
aka orin | salaryman gamer | fgc jack of all trades | mvc/ggxx/vf | marxist
What does it take to effectively commentate fighting games? How do you improve?
I hate to kinda cop out on giving a personal answer, but there was a recent, and extremely good, Twitter thread by a commentator, Jaytsu, about "What makes bad commentator; how do you improve upon it?"
https://twitter.com/jaytsu_/status/1708532670047658423
I legit implore you to read it in full because it's great and in organized, bite-sized chunks. If you can't access it due to Twitter being whatever it is right now, I'll gladly grab screenshots (and ask for permission later 😂).
If you have any follow up questions afterwards (even when the AMA is done), I'll be happy to delve into great detail!
This was a helpful start! I think I need a flashcard deck of SF6 moves off of wiki.supercombo.gg to remember all their names... 🤔
You can always fall back on basic/ colloquial names. The ones that are different in functions are the ones requiring fine designations. Eg Fireball for a lot of projectiles, but Sonic Boom/Max Out (or "Booms") for Guile and Dee Jay as those functions are different despite also being a projectile.
Don't ruin your brain with flash card recall if it hurts your pacing. Just stay with the high points of being able to recognize situations and the main moves that get folks there (e.g normals, command normals, main special moves). If that is your strength though, definitely lean into it. I'm horrible at that! (Trying to work on it as of late though).
I figure it would also help my gameplay, training that instant visual recognition of moves when they come out!
How did you get into commentating? Just chatting it up at locals?
You know, I've never really thought about this before LOL
Mind if I ask you to pop that into my Ask box? I think that's gonna be a whole story thinking about it for a bit now. https://cohost.org/ryyudo/ask