As you know, I am a PC gamer at heart. I love RTS games. Unfortunately, there are not very many RTS games being made anymore. As you can expect, I am all over Starcraft 2. I’m closely following its development, I’m a participant in the beta, and I generally am a fan of Blizzard games. When Beta Phase 2 comes out, you will see the posting here plunge to nothing! (laughs)
Anyway, I have been exploring this bizarre ‘Starcraft’ type of players. What always struck me as odd that they keep insisting they type with symbols and letters like ‘gg’ or ‘glhf’ while they boast about their macro and micro. But why doesn’t this apply to the typing? Grandmothers can macro words better and can fully type out ‘good game’ or ‘good luck, have fun’. If someone can have good Starcraft 2 skills, they can surely have decent typing skills. But I digress…
One funny part of the Starcraft scene is the ‘youtube commentary’ videos. What I find humorous about them is how the commentators have to find something interesting to say in the first five minutes since every game has the same exact five minutes. Everyone is going to make scvs, probes, and drones. Everyone is going to scout with them. How do you make that sound exciting? And they do a decent job.
As gamers, we have to admit that gaming is a waste of time. Or is it? Can gaming be turned from a liability into an asset? My approach is to use gaming to learn more about the secrets of business. But that is my approach. People like the commentators are using gaming to improve their communication and perhaps make some money to the side. Some of the ‘pro-players’ have become mini-entrepreneurs and have set up little shops where they sell shirts and all. It is actually a fantastic thing for young people to do. You are turning your fun past time into a more productive activity.
Imagine, shock, if your productive activity takes off and that can be your job for life? Imagine your job being you having fun all the time. Why not? You have one life so you might as well make it count.
Out of all the commentators, day[9] is particularly different. This guy has some real broadcast talent skills that haven’t been fully developed. Unlike other commentators, he doesn’t just talk about the game but is constantly funny but informative at the same time. Not too many people can do this.
One of the things he is doing very correctly is the picture below:
Day[9]’s videos are not about how awesome he is or how awesome the pro-players are. His videos are about how awesome YOU are. People gravitate to his videos because he is sincerely trying to teach them to be better Starcraft 2 players. Along the ride, the viewer gets to see interesting games and funny antics by day[9]. I don’t see that same desire of wanting the viewer to ‘kick ass’ from the other SC2 commentators.
I don’t know if Day[9] has any formal broadcasting skills. However, he should definitely consider doing it for a living and try getting some formal skills. The skills he is building just by using Youtube will be incredible.
Communication skills are so important no matter what you do in life. Many people are scared to death to do a speech. This guy is getting comfortable putting his face on TV and doing it day after day after day. Even though he is having fun about a video game, he is building ‘in-demand’ skills.
Anyway, in a year or so once video conferencing is more popular, I’d love to get a couple of super models to ‘ask him questions’. So when he goes to the viewer and says, “Let’s see what this person’s question is…” he sees a super model hot babe asking something like, “Day[9], when I make my roaches and ultralisks, I still have problems with Terran mech. Do you have any suggestions for me?” his response would probably look like this:
