Behind the Voices: The Practice and Challenges of Esports Casters

Casters commentate on a live, streamed video game for a large online audience. Drawing from 20 semi-structured interviews with amateur casters of either Dota 2 or Rocket League video games and over 20 hours of participant observations, we describe the distinctive practices of two types of casters, play-by-play and color commentary. Play-by-play casters are adept at improvising a rich narrative of hype on top of live games, whereas color commentators methodically prepare to fill in the gaps of live play with informative analysis. Casters often start out alone, relying upon reflective practice to hone their craft. Through examining challenges faced by amateur casters, we identified three design opportunities for game designers to support casters and would-be casters as first-class users. Such designs would provide an antidote to the challenges faced by amateur casters: those of the lack of social support for casting, camerawork, and data availability.