Pokémon TCG: Sword and Shield—Brilliant Stars

Worlds Commentary.

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Alex(charm)ander

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Yesterday's commentary on the World Championships was a huge step in the right direction for the game. I think we can all agree that more professional coverage will help increase interest in the Pokemon TCG. If it were not for the efforts of The Top Cut and their success in providing coverage to the playerbase TPCi may have not even considered the idea. However, yesterday's commentary was very poor and as a community if we want to improve the quality of future representation we should voice our opinions. After all, representatives of TCPi read this, right?

The lack of knowledge on the part of the commentators made it difficult to watch. I found myself being distracted from the game by the frequent questions the commentators were asking the TPCi representative. For a large portion of the feed they disregarded the game to ask questions about basic game function. Some have argued that for the people watching who are unfamiliar with the game the basic explanations may be helpful. I argue that those who have no interest or investment in the game will not be watching, especially a World Champion finals match. Those who are not competitive still recognize the basic rules, like why we shuffle. There is no person who is benefitting from misused terms, misidentified cards, and incorrect rule assumptions.

Many people have suggested that The Top Cut commentate the feed, that is a good idea as they understand the game and have the experience but we can't all rely on TPCi to use community based representatives when they have their own within the company. For future feeds to attain the level of professionalism and appreciation sought from the Pokemon community more knowledgeable commentators should be used. I am not asking for top level competitive commentary, there may very well be non-competitive players watching, but it should be fair to assume they at least know the rules, and not every card needs to be explain. The CURRENT GAME should be commentated on not a discussion about the GENERAL GAME.

tl;dr: Last night's commentary wasn't good, lets talk about how it can be improved.

Discuss.
 
Alex(charm)ander said:
The lack of knowledge on the part of the commentators made it difficult to watch. I found myself being distracted from the game by the frequent questions the commentators were asking the TPCi representative. For a large portion of the feed they disregarded the game to ask questions about basic game function. Some have argued that for the people watching who are unfamiliar with the game the basic explanations may be helpful. I argue that those who have no interest or investment in the game will not be watching, especially a World Champion finals match. Those who are not competitive still recognize the basic rules, like why we shuffle. There is no person who is benefitting from misused terms, misidentified cards, and incorrect rule assumptions.

Many people have suggested that The Top Cut commentate the feed, that is a good idea as they understand the game and have the experience but we can't all rely on TPCi to use community based representatives when they have their own within the company. For future feeds to attain the level of professionalism and appreciation sought from the Pokemon community more knowledgeable commentators should be used. I am not asking for top level competitive commentary, there may very well be non-competitive players watching, but it should be fair to assume they at least know the rules, and not every card needs to be explain. The CURRENT GAME should be commentated on not a discussion about the GENERAL GAME.

tl;dr: Last night's commentary wasn't good, lets talk about how it can be improved.

Discuss.
Click to expand...

Be careful not to conflate two different things here.

Yes, I agree that it was disconcerting to hear misused terms and incorrect terminology.
We should not have that, at all.
However, I think that there was a large novice audience, much as there is for the Olympics.
We wouldn't want to watch gymnastics where the commentators assume we all know the complicated ins and outs of the sport.

So, it seems that there needs to be one commentator that focuses on the basics of the moves being made. That could be one of the Pokemon staffers that has both a deep knowledge of the game and an understanding of what new players need to know. And one expert commentator that can give the color commentary about the strategies being employed. I would suggest either a judge who has watched a number of of matches of the players involved and so both knows the decks and how the players use the strategies involved.
That way, we won't get comments of "he's searching for something. I wonder what". The commentator should know what one or two things that the player would be looking for in the given situation and be able to simply explain why.
 
The "large novice audience" was composed primarily of people there to mock the game and berate other players, judging by the chat. We should not cater to them in any way, shape, or form.
 
Better yet, there should have been two different commentary teams taking the same video image, and then two separate web streams issued simultaneously. The commentary on one stream would be for non-players and novices, the commentary on the other stream would be for experienced players. (If they didn't want to bother with the latter, they could just feed the video stream to the Top Cut, and give them permission to use it and add their own commentary.)
 
hmm, im sure all commentators started off from somewhere and somehow. instead of all the negative "commentation sucked! i couldve done it better! they are such chumps/newbs" commenting, how about we say thanks as it was broadcast and imo, they did a job well done for their lack of knowledge of the game.

i commend them and i know darn well i wouldnt have done so well under the pressure of knowing thousands were watching.

thats the thing with society now, too many people putting others down instead of helping them up
 
PokePop said:
However, I think that there was a large novice audience, much as there is for the Olympics.
We wouldn't want to watch gymnastics where the commentators assume we all know the complicated ins and outs of the sport.
Click to expand...

Cosign everything in your final paragraph (which I omitted), and I think the Olympics comparison is a good one -- the NBC coverage, when it actually got around to broadcasting sports, invariably had a team that had one "insider" and another more casual-fan-ish commentator. The "insider" would be able to point out the intricacies of what was happening and react appropriately, and the casual commentator would be able to ask (intelligent!) questions about what was going on when he or she felt like a deeper explanation would be useful. I don't care at all about gymnastics or diving, but it's still possible to watch and enjoy those events if the commentators are doing a good job.

If TPCi manages to recreate that formula, I'll be happy. Until then, I'll be complaining that it wasn't the TTC guys. As well as acknowledging how cool it is that we were able to watch the matches live this year.
 
"Trash Claw" is stupid. 20+ times is simply lazy. Learn to read the cards that are both on the decklist in front of you and on the screens you're watching.
 
Tapin said:
Cosign everything in your final paragraph (which I omitted), and I think the Olympics comparison is a good one -- the NBC coverage, when it actually got around to broadcasting sports, invariably had a team that had one "insider" and another more casual-fan-ish commentator. The "insider" would be able to point out the intricacies of what was happening and react appropriately, and the casual commentator would be able to ask (intelligent!) questions about what was going on when he or she felt like a deeper explanation would be useful. I don't care at all about gymnastics or diving, but it's still possible to watch and enjoy those events if the commentators are doing a good job.

If TPCi manages to recreate that formula, I'll be happy. Until then, I'll be complaining that it wasn't the TTC guys. As well as acknowledging how cool it is that we were able to watch the matches live this year.
Click to expand...

The funny thing is that NBC has been torn apart during the Olympics because they actually didn't provide any of the names of the moves done during gymnastics, at least during primetime.
 
PokePop said:
However, I think that there was a large novice audience
Click to expand...

Nondescript words like "large" are tricky. Assuming "a lot" of people is 1 million, that's relatively small compared to the population of the world.

While there many have been "many" novice people listening, I would say the majority of the audience was not novice. I didn't even know they were streaming until 11:30 the night before...so I find it hard to believe that novice players that don't frequent fan sites as often made up the majority of the audience....but more importantly, I doubt very, VERY seriously they were the target audience. I watched the match at my local card store on the big screen. The owner is primarily a Magic player, but dabbles in everything, and is vaguely aware of the rules of Pokemon and of the "money" cards he buys and sells. He was watching the match as well and told me he had no clue what was going on the whole time because he had no idea what the cards did or where at a glance, and didn't know enough of what the strategy was. So, I doubt the target audience was novice people that were lost the entire time. Which means the target audience was meant for non-novice players that have been BEGGING for the coverage for years. Much in the same vain that TCPi (er, the entire Pokemon franchise as a whole, rather) doesn't advertise on NBC and pretty much ONLY advertises on CN and the likes, because that is their audience, if they are going to stream live to their target audience, they need to appeal to it, or else its like Pokemon commercials on late night Cinemax.

I was very happy to have SOMETHING. Yes, the commentary was horrible, but I would MUCH rather have bad coverage than no coverage.
 
The Commentary seemed uneducated I think we all agree.
Maybe next time they will get someone who knows the cards.
 
Just to be clear, I'll preface this by saying I'm happy they live streamed anything at all regardless of the quality of commentary.

Regarding the target audience, the stream was advertised on a website that focuses on video games (GameSpot) so many of the people that showed up were likely more familiar with the Pokemon video games than the TCG. Also trying to target a certain audience and successfully targeting an audience aren't the same thing. They may have been trying to appeal to people not necessarily familiar with the TCG but just didn't do a very good job with it (I'm a VGC player with basic TCG knowledge but had trouble following the game).
 
At one point he calls the deck a "Library" Since when did Pokemon become Magic? There were a few times when they just missed turns completely. I thought they didn't do a good job pointing out where the turning points of the game happened. For example game 3 where Harrison moved all his energy with Shaymin to Mewtwo so he could KO the Darkrai. I don't think anyone would disagree that the move there was huge and was probably the losing move of the game for Harrison. He also said "kill the opponent's Pokemon" If you really want to cater to people who know nothing about the game, and I know this is a stretch, but what if a parent was watching and thought Pokemon was too violent for their kid because Pokemon killed each other instead of knocking each other out? Stretch I know, but you have to think of all the possible outcomes for that statement. I'm also down with getting better feed for those at home. I'd like to see what's in each players hand, if they could work that in somehow. Commentary is a good idea, just need to get someone who's an actual "Pokemon Expert" to commentate.
 
I think the solution here is to not have Gamespot (a video game site, whose VGC commentary also stunk) do it anymore. I mean, why didn't they have some spare staff run it or something, having an outside party do it was pretty unnecessary unless there were other considerations involved. IIRC in another thread, someone mentioned Japan got a stream not from Gamespot, so it's not like it can't be done...

Overall, just get better commentators is the solution. And better streaming on the VGC, it was disgraceful its finals was pretty much unwatchable. I mean they have to know who the top players are out there, having some of them or ven experienced judges can give better commentary...
 
PokePop said:
Be careful not to conflate two different things here.

Yes, I agree that it was disconcerting to hear misused terms and incorrect terminology.
We should not have that, at all.
However, I think that there was a large novice audience, much as there is for the Olympics.
We wouldn't want to watch gymnastics where the commentators assume we all know the complicated ins and outs of the sport.

So, it seems that there needs to be one commentator that focuses on the basics of the moves being made. That could be one of the Pokemon staffers that has both a deep knowledge of the game and an understanding of what new players need to know. And one expert commentator that can give the color commentary about the strategies being employed. I would suggest either a judge who has watched a number of of matches of the players involved and so both knows the decks and how the players use the strategies involved.
That way, we won't get comments of "he's searching for something. I wonder what". The commentator should know what one or two things that the player would be looking for in the given situation and be able to simply explain why.
Click to expand...
PokePop, I definitely agree with your closing point and I think to an extent it fortifies my argument. Something I am having a serious issue with is that about mid way they steered away from commentating on the game and began to just talk about the game of Pokemon in general. It was distracting, disorganized, and unprofessional that they simply are having a conversation over the game being streamed.

Is there a link to the finals match so those who didn't get to see it can watch it and follow the thread?
 
At one point of the stream, after the VG final and before the closing ceremonies, the commentators conversation turned to the fact the USA sweeped worlds and was like what message does this send to the international community. The USA did not sweep, the USA won 3 (all VG) out of 6 (TCG and VG) world titles. It seemed the focus of the stream was VG, VG, VG. Now I know in TCG circles, players don’t really care about the VG and in VG circles, players don’t really care about the TCG. Players opinion of the other side of the game is something that can not be controlled, however when something official such as a live stream is done there needs to be a balance of VG and TCG. The one sided focus of the VG is something that can be fixed for next year.

This is the first time there was a live stream, there are bound to be somethings to be improved upon. The fact that there was a Live Stream was a major plus that can not be overshadowed by and negitive parts of the stream.

Props P!P
 
Politoed666 said:
The "large novice audience" was composed primarily of people there to mock the game and berate other players, judging by the chat. We should not cater to them in any way, shape, or form.
Click to expand...

I agree with not catering to the trolls, and in fact there should have been much much better moderation on that chat. You can't have that kind of banter going on for something that's supposed to be kid-friendly. All they did was auto-ban people who posted too quickly or insulted the announcers (and the latter not even consistently), and occasionally show up to wave a finger.

I do think there's a large audience of people who don't know what exactly is going on in the game, which is why some basic (accurate) explanations are helpful, as long as they're not distracting from the game itself.
 
There were actually alot of VGC viewers watching the TCG side, so i mean i did'nt mind them explaining every card and the basic strategies i was just annoyed by the face that they got alot of cards names wrong and some of the them they did'nt even know what they did. i definantly think TPCI can do alot better with there announcers.
 
By the way, one thing that I really enjoyed was watching the live stream before the match started. Seeing all the people I know, it almost felt like being there.
 
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