Who is the professional commentator on Hearthstone

In recent years, the development of eSports, players and organizations is constantly spoken about, but the public does not know much about the most important part of coverage of events. Each commentator has his own story, and if everything is more or less clear with classical sports, how these or other people became commentators on cyber-disciplines is not always clear. Olesya Olesami Denisenko, one of the first professional Russian-speaking commentators on Hearhstone, agreed to answer questions about her work.



I got acquainted with Olesami in the backstage Starladder, held this winter in Minsk. Then I was already familiar with Hearthstone as a game, but I heard about the cybersport part of this project from Blizzard only from afar.

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Commenting for an idea

When you are doing something unique, then you have to learn on your own, without anyone's supervision or help. Olesya began her work as a commentator in 2014, when HS was still young and neither the public nor organizations showed any particular interest in this discipline. This work did not bring any money either.

“I began to comment in 2014 on the“ freelance ”, for which, however, did not pay. For a long time I commented on one at all. Then nobody did it, because the discipline did not bring money, did not bring the audience, for a very long time and it was problematic to receive the rights to broadcast. But at the same time, on my “solo” career there are very serious e-sports tournaments, for example, “Dreamhack Winter”. If I'm not mistaken, before me "Dreamhack Winter" never gave the right to broadcast "solo" to commentators, so I consider this a definite achievement. "

It always seems to people that someone’s friends, acquaintances or people who are just lucky to be “in the right place at the right time” become commentators. However, from a conversation with Olesya, I once again made sure that nothing is so simple. The dream job will not fall on your head and you will not find yourself in some amazing profession without putting a lot of effort into it. For example, Olesami is a long months of work without any opportunity to earn.

“I commented, in fact, blindly. At that time, it was not clear whether HS would take off and whether this discipline would have its own cyber future. I had to combine work with university studies, and most importantly, I did not allow myself to disrupt the broadcast. Lateness, cancellation of the stream, disconnection in the middle of the game - it was all unacceptable. If the organizers trusted me to conduct a Russian-language broadcast, then I always conducted it “from call to call”.

Statistics on some of the tournaments held as a solo commentator from the personal archive of Olesami

At some point, had to take a chance. Studying at the university came to an end, and I had to make a choice: to try and continue to realize myself as a commentator, although it still did not make money or give it all up and start looking for a normal job, because it was simply unacceptable for parents to sit on the neck. Here, surprisingly, I found support from my relatives. Perhaps I was lucky with the occupation, because in the annex to eSports, it’s difficult for the same novice professional players to explain to their relatives what they are doing, everything was easier for me, because there’s no analogy between the usual and every sports commentator and eSports commentator. complicated. Plus, my mother noticed that the search for ordinary work is not a matter of one day, and I can spend several months searching for the opportunity to earn money as a commentator. ”

Commenting or streaming?

On the example of such disciplines as Dota 2 or CS: GO, it is known for certain that some popular commentators successfully combine their work with an additional activity - streaming their own games. The basis of any streaming is advertising of any manufacturers, services and other sites, as well as donations from viewers, when, as a commentator, you are “sitting” on a salary in an organization-studio with which you work. Olesya separately indicated that the goal of becoming a streamer and earning money from donates was never there.

“I never wanted to be just a streamer. Yes, I have my own airs when I play Hearthstone or Overwatch, but this is done for the sake of entertainment and communication with the audience. When I was just starting out as a commentator, I was also doing streaming. And now it's nice to go on the air, to communicate with people who have been watching me since the days when there were all 2-3 people on the stream.

Screenshot from one of the streams, November 2015

Plus, if you want to become a successful streamer, you have to do it all the time, have some kind of broadcast schedule in order to keep and increase the size of your audience. I didn’t want to do this, but I wanted to comment, so I can’t call myself a streamer.



At the very beginning of her career, when she commented “for the idea,” few streamers agreed to hold a tournament with you. It's very simple: it did not bring people neither money nor the audience. Therefore, very often I had to work in solo. In a similar situation in the coverage of one of the tournaments, I alone worked three days in a row for thirteen hours. ”

Studio search and sexism

In the course of our conversation, Olesya not only talked about how she was looking for a permanent place where commenting on Hearthstone tournaments could get money, but also with biased relations only because of gender.

“There were several interviews. In some places, the conditions and prospects were not fully understood, in others, the management chose to rely on other candidates. In general, it took a lot of energy to be perceived not as a woman, but as a commentator. As a result, I got into the Starladder.tv team, whose office is in Kiev, where I live. Already under the wing of Starladder, I held my first tournament as a studio commentator in a pair with Roman Casperrr Lepyohin. I must say that it was cool. Roma is a very experienced commentator and he knows how that still surprises me - to entertain the audience, joke and find such topics for conversation that I myself would not have thought of. Generally, Hearthstone is a difficult discipline. ”

In addition, it so happened that eSports is mostly a male hobby. That "male" and "female" leagues simply does not exist. History knows examples when women played in the top teams in professional teams. One of the brightest of them in the CIS is Elena Meg Urusova, who once performed on the pro scene as a player of the Mousesports and Virtus.pro team in the CS 1.6 discipline. Having finished his playing career in 2009 (the playing career lasted from 1999 to 2009), he went into management and commenting, and now works as a leader in coverage of major tournaments in her native discipline - CS: GO.





Elena "Meg" Urusova



In our conversation with Olesya, I remembered about her, because the appearance of Meg on the screen during the broadcast often causes a whole wave of dirt from the not very adult and adequate part of the audience. Personal insults, obscenity and just filth in chat rooms are in the order of the day for cyberspace broadcasts. Having a simple analogy, the question arose: is there such a thing in HS, or is the situation in CS: GO just a special case?

“Dirt in chat rooms is the norm, which is on the broadcast of tournaments, which is on personal streams. I used to fight it, to endure, to look for something good. The CIS community is generally considered one of the most difficult and aggressive. We have very enthusiastic people, they do not forgive you for mistakes, inattention, and any mistake makes a whole wave of negative.



On any of my broadcasts, even now there will be at least one person who will come to the chat and say: “What kind of woman is she and what is she doing here?”. He didn’t, of course, know that the casting of HS tournaments in Russian began with “this woman”.



Generally, it is difficult. Sometimes the airs are delayed for ten, twelve, sixteen hours. Consciousness is floating, you are already faintly aware of what is happening and these “waves” in your address do not raise your mood.



But I try to see this as good: if the criticism is constructive, if I really made a mistake while working, then people should listen. On the other hand, non-objective criticism in Russian-speaking e-sports is the norm, especially if you are a girl. ”

At the microphone

Communicating with Olesya, I rightly compared Hearthstone broadcasts with poker broadcasts: both card games and in both games, often, nothing happens. For comparison with poker, there is one more reason - some professional players in HS came to the discipline from it.



Olesya laughed and completely agreed to my phrase “nothing happens in HS”.

“Hearthstone is just that complicated. This game, in which the zero dynamics, in which the move takes a minimum of time, because most players are thinking about what to do. What should the broadcast host do at this time? Entertain the audience. By the way, it was in this aspect that Casperrr struck me, who, due to his experience, did an excellent job with this task. What saves me most is my personal statistics, which I have been conducting since 2014 personally for myself. It recorded decks, classes, players. Whoever won against whom, lost, winrates. And when the game stops, you can always refer to this personal “cheat sheet” and give the viewer interesting, unique information, which, in my opinion, it would be difficult enough to find yourself.

Olesami and Casperrr on air

In general, preparation for the broadcast is a very important aspect for me. In addition to iron discipline (according to Olesya, she has never been late for the whole of her career or, moreover, did not miss any of the broadcasts entrusted to her), it also helps me to prepare for the broadcast itself. Of my colleagues, few people spend so much time preparing for work, they act according to circumstances. As I understand it, they hold a lot in their own memory. But I can’t do that, I don’t remember the information badly at all, so I have to write everything down. And so my statistics was born, to which I constantly appeal. This helps me not only to provide accurate information about how specific players performed at some classes earlier, but also to cope with the work.



This, incidentally, makes such a phenomenon as “post-analytics analytics”, which is quite popular and is actively exploited in CS: GO and Dota 2, specifically in Hearthstone, dead. In fact, as a Hearthstone commentator, you do not just cover what is happening on the screen, because there’s really nothing to cover there. You have to tell something about the players, if there is a couple - to discuss, analyze decks, meetings. Of course, this requires a lot of effort. If the broadcast is delayed for ten or twelve hours, then yes, you squeeze it out and start talking about certain specific moves, predict the future moves of the players and talk in the style of "but if he looked different." In fact, this is 100% overlap with what post-analytics analysts are doing. The only thing left for them at major tournaments, for example, held by Blizzard, is to once again discuss these or other decisions that influenced the outcome of the meeting. ”

Iron and money

Working as a streamer or as a commentator from home requires three things: professional skills, stable and fast Internet and, of course, powerful PC. I could not help asking Olesya about the configuration of her car and even tried to get out dxdiag in order to easily pull out all the information about the system.



Unfortunately, at the moment the personal car is in the corner without the ASUS motherboard (which is already the third month in the official SC in Kiev without any hopes of a quick return), so it was possible to get only a photo of the printout with positions on the gland, from which car was going to:





Main home PC configuration

“I was saving for a computer for quite a long time and in the winter I collected a powerful machine that had to cope with streaming and parallel launch, for example, Overwatch. However, subscribers noticed a problem with the work of the webcam and, as it turned out, there was a problem with the motherboard. I brought it under warranty to the official SC here in Kiev, but so far nothing good has been heard.



In order to have the opportunity to work from home on online tournaments and sometimes stream the most, I had to take a system worker at work from the SLTV office, but he is no match for mine, which now, unfortunately, is gathering dust in a corner in the disassembled condition ".

And, probably, one of the most interesting questions is the salary. Understandably, I did not name Olesami for a specific amount, but I was able to partially respond. Speech about transcendental sums is not.

“I rent an apartment with another studio employee. In general, there is enough money that commenting brings for a normal life. Without any exorbitant sums - just a salary, like in any other job. ”

Summing up, we can say that commenting is hard work. In addition, unlike classic sports commentators, a person from eSports is always in sight, very often in the frame. And in order to cope with the attention of the audience, especially as aggressive as the audience from the CIS, you must truly love your work.

PS At my request, Olesami has registered on the GT and all questions you can ask her personally in the comments to this publication.