Hello! My name is Gleb Korotky, although now I am better known under my “pseudonym” – DrBrilmann. I’ve been working on the League of Legends pro scene for a year now, commentating on games in Ultraliga (Poland), NLC (Nordic), Amazon EU Masters, and, God forbid, VCS English (Vietnam!).
The fact that I am not a native speaker, but at the same time I work in the world and in English, in principle, is not news, because there are many people of non-English-speaking origin working in the LoL field. There are Portuguese, Greeks, Danes. But in my memory there were no Russian commentators working in English, at least in the League.
And in this regard, I decided to start a small blog about how I got here, as well as share with you new impressions and experience that I gain while working in the field of professional computer sports.
How did I get here
In general, the story is quite trivial. Covid came, I lost my original profession (concert pianist) and was locked at home with no idea of existence. And since I’ve been playing League of Legends for who knows how many years now, I was tempted – why not try myself as a commentator?? I’ve wanted it for a long time, I’ve been dreaming about it for a long time, and I also know English. Just on the way. And so my friend and I sat down with our equipment of very dubious quality and started playing the game every two or three days “on the table”. Understand how we work, understand what we need to do, and how it all works.
Technical Note. I took on the role of the so-called play-by-play caster, that is, the commentator who deals with narratives, the general movement of the conversation and voicing what is happening in team fights. My friend took on the role of color caster – an analyst who explains what is happening.
And after sitting and working for a https://slotssafari.uk/login/ while, my friend received a direction, saying that it turns out that the French do not have an English broadcast. And right now the whole league was on a crazy upswing, a team called Karmine Corp was becoming a star and receiving huge support from fans, to the point that they were collecting some crazy numbers on Twitch. I won’t lie, but they almost spit on the numbers of the official French broadcast.
And we started recording it. Lord, what a hemorrhoid that was. We recorded live game broadcasts with the sound turned off via OBS, then immediately processed them, checked the quality, and immediately tried to upload them in order to make it before the broadcast ended. Well, it was necessary to post the translation as quickly as possible in order to disrupt the maximum hype. And by the way, surprisingly, we sometimes collected excellent numbers. Somewhere there were 30 views, and somewhere there were 5-6 thousand, and this was without advertising(!).
It was going very hard. Esports commentator is a fucking weird profession. Firstly, it is very similar to the profession of dubbing actors. Some people don’t succeed because they don’t have a “fork in the ass,” as Oleg Palych Tabakov called it, or they don’t understand how to work in front of the camera and in front of the microphone, or how to work with their voice in general. Secondly, there is one of the most unpleasant pitfalls here – there is really nowhere to study. The industry is very young, and despite the fact that there are many professions, roughly speaking, related ones, there is nothing directly related to this. Hence it turns out that we have to open the broadcasts of those commentators who are most attractive in style and psychophysics, and we try to understand why what they do works. In my life these were the three main commentators: Quickshot, Medic and Kobe. Thus, my initial commentary style became a hodgepodge of styles from these particular ether mastodons.
One more quick little note. I have no idea whether I have the right to insert links here or ways to find me, so if yes, indeed, it is possible, please tell me in the comments, and in the next blog I will indicate all the links that I mentioned in this material. Thank you 🙂
As a result, it so happened that we covered two seasons of LFL 2021 – spring and summer. In this frantic mode, where our work had to be combined with the project, trying to invest in these deadlines and not receive a penny in return. But there was really enough fan love. People wrote that they really liked it, and at the beginning of the “Custer journey” this was enough for me. The fact that I spend 6-7 hours licking other people’s broadcasts, master classes and trying to find tips in all possible related professions does not go unnoticed, it just took me to seventh heaven with happiness.
Christmas 2021
But the euphoria from all this passed and the question arose – in general, what should I do with all this beautiful experience that I received?? I don’t know. And I went to the amateur leagues. Mise-en-scene – amateur leagues are discord servers that broadcast on Twitch. I have probably never had a more disorganized experience. There are no normal schedules, everyone is trying to do something “like on time”, the broadcast goes to a maximum of 30 people (of which 20 are the league administration and players), and if you get paid for this whole circus with microphones, then this is pure happiness. For reference, I worked for a league in an American college. I worked from 00:00-01:00 at night until 03:00-04:00 in the morning. So I worked 4 Sundays and got $30 for it. On the one hand, nothing else could be expected, but on the other hand, it was incredibly offensive. They told me that we received some kind of grand from college, everyone was excited about my work, and in the end the output turned out to be scanty. But I got experience working with different partners and learned a lot. At least some positive.
After working in these amateur leagues for 3 months, I got a little discouraged. The eco-system in eSports is similar to the eco-system in the world of dubbing. A pool of 2-3 people is immediately assigned to the role of commentator, and if someone doesn’t like you, then you won’t get the job, no matter how layered and attractive your resume looks. Needless to say, all my resumes and cries for help went down the drain.
And then, somewhere on Christmas Eve, I receive a message. "Yo, there’s Ultraliga, the Polish regional league is looking for English-language commentators. Will you go? But they don’t pay there."I went without blinking an eye. Well, this is the official, OFFICIAL, KARL, broadcast for Riot Games, what can you think?. A month has passed, and here I am on air from my room, with a good microphone, in a jacket, in seventh heaven.
Looking back at myself now, of course I facepalm. I commented very badly. But I tried very hard and worked on myself as best I could. And apparently it worked.
2022
It turned out to be a drop dead juicy year. I will omit some general details that relate to the world, but I managed to visit Ultraliga, VCS English, NLC Div3, Amazon EU Masters. Several things helped me most in my work – my background as a journalist, my wild love for dubbing and Andrei Zaitsev’s master classes (he, of course, does not read this, but Andrei – thank you very much). In general, I noticed that dubbing actors are the best source of inspiration in my work. In general, I have had very close contact with Russian art all my life. I am a concert pianist by profession, and also from a family of theater directors, so exploring the craft of Russian artists has always been one of my main interests. They teach me how to use my voice, how to tell these stories. In general, I have a very artistic approach to broadcasts, I try to look for ways to build stories not just within the framework of a TV product, but even a little more artistically. This is a topic for a separate blog, this one is already huge, but 22 revealed a lot to me.
The icing on the cake was a trip to Warsaw in August, where I cast from the studio for the first time. This is also a separate conversation, I have a few photos and stuff, I can tell you in detail.
Something like this. I hope that you were interested in reading all this, and I will be happy to share even more with you, it seems that there is something to tell. That’s all. Thank you everyone, see you on the air! 🙂