Gaming
Esports
Mamoon Sabri: Put the kettle on, it’s TeaTime
Pakistani caster and streamer Mamoon ‘TeaTime’ Sabri spills the tea in this candid conversation.
Pakistani shoutcaster and streamer Mamoon ‘TeaTime’ Sabri has had a hell of a journey. From gaming as a kid to discovering casting and going through numerous disasters and achievements to finally establishing his name, he has had a rollercoaster in the last six years.
Recently, he commentated the finale of Red Bull Flick, the first-ever 2v2 CS:GO competition in Pakistan where players from around the country clashed on the five new custom maps.
Sabri has now also become the first Pakistani to cast a major international tournament when he took part in DreamHack Open Fall 2020, a European sports league season, in November.
“I commentated some group stages and placement games. Because now everything is online, the playing field is leveled. Being hired to cast Dreamhack should be impossible but as everyone is doing remotely now, it’s all about pure skill,” said Sabri, ecstatic about the incredible opportunity. “Because otherwise, it costs a lot more to hire a Pakistani and fly him in for a tournament. Plus, we have visa issues.”
Pakistani caster and streamer, Mamoon 'TeaTime' Sabri
© Ahmed Hayan Kazi
“DreamHack is basically everything. The best thing is they test out new talent. So, I’m really grateful to them that they tested me out,” he said, adding that he’d been emailing them once every four months for three years now.
His efforts paid off but it hasn’t been an easy journey. Sabri’s story, in fact, started many years ago.
FUNNY BOYS AND FUNNY STORIES
Before the school-age Sabri was even aware of what casting was, he would play games with his two elder brothers, Moiz and Musab. As they weren’t allowed to go to LAN cafés, the brothers would mostly play games at home.
“I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t playing games with them. In early 2000s, my eldest brother Moiz went to LUMS and he started playing a lot of Warcraft 3 and DOTA 1. He brought DOTA to our house and that’s what, according to my mother, ‘corrupted the household.’”
First Pakistani to cast at DreamHack - Mamoon 'TeaTime' Sabri
© Ahmed Hayan Kazi
While Sabri’s brother Musab was really good at DOTA and according to him, could’ve been a pro-player if he wanted to, Sabri was quite the opposite. “Although I had been playing DOTA since 2003 or 04, I wasn’t very good at it,” laughed Sabri.
“One thing I do is when I go for something, I try really hard. The issue was I kind of sucked at gaming. I was super competitive but I wasn’t really good. So, I’d try doing things that would make up for it by playing with European teams so I could get better.”
“But I was never good enough. Mechanically, I had a ceiling that I hit and I couldn’t go beyond that. And I also didn’t like putting in 12 hours a day. Being super competitive made me a worse person. I was always agitated and angry. Most of my fights with my brothers happened over DOTA. I knew I wouldn’t go on to compete at the highest level. The transition to casting happened because I stopped gaming.”
Sabri was formally introduced to the idea of casting in 2012 when he came across a Pakistani DOTA community called PkDota, run by Rahim Amir, whom he describes as “a super shady dude but he rallied the community effectively back then”. PkDota held a tournament called ‘The Inaugural’.
Sabri credits the book ‘Hogfather’ for his alias 'TeaTime.'
© Ahmed Hayan Kazi
In the tournament was a guy named LeProdigy and he said he was casting some of the games and asked Sabri to join him. “I said I didn’t know how to cast. But we did it and enjoyed a lot. It was fun. I listened back to it later and hated it because you never want to listen to your own recorded voice. I hated myself so much. But I don’t like hating myself so I got competitive and decided to get better at it.”
Amir offered Sabri more opportunities to cast, eventually setting him on his way to pursuing it professionally. But in hindsight, while Sabri may have been introduced to casting much later, the earliest traces go back to his childhood in mid-2000s when he would play with his brothers.
“One part that subconsciously played a major factor in leading me towards casting was Musab. He and I used to connect our PCs online and play a game called ‘Pickup Express’. And my brother is a funny guy so he’d make up these characters and try to make me laugh,” he shared.
“He’d go off, like, ‘This reporter has never seen anything like this, he’s never seen a car go this fast…’ and he’d make up these small, entertaining skits which made the experience of the game so much better. When I look back at it, that was my first instance of experiencing what casting could be.”
It creates a spectator experience and you’re entertained by being a part of that experience. That’s what casting is!
TEATIME
Sabri is mainly known by his social media and gaming alias ‘TeaTime’. On how he landed upon it, he credits the book ‘Hogfather’ by Sir Terry Pratchett.
Sabri was formally introduced to the idea of casting in 2012
© Ahmed Hayan Kazi
“Hogfather had a character called ‘Mr. Teatime’ and Mr. Teatime was an assassin who figured out how to kill Santa Claus by using the milk teeth of children. His entire point was he’d figure out the best way to kill you and he’d do it for fun. And I thought for a professional DOTA gaming career, that was a really cool name. And that eventually transitioned into commentary.”
CASTING KING… NOT YET
Not unlike it happens in many creative industries in Pakistan, a year and a half into casting and Sabri was still never paid for it. But he got a lot of work and thought he became “pretty decent” at it.
“In hindsight, I wasn’t particularly good but at the time, you know, you think you’re all white hot. I wasn’t good because first of all, it’s more difficult to cast in a language that’s not your first language. No one in Pakistan can speak English like someone in England does. We do it best in Urdu as we have a lot of anecdotes and the local cultural fodder to play with.”
He recalls a story of his friend, Ali Hasnain, who recently cast for Red Bull M.E.O. “Ali casts in Urdu. And he’s new at it but he had this amazing line which could only come from a veteran. He said something along the lines of ‘sure, Vega doesn’t have good rotation, but if they have a tree, four of them will take cover behind it, four will drop smoke bombs and they’ll produce you an entire Michael Bay movie.’ Something like that doesn’t come out easily when you cast in English. That’s something I’ve put a lot of emphasis in learning.”
He added that his education in business administration played no role in leading him towards casting. “Perhaps the only thing that it helped me in with regards to my commentating is working with people and having a vibrant vocabulary and a sense of anecdotes to draw from.”
THE SWITCH
In 2016, Sabri switched from DOTA casting to Counterstrike when he signed with the multi-channel network ESL, which is the world’s biggest and oldest e-sports company. “I was brought in to cast DOTA competitions but I found out ESL doesn’t have any in-house DOTA casters, so I was offered to cast Counterstrike. I had been watching CS because I love the game, so me being a fool that I am, I said yes,” he said. “And I sucked at it. It’s very different.”
Sabri switched from DOTA casting to Counterstrike when he signed with ESL.
© Ahmed Hayan Kazi
Sabri noted the issue is that no one offers any feedback in casting so it’s all on yourself to learn and improve. “In my entire career of six years so far, I have only ever gotten feedback once. It was from Scrawny CG, another caster.”
When I started, there was no one to guide me. Now when new casters come up, at least they have me.
DISASTERS, DISASTERS, DISASTERS
“I’ve had two major disasters: In 2017, as part of ESL, I was to cast qualifiers in IEM Katowice, which is one of the two unofficial world championships (another being ESL One Cologne). The match I got was Fnatic vs G2 Esports, which comprised of some of the all-time great players. This was THE qualifier.”
What was supposed to be the big launchpad for his casting career went completely awry. “By this time, I thought I was ready. The only issue is I’m from Pakistan and our internet isn’t very good.”
Two major issues happened: Twitch servers are bad in Pakistan, so you can’t get the maximum streaming quality that you want. The second issue was during this tournament, Islamabad faced the biggest storm it had faced in years. “So, I was streaming to 53 thousand people live and my streaming quality was horrible.”
One thing I do is when I go for something, I try really hard - TeaTime
© Abuzar Mir
He continued, “Another thing was I had never casted for more than 10 thousand people. It went so terribly that until last year, most people remembered TeaTime because of this disaster. People now doubted my stream producing ability. That kicked me far down. In the beginning when I worked with ESL, I skipped a few steps on the ladder so now I had to go back and figure out what those steps even were.”
The second disaster happened in 2018 when Epicenter announced DOTA 2 casting challenge. “I had been watching DOTA but hadn’t played or casted DOTA for two years.”
It was eight hours of casting daily. Yet, he agreed to cast as he felt he “shouldn’t say no at this stage.” However, he struggled to juggle between his university and a full-time casting routine for weeks. Exhaustion and lack of sleep ultimately took a toll on him… and he slipped.
“DOTA and CS communities are very different. DOTA is like a cult and is very protective of their people. Making jokes about players isn’t acceptable and you need to be tactical about it,” he shared. “One of the players in the game was Admiral Bulldog, who won the world championship in 2013, and he’s huge in the community. Bulldog hadn’t been a pro-player for a while though and had a bad score-line in that game. I said something about how he can’t keep up and he’s a bit of a celebrity. To me, that was nothing controversial.”
However, people started sending death threats to him on Facebook. “My Twitter had blown up. And I was young and defended myself badly. So, I can never really do DOTA casting internationally again. That is not something you feasibly come back from.”
To put it simply, it was just a tempest in a teapot.
LEARNING FROM THE BEST
When Sabri first got into DOTA, he would listen to TobiWan, LD and ODPixel. Then for Counterstrike, it was Semmler, Anders, Sadokist and HenryG.
“Listening to them, particularly ODPixel, made me realize I need to look beyond the raw technical ability. Because eventually everyone would figure that out and get decent enough to get people somewhat hyped. But what’s going to set you apart is whether you can make it iconic. ODPixel helped me figure that out.”
The ultimate goal is not technical proficiency, it’s ‘iconic’
WHAT EVEN IS CASTING?
TeaTime emphasizes the importance and thrill of esports commentary. He says not everybody has the technical knowledge of the game. “Very few people are fans of the game. What people are a fan of is competition. What people want to see is humanity-defying feats being accomplished,” he notes.
Commentators of Red Bull Flick 2020
© Bsports
“For example, you’re watching a guy play Counterstrike, and you see the player standing and another guy comes behind and the player instinctively flips around and shoots him in the head without giving the other guy a chance to respond, you know it’s going to be cool.”
“The problem is your body and mental reflex isn’t ready for it to be kind of cool. You are not fast enough to register that because you’re not in the game. There’s a big difference: you’re not playing so you’re not as hyper-aware; you don’t have your hair raising. You do not have million dollars on the line; you do not have eyes sweating, knees weak and arms heavy. That’s my job to give you that. It’s my job to make you feel like you’re a part of it and say ‘this is the epitome of what you’re experiencing’.”
However, getting too technical isn’t ideal either.
“A part of my job is to educate you. That’s why the first rule is accuracy. You never lie as a caster because what you say is representative of history to come. The second rule is to always be entertaining. Education does not surpass entertainment.”
CAST ON
When Sabri turned into TeaTime, there was no one to guide his way. That has changed now with new casters appearing onto the scene, most of whom have been trained by Sabri himself.
“Every single step of the growth that I’ve made was impossible for a Pakistani until I did it,” TeaTime remarks. “You don’t know who to go to, to get hired. Even if you’re the best caster in the world, if you’re from Pakistan, it’s impossible to get into the conversation because there’s no local scene to get listed in. You have to send cold emails and ask them to trust you, a random Pakistani kid.”
In the end though, the cold emails and the years of learning and hard work paid off for the ‘random Pakistani kid’ known as TeaTime.
