Community

Thanks to Wizards for creating a forum thread for this event, and linking to it from the coverage pages!  I appreciate being able to comment on the matches and see what other people are saying about the event.  (Despite much of the discussion being complaints about the coverage. )

Feb 11, 2011 -- 7:01AM, The_Cardfather wrote:

I enjoy Rich, and I could listen to him commentate all day. Even play by play on podcasts were clear enough to know what was going on w/out the video. I think most of us are used to how pro sports are broadcast. MTG would have to be broadcast more like Golf flipping between the matches (like the Worlds T8 was) while providing the hand/table coverage of poker.  The trick is that MTG has a much more complicated board state than poker, so you would actually have to show that while keeping a mockup of the players hands in the bottom frame.

That would be hard to do the mockup, but the sports comparison is not far off. With Rich and Brian they have the classic play-by-play/color man setup covered. Rich's voice is perfect for the play-by-play as long as he stays in his lane and feeds Brian properly. Too often both commentators go off and tangents until Brian says something like "hey we should talk about what just happened in this game." And if the camera happened to be in a close-up of one of the players flicking his cards during that stretch, it's often hard to piece together what just happened no matter how much attention is paid by the viewer. (Compare this to the 2000 Super Bowl, the best game no one got to see because the camera spent too much time on Mrs Warner and Jeff Fisher while the game was being played, and Al Michaels and Boomer Esaison spent the game arguing instead of telling us what we missed.)

As far as "listening" to Rich, I think that's the key. They have to assume in the booth that we cant see anything because much of the time it is hard to make things out on the table with the terrible resolution and glare of the card sleeves. That means summing up the game state more frequently and declaring each card as it is played. If they do that there is still enough time for all the special-interest elements. They have the pieces for a good announcing team in place, if only they prioritize correctly.

Argh Rich and Brian are demonstrating why I don't like limited as a webcast. This is the first block in years where I am not that familiar with the cards and can't see them anyway. and they sit there are babble on tangents, sometimes making only passing references to the game. I am losing huge chunks of the whats and the whys. 

@zpikduM: I would make sure nothing non-essential is running, wired conenction, that's about all I could say. Hope that gets it corrected for you.

I'm aware of the sidebar, and not only does it not cover every card they talk about, they don't talk about every card anyway. I was watching them babble in the last limiited game and I could not see a card Guillome played but it killed something. They never actually circled back to the play. Rich should be calling every card that moves and periodically updating the game state.