What does it take to get a top player to record their games?

[krazyhades]

Very few YouTube channels have a competent, much less expert, player, and even fewer have multiple playlists of Angband games. I've watched all the Angband vids yet put out by fizzix (fizzixangband on YouTube), plus all those by tonberrytoby. I have the personal setup to do some streaming of my own games, which I'm happy to do but I'm definitely not at fizzix's level of game knowledge or execution, and even he is almost as lucky as he is good for his games it seems (no offense intended! luck is an important skill!). Okay a bit exaggerated, he's pretty good, but still.

What high-level streamers do you all know of? And what does it take to get e.g. Timo or other top-tier players to stream/commentate games?

[MattB]

Originally Posted by krazyhades

I'm happy to do but I'm definitely not at fizzix's level of game knowledge or execution, and even he is almost as lucky as he is good for his games it seems (no offense intended! luck is an important skill!). Okay a bit exaggerated, he's pretty good, but still.

Good players just LOOK lucky.

EDIT: Which, by the way, is why bad players, such as myself, think that they're unlucky.

[Derakon]

I'd say three things hold me back (not that I'd say I'm necessarily any better than fizzix!):

1) No spare time.
2) No idea how to tackle the commentary issue; if I explain everything then I'll end up with a hoarse voice very quickly, but being too spare makes videos not that entertaining.
3) I prefer to play with a gigantic main play area and a few smaller windows; I don't think even YouTube's largest video size would give acceptable quality.

[Patashu]

Can't help with 1, but

Originally Posted by Derakon

2) No idea how to tackle the commentary issue; if I explain everything then I'll end up with a hoarse voice very quickly, but being too spare makes videos not that entertaining.

Record commentary in post-production?

Originally Posted by Derakon

3) I prefer to play with a gigantic main play area and a few smaller windows; I don't think even YouTube's largest video size would give acceptable quality.

Youtube has no maximum quality afaik. (Look at official TASVideos encodes, they go past 1080p HD and all the way to 'Original')

[DaviddesJ]

I'm not a "top player" (I'm not much into competition), but I also enjoy playing relatively slowly, way too slowly for someone else to watch on a video.

If you wanted more replays, the best way to do that would be to convince the developers to build game-logging software into the game itself. With modern technology, it would be easy to record every keystroke and event that happens in a game, and then replay the game at any pace you want, being able to see everything that's happening at any time. But someone would have to want to do that work.

[Timo Pietilä]

Originally Posted by krazyhades

And what does it take to get e.g. Timo or other top-tier players to stream/commentate games?

About year of my time would be correct. I play slowly. 15 minutes every now and then, and stop to think about my gear for a long time every now and then. Everyone would just die on boredom watching me playing. I can easily play one char for a month.

I have this same phenomenon in Civ IV too, I watched TheMeInTeam win in 1/10 of time I use playing, and I think he isn't playing any better than I am (he forgets things, doesn't micromanage enough etc.).

[fph]

It would be nice to have an external observer comment on the game (as it is done for instance on starcraft matches and other games). Unfortunately with a turn-based game that doesn't work quite well (you can't pause/speed up at some points and check things such as the player inventory when needed).

[Timo Pietilä]

Originally Posted by fph

It would be nice to have an external observer comment on the game (as it is done for instance on starcraft matches and other games). Unfortunately with a turn-based game that doesn't work quite well (you can't pause/speed up at some points and check things such as the player inventory when needed).

While I said that I play slowly most of my epic combats in angband are played like they were real-time more than turn-based. In there I go other way around, no time to comment. Using macros, inscriptions and lightning-speed keypresses observer could not tell what just happened. Monster is dead/gone for apparently no reason at all.

Angband isn't very "lets play" -friendly game. fizzix lets play is about the best you can get. I'm quite impressed how he manages to control his playing and actually explain what he is doing.

[HallucinationMushroom]

It would be an easier to sell to get a top player to just agree to stream live play at a certain time, and field questions through text. If you are looking for an education bent... I guess it wouldn't necessarily have to be a character from birth to death. It could be a series of educational encounters, or something, with downloadable character files to play through as well.

[debo]

Originally Posted by fph

It would be nice to have an external observer comment on the game (as it is done for instance on starcraft matches and other games). Unfortunately with a turn-based game that doesn't work quite well (you can't pause/speed up at some points and check things such as the player inventory when needed).

I've been doing this with some of clouded's Sil games, although I sort of dropped the ball on it after the first few. Basically he was recording termcasts of his games, so I just load up the termcasts in a player and I can speed up / pause playback as needed.

The only issue is that sometimes you really do wish you could inspect inventory, scan the map, etc. and you can't, but that's not a huge deal. A bigger dealbreaker for many people is that you can only use a single window/terminal for this if you're going to use termcasts, since multiwindow termcasts aren't really a think and most players won't likely be using huge terminals to compensate.