Gaming
We asked Kevin “Purge” Godec what it takes to make it to the top in eSports casting and analysis.
Kevin “Purge” Godec is a man whose image seems permanently burned onto our screens. He’s recently been at ESL One Manila, Epicenter and the Manila Major and has become a much-ppreciated member of the incredible talent pool in the Dota scene.
It hasn’t always been that way, though. Purge started out his career by creating Dota-related content and became famous for his guide, Welcome To Dota, You Suck, which remains one of the best guides for newcomers to the game.
His educational videos, streams and casts led him to success, before he tried his hand at the professional playing side of things, having a stint in South Korea with Team Zephyr – where he helped to grow the Korean scene.
Now he’s back, fully focused on casting and is an integral member of any panel he features on. His next hope? Casting his first game on The International main stage.
But the road to fame, and cementing a spot as a top-tier analyst or caster is a tough one. We caught up with Purge just before his stint at the Manila Major to discuss his thoughts and tips on how to become the very best.
With your guide, Welcome To Dota, You Suck, you are the first port of call for many newcomers to the game – what was your motivation behind creating the it? I originally wrote Welcome To Dota, You Suck because one of my college friends showed interest in learning how to play the original Dota with me and my other friends. I wanted to write a guide to help him acclimate better to the game.
The first Dota had substantial barriers to learning and getting into the game. Some things were even as simple as learning the slang, how to pick your hero and even how to even download Dota and join a game in the Warcraft 3 client. Back then, there was also a huge amount of terrible item builds. Almost all carries would build Power Treads and then Vladimir’s Offering without understanding why it was sub-optimal.
To be honest, there was very little understanding of how to play Dota efficiently. My friend only lasted for a month or two after I wrote it, but he did get more into Dota 2 when it was released since it was a lot more straightforward to play, thanks Valve!
How difficult was it to transition from your days as a player to full-time casting and analysis? Casting full time is a lot of work, but it's not something I haven't done before. When I first started my YouTube channel casting was something that I did often as part of work and exposure to grow my YouTube channel. The goal in the end was to make a job out of something that I liked doing and I eventually succeeded at that.
Full-time casting from an event standpoint can often be stressful due to the travel and thus not being at home a lot, which means having less free time to actually play Dota. It's completely worth it, though, because I absolutely love watching the teams and meta develop every LAN.
It's a treat to be paid and have the opportunity and the time to watch every series and game leading up to a Grand Finals. I can't justify that time sink if I'm sitting at home and should really make a YouTube video or stream Dota.
Do you think the current setup in Dota 2 makes it difficult for newer talent to really come to the fore, or do you think there is enough opportunity to shine? There is always space for new talent in Dota 2, though it may not seem like that to outsiders. While there is a lot of talent that doesn’t go to every major or LAN, the reality is that the people often going to those LAN's or majors are the best talent we have to offer as a scene.
If you are a new talent, you have less practice, experience, and expertise and therefore won't be picked. But if you're a very talented play-by-play caster, or you are high MMR and think you can become very good talking about and analysing Dota, then you can definitely get a job working LANs or doing stream casting. You just have to be better than someone else (eventually) and work really hard to get to that point. Sadly, a lot of people are missing one or both of those qualities.
If you had to give one golden tip to an aspiring caster on how to make it and improve themselves, what would it be? I think you need to be extremely critical of your mistakes. I found one of the benefits of casting Epicenter is that many people were forced to watch me, and then they took to Reddit to either complain or criticise my faults, which I naturally lapped up to help fix those issues.
You have to be smart enough to realise what makes a good broadcast, what helps the narrative and the program. If you can't do that as rapidly as other people it'll take longer to reach the level you desire, but you can solve it in other ways too.
You can watch people better than you and think about what they are doing or saying that is making them exciting, interesting, or good, and that's a great way to improve as well. It doesn't have to just be limited to Dota, as long as the role is similar to what you’re trying to do in Dota.
You’ve recently been involved in a mixture of two-man casts and tri-casts. Which do you prefer to be involved in dual-casts or multi-casts? Why? I feel very comfortable in two-man casts with just about anyone, but I think tri-casting can also be really beneficial. Sometimes when I'm dual-casting I find myself talking just to fill time and that might lead to less intelligent things being said, whereas I think tri-casting allows you to plan what you’re going to say a bit ahead of time.
Every second spent filling time is time you could have spent enriching the broadcast in a positive, rather than neutral way. If two to three people can have a discussion about strategy or item builds whilst one can narrate the exciting play-by-play moments it truly can make for a phenomenal broadcast.
Two people having a discussion can sometimes be very routine and verging on boring. If a game is boring with very little action, having three people gives you more scope to entertain with banter and discussion.
In a perfect world with perfect talent who don't need to fill time a two-man cast would be optimal, but none of us are perfect. If those perfect people existed they would already be at the top of the casting scene, so I think tri-casts are great.
What would you say is the best tournament you’ve been involved at in a casting capacity? The International has always been amazing from a casting capacity but I haven't had the chance to cast a main stage match yet, I’ve only done the newcomers stream so I won’t count it.
The Frankfurt Major was a great event, but I was still pretty rough around the edges. Epicenter was a wonderful tournament for my growth as a caster because I got lots of helpful constructive feedback, both positive and negative, but the main arena was being commentated for in Russian, so it didn't quite feel like I was casting the event.
That leaves me with ESL Manila. I loved casting that tournament since the games were high quality and the fans were amazing. Overall I enjoyed Epicenter better as an event, but I felt great about the ESL Manila casting and panel work. Both were great, though!
Who is your favourite partner to cast with, or who do you believe you cast best with? I feel like I can cast well with most, if not all play-by-play casters. I think that I the best balance with TobiWan and ODPixel at the moment. I'd be very pleased to be paired with either of them at a LAN, but I'm completely comfortable changing things up.
If you had the opportunity to cast any eSports event across any platform and game – what would it be? Would it still be Dota? I would still pick Dota for sure. I've always been a mono-gamer in that I don't play very much variety. My main focus has been Dota for seven or so years now with some occasional straying into other stuff temporarily. I watch and appreciate other eSports titles but I'm content with Dota and plan to ride the wave until Virtual Reality takes over the world! Perhaps then I’ll move on to something else!
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