Shoutcasting for esports can be incredibly fun and rewarding. As a shoutcaster, you bring life to an esports game by hyping up the biggest plays and explaining the ins and outs of the game to your viewers. If you’re really into esports, you can be a shoutcaster.
Maybe you’ve already tried shoutcasting once or twice and you feel like you didn’t do well, or it isn’t for you, or maybe you’re trying to improve your shoutcasting and don’t know where to start. If you want to upgrade your shoutcasting for any reason, here are five quick tips that you can apply to become a better shoutcaster TODAY:
Do Warm-Ups
A big mistake a lot of shoutcasters make is not doing warmups before a shoutcasting session. Just like any physically demanding activity, stretching and warming up your body beforehand is necessary before you start shoutcasting.
Take a minute to relax your jaws, massage the muscles of your face and lips, and warm up your tongue and diaphragm by doing trills and vocal exercises – check youtube for more details on vocal exercises! It is tiring to talk for long periods of time, and if you’re not warmed up, you will end up stumbling on your words when your voice becomes exhausted.
Get Rid Of Filler Words
When you first start shoutcasting, you’re going to have a lot of filler words. “Uh,” “um,” “like,” “interesting,” “however,” and other words are very commonly used to fill in the time between your brain processing an idea and your mouth articulating it. However, if you use filler words a lot, you’ll sound awkward and choppy when you shoutcast.
If you’re able to identify your specific filler words, you should make a conscious effort to stop using them. Practice by talking about something for a time without saying your filler words. You can also try replacing your filler words with a variety of other words, or even having small pauses in your casting, which sounds a lot better than just repeating “interesting” every few seconds!
Level Up Your Game Knowledge
It’s part of a shoutcaster’s job to educate the viewers on what’s happening in the game. If you only know the game you’re supposed to be casting on a casual level, you will sound lost or even be confused at times, which can really detract from the viewer experience.
Take a little bit of time to study the game you’re casting! This can be in the form of either playing the game or even watching professional matches. This way you’ll never run out of things to talk about, even when there’s not much happening in the game itself.
Pick A Casting Role (And Stick To It!)
There are two main shoutcasting roles: the Play-by-play caster, and the Color caster/Analyst. If you’re trying to be a jack of all trades, you’re gonna have to work twice as hard to be as good as someone who focused on one style first.
Rather than becoming an all-around caster, it’s better to master one role first. If you want to be a play-by-play prodigy, you have to be able to think on your feet and convey information quickly and efficiently. This means focusing on vocalization and upgrading your vocabulary to be able to cast a variety of situations easily.
If you want to be a great color caster, you will need quick wits and deep knowledge about the game. This means needing to study the game more, and asking professional players how they view the game to understand the game at their level. You’re basically a translator – bridging the gap between the audience and the pro players about their understanding of the game!
Learn From Established Casters
Bad news: there’s no real school to go to if you want to learn how to shoutcast. Good news: there are a ton of brilliant shoutcasters out there for every esport that you can learn from and emulate.
If you want to improve really quickly, watch VODs of games cast by your favourite shoutcaster and do your best to really listen to what they’re saying and how they say it. See if you can imitate their inflection, word choice, tone, and pace. Watch their interviews to understand their thought processes, and how they improve on themselves and apply those lessons to yourself!
Shoutcasting is ultimately like any other skill – It takes a lot of dedication and practice to become really good at it. With these five tips, we hope that you’ll find that your journey to becoming an amazing shoutcaster will become a lot easier!
