INTERVIEW: TotalBiscuit: '[Apollo] is one of the most analytical casters'

GosuGamers called up the eloquent John "TotalBiscuit" Bain to hear the DreamHack AMD Sapphire Championship commentator's words on the nearing tournaments in Sweden. And they were many, mind you, over 1900 words. So get a protein shake before you start to read.

I've been asking players how they have been preparing for DreamHack, so I'd shoot at you the same question. How do you, as a caster prepare for a tournament like this?

- Well as the play-by-play caster it's sort of my role to make sure that the action is always exciting and that I'm always accurately describing what's going on on the screen to make it easier for the guys that are watching. I think the worst thing you can possibly do is when trying to relax with a beer and a packet of crisps and watch some good eSports action is to have to pay too much attention. For instance the way football works, the fact that the play-by-play commentator often will call out the name of the player that has the ball to stop the need to keep track of that for the viewer because it becomes to stressful for people.

So I tend to practice simply by keeping my voice in shape and doing commentary every single day. Obviously I take as many tournaments as I can to try and do that. A lot of the things that I learn about the game also come from playing as well. I've been playing a lot more lately. I've switched races so that I'd get a better idea of how Zerg mechanics work and in the last couple of tournaments as a direct result of that I've been able to explain situations better as I have a better feel of what a Zerg player would be able to do at that time and also how important things like inject timing is and creep spread and the amount of queens on the field and all sort of things like that.

So I try to keep my knowledge as high as I possibly can on a part-time basis and Apollo is the guy that focuses on the individual players. He knows their play styles and he also learns a lot about timings. I think he is one of the most analytical casters in the world at the moment. So he deals with all that stuff and I just keep in practice and make sure that when the tournament comes around I'm in the best shape I can be for a very long time and to keep the enthusiasm and excitement level up to a 12-14 hour cast.



You've been casting alongside Apollo for a while now, and you've been handed a lot of compliments for your tournament casts. Why is it, do you think, that you and Apollo work so well together?

It's a very classic composition in thestyle of how normal sportcasting works. It's based on the American sports casting model that's been in place now for a very long time. It's been at least 50 years that they've been doing the same thing. Whereby you got one who is generally broadcast trained but he's not a sportsman and his job is to present the match in the most clear and concise and enjoyable way imaginable. He does so by having this training, having a lot of vocal training, to go through sentence after sentence rapidly but clearly enunciate what you're wanting to say. Plus making sure you're not stumbling over your words and making the whole thing awkward. If you're detracting from the broadcast by simply falling over yourself as opposed to being exciting and driving the hype then you're doing it wrong.

Whereas Apollo, his strength is because he is an ex-player and a coach for Team Dignitas. That's where he comes in as the analytical guy which is exactly the same as how American sports work as well. You'll often have this so called "color commentator" and he'll be either a player, an ex-player, a coach or a manager. Someone who's got that inside knowledge and can provide a more in-depth look to the way that the game is playing out from the perspective of someone who's been involved in it.

We play off each other really well, and I suppose it also helps that we're both British so we both have the same kind of humor and it doesn't get awkward as a result of that and we both get along really well. We're good friends, we've been for a while. I think that continuing to commentate together at every event possible - this will be our third event this month that we've commentated - then I think that results in us having a good synergy.

You've been to DreamHack a couple of times before. How do you think the organization is doing eSports spectator-wise?

- I certainly think it's driving eSports in Europe forward harder than any other organization at the moment. It's really heartening to see that there are a lot of different organizations in different European countries that are trying to do it. DreamHack is in the best position to do it because of the size of its LAN event and how well established it is, how well funded it is and also how experienced they are in terms of both running tournaments and from a production side. Those guys know what they're doing when it comes to producing a good quality show and as a result you see that DreamHack is one of the best produced tournaments in the world. Now of course they have access to that big arena and what we're hoping to see is the biggest Western eSports crowd that we've seen so far for StarCraft 2. I'm hoping that that ends up being the case, considering how many fans they tried to cram into the DreamArena Extreme for DreamHack Summer 2011 which was half the size of this event then I think we're going to have a really good showing there. So I'm grateful to DreamHack for continuing to push so hard on the StarCraft 2 front of things and always producing a very professional show and being very easy to work with.



Are there any other tournaments at DreamHack you would have liked to cast for. Dota2 perhaps?

- I don't really have the knowledge to cast for Dota 2. The problem with Dota is for instance is that I played it for quite some time, but then I stopped playing for a great deal of time so I'm really out of date when it comes to the meta-game and the item builds and things like that. I'm still trying to re-learn that.

I may get involved in it at some point as a play-by-play caster on a more casual level. I don't think I'd ever get in to that scene in a very major way. The degree of knowledge to make that interesting is extremely high and I don't know if I really have got the time to learn it.

I wouldn't mind getting involved in Bloodline Champions or maybe League of Legends as well. I know more about League of Legends than I do about Dota 2 for instance. But it's hard to just sort of shoe horn yourself into a scene when you're already working fairly heavily in one and still having to do all of the stuff that I do on a full-time basis. StarCraft 2 has always been a part-time passion project for me. And I think it's going to have to remain that way because I'm involved in too many other things and I don't really like focusing too much on one game. I like variety. Those are a couple of tournaments I'd like to dabble in but I don't think it would be appropriate for me to do so at this stage.

Looking at the StarCraft 2 player pool, do you have any players you would especially like to cast? Any favorites there?

- I certainly got a few favourites definitely in terms of people I enjoy watching and people I think have a good shot at winning the tournament.

People need to keep an eye out in Group H for the Swedish player SaSe, who recently joined Quantic Gaming. He's in a group where he could potentially lose, but I think he should be okay. He's in there with Adelscott and Merz. Merz is obviously quite strong but SaSe's been in Korea now for several months and I just saw him play at the IPL4 qualifier in the UK. He did go out before the final, he was actually placed third simply because he ended up having to fight the Korean player Tails twice. And he beat him the first time, knocked him down in the loser bracket in a PvP but then lost again. Before that he was looking untouchable. He beat Ryung 2-0 and it didn't even look close.

And obviously SlayerS`Ryung is an extremely potent and powerful player, he was considered to be one of the favorites of the tournament alongside Stephano who is of course someone else who I'd watch. I don't think there's any chance of Stephano not getting out of his group. Bischu is a bit of a threat to him as we saw in the IPL4 UK qualifier. Bischu actually did take a game away from him and almost won the series. SjoW could, maybe, but I don't know. I think Stephano deals with Terrans so well so that even a player of SjoW's caliber's is going to be really hard pressed to deal with him there so I think that he'll go through.



Then of course there are the people I love to watch like ThorZaIN who has just won the NASL 2 open tournament so he's got the final spot for the grand finals in early December, that's great to see. And obviously SeleCT as well is looking for kind of a breakout moment where he can actually win a tournament. He's been getting very far in a lot of different tournaments lately so yeah there's so many great players. It's kind of a shame that we did lose some of the Koreans. MC is not coming which is very disappointing. I love watching MC play, and since I got to cast with him at DreamHack Summer it's disappointing for me to not see him come along. And obviously we're missing out on Clide as well. There's a lot of different people that I think can take it. Needless to say, we have got IdrA, NaNiwa, HuK, SEn who have all been performing really well lately.

What else will you be looking forward to at DreamHack?

- If I get the chance I would like to see a little bit more of Dota 2 played. I just like to watch different games. I do different games on my YouTube channel as my job every single day. And I love to experience as many games as possible. I'd like to see Bloodline Champions for instance, that's a game I'm very interested in. I've played quite a bit of it and I think it's good potential to be a good spectator eSport.

Aside from that I'm really there to meet people because DreamHack Summer was one of the best experiences I've had in terms of meeting the fans and just meeting really cool people. I've got a lot of fond memories of that tournament. Since this one's going to be twice as large I'm hoping that I get to meet a lot of cool people there as well. And since we've got our arena stage and we're gonna be in the same place pretty much the entire time people can just drop by and say hi in-between games - and I hope that they do.

Any last words to your followers and fans?

- Once again thank you for following everything that I've done and I really appreciate that the guys that usually follow me are willing to accept a lot of different games and they don't really want me to focus on just one, that's awesome. Thank you for everyone that has supported me through my StarCraft 2 commentary from the very start on day one of beta. It's cool that I've got now to this stage where I'm commentating probably the biggest tournament that I've been involved in so far. I hope that you guys do come along and watch and I hope you have a good time!

About TotalBiscuit
John "TotalBiscuit" Bain is a full-time game commentator, with a YouTube channel with over 500,000 subscribers. He is a part of the British StarCraft 2 commentating duo Apollo & TotalBiscuit. At DreamHack Winter 2011 he will be one of the six commentators at the DreamHack AMD Sapphire Championship. Check out his YouTube channel for gaming as well as his YouTube channel for StarCraft 2. You can also check out his live channel on Twitch.TV where he host tournaments and Showcraft Variety streams.