So this year I've Shoutcasted 6 events, 5 of which have been live, and I have 2 more coming up over the next months (1 of which is again live). Among these have been tournaments held at Armageddon expo, the Univeristy of Auckland and online for Riot's OCE Uni Championship. I've also branched out into Hearthstone, casting my first live event for that just a few weeks back.
And that's just this year.
Sure it's not a lot. There's people doing more than me in terms of volume. Hell, there's people casting online events every single week. The difference is I do just about every live event in the country, and the online events I cast are high-calibre. I hate feeling like I'm tooting my own horn, and for all I know I might just sound like I'm talking myself up, but I would like to think I'm one of the better shoutcasters in the country right now.
The reason I've made this blog post though is because there's a question I get asked with more and more frequency. 'How did you get into shoutcasting?'
Today I want to try and answer that question.
Thing is, there's actually two questions being asked within that one. The first is 'how did you get into shoutcasting?' and the second is 'how can I get into shoutcasting?'
The way I got into shoutcasting is pretty simple. I started.
A few years ago, I got involved with the DWAI Gaming community, becoming it's Oceanic Director shortly thereafter. In this position, I was tasked with establishing a community presence in Oceania for DWAI Gaming. Whether or not I was successful is a different discussion. Part of launching this community involved running events, which needed to be held to the same standard as our North American events. This meant they needed to be streamed, casted and well-run. When I first put the promotion out for our first OCE event, I had someone called Matt Ross post a comment asking who was going to be shoutcasting. I said that I was planning on doing it myself, but if he was free then I'd love the help.
He was free.
So together we casted that event. Then the one the week after. And then a week later again.
So it went on.
Matt Ross had more experience than me, and working with someone regularly made it easy to bring my own standards higher each week. The more we got to know each other's style, the smoother our casts became. We were also extremely honest with one another, and after each match (sometimes between games within a match) we'd have a chat about how the whole thing went, what went wrong and what we need to improve on. If it was crap, we'd say so. Then, we'd take the advice on board and work on it for the next match.
Our quality improved massively in that time.
The rest gets a little muddier, but really it came down to putting myself forward and having a few people in-the-know who felt I did good work and would vouch for me as a caster when events were being planned.
My first live event happened because of Matt Ross too. He was running a University competition in his hometown of Dunedin, and his play-by-play caster pulled out on him about a week or two before the event. He came to me asking if I could fly down and cast it with him. I agreed. Flights came out of my own pocket, but it was well worth it. We casted for two very long days, and had an absolute blast. The audience was small, and I was wearing jeans and a polo, but the whole thing was a massive step up from the online events we'd casted. The next time he ran that event, he offered me the casting gig first. And yes, I accepted.
Once again, Matt Ross had more experience than me, which meant he also knew more people than me. Along the road I also met one Daniel Klinac, who was again very much in-the-know. Somehow between the good words put in by these two I ended up being put on the team that casted at DigiNationz that year in Vector Arena.
From there it snowballed. I'd made a name for myself with the right people, and had a reputation for saying 'yes' to live events. Next thing I was being asked to cast at Armageddon expo for 2015. Again, flights came out of my own pocket.
But that's starting to change now, and in truth it's only been about 6 months since I started doing high-calibre live events.
So how did I get to where I am? Well like I said, I always said 'yes' to live shoutcasting opportunities, and I always did the best work I could no matter what I was casting. Nothing is beneath me.
I still have a long way to go, and could be a lot better than I am, but it's something I can very nearly say I do professionally. That's a big thing for me.
As to how you can get into shoutcasting things like I do, here's what you need to do:
1) Do good work.
2) Take any gig.
3) Show up.
It's a small community here in New Zealand, and if you do those three things you'll get noticed before long. Once you have that reputation, the work comes to you.
As for me, I hope to turn this into something that can earn me money one day. The eSports industry is constantly getting bigger, and the fanbase grows with it. Two years ago League of Legends was the only thing seen in New Zealand. Now we have events for LoL, DotA, CS:GO, Hearthstone and many more. I'm excited to see how much bigger it gets in the next year.
Now imagine what it will be like in 5 years.
That's something I'm psyched to be a part of.
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