Before you begin here, please read up on general Best Practices
Good commentary keeps the audience engaged in the broadcast. Hooking the audience is easy when commentating on a hyped match up (perhaps a late-tournament race, or an early race between high profile members of the community), but the trick lies in being able to convert that hype into an unbiased, informative, and entertaining broadcast for what typically amounts to about 90 minutes.
Before you even get into the commentator booth you already have a little bit of work to do:
Once the restreamer gives you the countdown to “going live”, it’s your chance to shine! As a new commentator, you may want to defer the introduction to your co-commentator that may have more experience so that you get a feel for the introduction and set up. Many members of the race crew even go so far as to script out this section so that we have a clean and professional introduction to all of our VODs (as many, if not all, are going to be exported to YouTube playlists).
A sample introduction might look like the following:
Good <time of day> Final Fantasy Randomizer fans! Today we’re bringing to you a matchup between <player/team> and <player/team> in the <round> of <event>. This match is the third in a best of three matchup, so the winner of today’s game advances while we unfortunately will have to say goodbye to the other player at the end of the match. My name is <name>, and I will be one of your two hosts for today’s event. I’m joined here in the booth with <co-comms> for today, and I have just two questions for you <co-comms>: how are you doing today, and can you tell us about today’s flags?
We have now given context to the match, introduced ourselves, and set the stage for the audience to be able to follow along. Other formats may require a short paragraph around what play looks like (for example, the DAB tournament or cooperative play matches), and really at almost any point you can insert some color commentary around the players (some of that information you dug up about them in the pre-work stage).
As you get more comfortable with commentary, people will understand the type of broadcast they can expect if you’re on one of the speaking roles. There are many commentators that can easily switch hats if their co-comms start to push a certain flavor of broadcast, but here are some ideas to get you started:
| Broadcast Style | Example Commentators | Description of the Style |
| I got the questions! | Most newer members | You know the game well enough to play through it with middling times, but maybe you don’t understand why someone would have made a certain decision or how something happens. Ask your co-comms for their thoughts or for chat to help out! This is NOT your opportunity to belittle or sound otherwise judgmental about a decision that was made. |
| I got the FACTS! | jat2980, Wote | You know the programming logic, calculations, or background context for the very specific details in the game. When something quirky happens, or statistically significant choices are made, you’re there to explain the why. You can also toss up some softball questions to a lesser experienced co-commentator to help provide knowledge via organic conversation. |
| Chillax | caleb, dani3883 | Just having fun. You’re hanging out with your friend watching some people play video games. You still have to be able to speak to the events happening on the screen, but after you quickly set the stage, you allow the runners to sort of speak-via-their-play and commentary becomes more conversational until major events happen. |
| Shotcaller | GregglyPuff, Deadpulse | Get the crowd excited by doing a play-by-play when things get hectic. Primarily done in very close races, really exciting finishes, or when we see uncharacteristic difficulty out of an encounter. |
This is far from a comprehensive list of ways in which you can start to define the presence you have, but hopefully it gives you some idea of the roles you can play while you work out how you present yourself.
Other notable fan favorite commentators include: LordFizzleBeef, Dengwoo, Willcleosis
Reach out to any of the veteran members of race crew if you need any other ideas, and certainly try to connect (a short while before the match) with the person who signed up for voice commentary with you so that you can figure out how the two of you might play off of each other.
No, we’re not talking about the sultry, dulcet tones of you dropping that sweet sweet bass vocal into the microphone. Your voice is the general feel of your delivery, and goes a long way in establishing how the community reacts to your commentary. A lot of people conflate their “voice” with the “role” they take at given point, and while role can certainly influence your voice, it does not singularly define it.
Consider how you want to be received by the audience – if you’re trying to come across as confident and insightful, then you need to be able to speak clearly, concisely, and most importantly, correctly about the topic. If you want people to have a pleasant, relaxed time, then you’re going to need to be pleasant and relaxed in what you’re saying and when you’re saying it.
This is probably one of the most important pieces that distinguishes GREAT commentary from good commentary, and it’s unfortunately one that doesn’t get taught easily through written word. Sign up for some weekend events, weekly races (when available), and random exhibitions just to get some practice in.
There are a lot of pitfalls that you can fall into that easily change the tone of the broadcast (and not for the better). Be mindful of the following:
If both commentators are comfortable speaking, you should be aiming for a reasonably equal amount of time talking as well. When one player dominates the commentary, the other player is hunting for places to insert themselves. This feels incredibly disjoint, because there’s no conversational aspect to the broadcast, and the interjection will often overlap the first voice. This results in a lot of “Sorry, I was just saying…” , “You go ahead…”, “Nope, oops, I just… “ All of these outcomes break the flow of the broadcast and also are just a real feelsbad moment.
Solution: Talk with your partner before the broadcast, get a feel for what they like to talk about.
Sometimes you get a little involved in describing something on the screen, but in the scheme of things it’s rather unimportant – like, yes, everyone cares about what level 1 black magic is, but no, if we see BLND LOCK LOK2 and STUN, we don’t need to say much more than:
“Yikes, no sweepers at level 1. LOCK will be nice if we have evasive fiends, and STUN might be useful if we have no offensive white magic so we can get some swings on Garland, but this is certainly not what our runners were hoping to see in the first minute.”
What we don’t want is
“OMG, bliiiiind, two versions of lock, and a stun. I can’t believe it. This is so silly. Like ‘hey black magic shop, can I buy a … WHOOPS NO THANKS!’ Oh folks we’re in for a brutal early game. I can’t believe it. Who rolled this seed? Can we get an F in chat for our runners? BLND, I can’t remember the last time I even used that. I bet they really regret taking two black mages here.”
Meanwhile, the runners have both already finished their shopping, got level 3 on the way to Garland, and ultimately won’t actually care about the level 1 black magic.
This scenario happens in many ways and at many points.
Solution: Mentally zoom out. If your reaction is a visceral recoil from what just happened, put yourself in the runners’ shoes. Instead of highlighting all the negativity, instead say “Okay, so our runners just got some less than stellar news. Now let’s consider, if we were in that position – what are we thinking?” This is a good conversation starter with your partner and chat alike, and we turned what is ultimately negative or mundane, and turned it into a discussion opportunity.
You’re allowed to be wrong (occasionally). It happens to the best of us. Allow yourself the opportunity to correct the error, then move on.
Acceptable cases include:
“Oops, it turns out I have that percentage wrong, there’s actually around a 14% to BRAK Tia but BANE is a slight bit less.”
Unacceptable cases include:
“Oh man, I didn’t realize that was going to happen. I should have read the flags. I’m sorry I keep forgetting that.”
Solution: Move on.
Did your joke land? Great! It didn’t? Okay, don’t say it again.
Lots of people tend to be uncomfortable with silence. Sometimes it’s okay to take a breather while you recompose thoughts, make sure all of the tracking is in order, or to just give viewers a little bit of space while the play can speak for itself.
Solution: Consider if what you’re about to add to the broadcast is something that advances understanding or interaction. Just stating what’s going on as a play-by-play for something like checking shops at Melmond and turning in the SLAB… it just seems a little unnecessarily redundant. Make a quick point about overall what’s happening and allow the conversation to form organically.
We all have our friends and favorites in the community, that’s certainly allowed. What is HEAVILY DISCOURAGED is making that known via commentary in which a friend or personal favorite is playing. Wishing poor luck on the opponent is bad taste, as is gloating over things like an equalizing ToFR wipe or a missed loose item.
Acceptable:
If <my friend> wants to have a shot at winning at this point, <opponent> is going to have to make some critical mistakes or have some tremendously bad luck.
Unacceptable:
<My friend> is only 5 minutes behind, which on this encounter table is really just about one wipe to Kraken2. Let’s hope <opponent> finds a punchy one so that <my friend> can get the win.
Solution: Frame things objectively not subjectively. Your feelings don’t matter, the facts of the game do.
While runners are playing, you should be taking down a quick note about something you may want to bring up in postgame. Leaving it too open ended leaves room for awkward conversation where nobody can seem to find a thread to talk about meaningfully. Another concern would be highlighting how close the victor was; there’s a very fine line between “That was a really close match, fought very well by both competitors,” and “Oof, <player 2> totally would’ve had it if they didn’t stop to buy those unnecessary heal potions.” The latter, of course, highlights a negative and makes Player 2 feel even worse about the course of events that just took place.
Solution: Respect the fact that both runners just devoted 90 minutes of mental space to a game. Avoid the personal biases here as well, and keep things to objective statements of play, questions about how the runner was thinking/feeling at a specific point that you questioned (but not necessarily the decision that they’re going to regret hearing about), or forward-looking thoughts.