentary to pick up all the relevant details and still not overload the viewer with information. I also think that they'll need to get good with the action replays. One of my favourite things with watching footy is where after a big play they'll replay the clip a couple times showing you how a dummy pass drew in 2 defenders or give you another angle to better see what went on.

Sports commentary has both play by play and color. The play by play guys pick up and describe the immediate focus of the action, and the color commentator throws in the details and stuff thats happening away from the play. This is usually a former player that has intricate knowledge about why X player skated away this way or why player Y is trying to push this other player back this way. It's just a matter of the commentators getting used to seeing the action of a lot of different games and calling it out will become second nature.

• malthrin · 07/31/07, 10:27 PM

Regarding potential improvements to the interface to make it more watchable: some of my thoughts in this thread. Blizzard's supposedly working something up in-house, but I'm not optimistic.

WSVG and E-Sports in general? Guitar Hero 2 really, really steals the show. Come the semifinals and finals, there's a crowd of several hundred people clapping and cheering and getting into the music. WSVG's treatment of the game, with the stage and the performance criteria (as opposed to just game score) has led to the events really capturing the energy of a concert, which is great. WoW will continue to be a niche thing - nobody but WoW players can understand it - but GH2's simplicity and energy make it extremely accessible for a wider audience.

Zifna · 07/31/07, 11:07 PM

As far as the best way to handle the event itself I would recommend:

1. Do some brief general term explanation at the beginning-- dps, healing, crowd control (cc), buffing, debuffing

2. Do rough introductions to teams, i.e. name of class and spec, and roughly what that means ("PlayerName is a Priest who specs, or specializes in Holy and Discipline magic, we can expect him to try to play a support role, healing his teammates and removing negative magic the other team casts") as someone suggested earlier.

3. Keep in-match commentary very general, i.e. "It looks like the Green Team is focusing damage on Playername but GreenHealer seems able to keep him up so far. Oh no! YellowPlayer's been crowd controlled by PlayerName, the Green team's Druid. Looks like HealerName got him out though!" Use some circles/arrows/symbols and repeat their use, ie always marker a red circle with a handcuffs/prison bars icon at the top around any CCd player to assist the less astute in watching the general trend of the action. Use NO specific ability names, instead saying stuff like "Priestname is putting magic shields on players to block some of the incoming damage."

If you want to bring the players into it during the match, pull in their faces in the corners of the screen at key moments a la the "aw shit" grimace someone makes when he dies or an expression of concentration as a healer deals with a difficult damage distribution

4. Do focused-in breakdowns of a match after it's done, pulling out key events and replaying them super-slowly, explaining exactly what's going on. Here, and only here do you use specific ability names and explanations. Feel free to talk with the various teams about their strategy and definitely pull in the faces on part of the screen as you do the slow-mo replays.

I think that's the best way to make it accessible to neophytes and still interesting to those who know what's up.