Gaming
We get the caster’s take on the new introductory channel for TI4, straight from the horse’s mouth.
Kevin 'Purge' Godec has straddled both sides of the player/commentator divide at this year's multimillion dollar Dota 2 tournament, The International 4. With Team Zephyr he competed for a spot at the tournament in the Southeast Asia qualifiers, then after his team's swift exit he joined the casting roster as part of Valve's Newcomer Stream which explains the basics to first-time viewers. He's already known to hundreds of thousands of players thanks to his comprehensive introduction to the game, "Welcome to Dota, you suck" and for the Purge Plays video series which introduces and discusses Dota heroes. Naturally he's well qualified in terms of making Dota less intimidating to newbies but with thousands of neophytes coming to the stream and wondering "What's all this fuss about?" how does he think his skills have held up? Ahead of Newbee’s victory last night, Red Bull grabbed a chat with the man himself at the KeyArena to find out…
Hi Purge, how did you get involved with the Newcomer Stream? The Newcomer Stream was brought up by Valve and they invited a bunch of personalities at the start. But over time they decided to invite me as well. I ended up getting partnered with SUNSfan which I'm really happy for because he really balances out what I lack. The International is a hype event to get people to play Dota anyway so why not have a way to make it easier for new players to learn the game? That's why they wanted us to focus on the basics. It's a really good idea and I feel it's revolutionising how tournament streams are going to go in the future. Maybe not all streams will do this but I think we'll see streams of other games that will be like this – League of Legends, for example.
When I want to watch a League stream if I see a big tournament going on and click on it I click away very fast because I don't understand anything that's happening. Something like [the Newcomer Stream] is going to be really good for getting people to switch games. That's the biggest barrier for most gamers right now. When you stick to one game you're generally not going to bother learning anything else so if you make it easier for them to learn other games there's a better chance they'll switch games. It's a really good idea from Valve there.
Is a Newcomer Stream something you consciously thought was lacking? No, I never thought about it before. I make a lot of content on my YouTube channel for new players but I never thought ‘Let's do this at a major tournament’. That didn't make sense to me because I assumed everyone wanted to have the hype and the top-tier casting that's pretty good for everybody.
How's it been going numbers-wise? Our viewer numbers are pretty low, honestly, compared to the regular stream numbers. Our Twitch stream was getting between 3,000 and 10,000 I think. In-game the first couple of days were about 15,000. I don't know what they were towards the end. I'd guess probably higher – between 15,000 and 50,000 people were watching our stream over the main stream. The main stream was probably getting – including Russian and English and all the other casting – between 200,000 and 500,000 people. Comparatively we're at pretty low numbers but the feedback has been so good. I'm assuming some people tune in briefly and then go. I'm happy with how things have been going.
How has your Purge Plays… video style translated to casting these games? It's pretty much a direct translation and that's one of the reasons I think I was a good fit for this. I've spent two years doing this already and I have good casting fundamentals because I casted for a while. It was really what I needed to jump in and do a good job from the start. I've been really happy because it's exactly what I'm good at.
What's changed since the start of The International? What's been refined? Most of my growth as a caster is usually based on my opinion of things. I usually just look at how things flowed and make decisions based on that. But we got a lot of good feedback from Valve as well. They would come in after every cast during the first five days or so and give us criticism on stuff they thought was bad. At first we had some trouble being a bit too dry at times, we maybe explained things slightly too much and then as we got used to things we would have a better chance of understanding what would be a good balance.
It's really important not to waste sentences when there's so much to talk about. The newbie stream, there's endless stuff you can talk about because you can talk about anything and nobody gets mad about it. You have to be really careful with your words and efficient with your words because there's only so much time, especially on the drafting screen. If you spend too much time talking too in-depth about one hero you don't even get to look at the abilities of other heroes which might be important. We started wasting less time and balancing better. Some games you focus on pulling or on drafting or what stuns are or damage over time or what a trilane is. We don't want to do all of it every game because it's too much information. Eventually we do play by plays and stuff like that.
Is it hard to remember to keep explaining jargon? It's hard to remember especially in the middle – at the beginning it's easy because you're in the mindset of explaining everything. In the middle of the casting we started forgetting again that we need to re-explain those concepts every cast so we had to remember that. Then towards the end we're at a pretty good balance. It's good having two people too. If I forget SUNSfan might bring it up or explain. It's good to have two people to cover each other.
What about explaining the metagame or team histories? It's important but not something I'm super expert in. You can give a brief overview. Towards the finals it's more important to cast the games and keep people excited. If there's a cool story like when CIS was playing I was like "[Black^] is a German player on a four Chinese-player team and he lives in China – nobody else does that". I should maybe focus on those a little more but the Valve guys also remind us that it can be confusing to say player names instead of hero names because new players don't know any names. If I say SingSing or Sylar that could be a hero name.
Or PPD could be an item like a BKB rather than a person? Exactly – so I have to be careful about acronyms and player names.
And what about the metagame? Maybe not drafts but how people skill build differently, things like that. When drafting I sometimes talk more about strategies like, "See this hero? In last year's TI he was really popular, this year he's not as popular." Other than that I focus entirely on this year's metagame. I've watched a lot of games since I got here and seen things change very slightly in terms of picking order. When I notice this stuff it makes me excited and I love explaining it. I try to focus on those things where I can because I want to get people pumped about the matches.
Does this stuff make you become a better player? It makes you think you're a better player but it doesn't make you much better. It's easy to look at pro games and think you understand how everything works. I've been watching these top-tier pros play for weeks but I know when I go back [to playing for Zephyr] I'm going to make basic stupid mistakes and things they wouldn't do. So it makes you think you're better than you are. You may understand the game better on a meta level but when you get into the game it's hard to make those decisions and see the whole picture. You're focusing on last-hitting and moving round the map or buying wards and things. When you're casting top-down you have all the time in the world to see what somebody should be doing.
What does the future hold for you Zephyr-wise? We'll be back for KDL [Korean Dota League] season three. After that we may do a roster swap, we'll see. But for seasons three and four coming up we'll be in Korea for six more months for those two seasons. After that we'll see what happens. We're happy with what we accomplished. We didn't think we'd even get in the TI qualifiers so the fact we played in it was an accomplishment. We obviously got wrecked there but even playing it was unexpected. We're pretty happy overall with how it went but hopefully we can jump back in with a clean slate and become the best in Korea again but we're quite a way away from that right now.
Do you sometimes feel like Dota 2's version of an elementary school teacher? I guess so – that's what I focus on so I guess you can make that parallel. A lot of basic stuff, good for new players. Yeah.
Is this the stuff that makes you happy, bringing the game to new people? The main drive for me is talking about stuff I know and explaining basic concepts [is something] I'm pretty good at. I have a good grasp of them in my head usually. The more advanced concepts I'm not as good at so I think the job fits me well but I like talking and sharing things I'm passionate about!
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