Saving NA CS: Caster Roundtable

North American Counter-Strike is important. It isn't just made of players, staff, and organizations. Fans, casters, analysts and other personalities are important components that sustain the scene. In order to hear the thoughts of these community members, Dust2.us presents "Saving NA CS" as a series of interviews.

Dust2.us "Saving NA CS" series continues with Jeffrey "Mnmzzz" Moore sits down with seven of NA's homegrown casters who all focus on NA's tier two scene. Watching North American Counter-Strike is always a journey. At times, it can produce some of the most fun matches to watch, and at other times it is certainly... interesting. Behind the games and reason that North America continues to thrive at the lower levels, there are the casters, who represent some of most dedicated people in our scene. These are there tips, stories, and the reasons why they do what they do.

Featuring: Anthony "ynoT" Vitale, Zachary "V1nson" Vinson, Kornel "BirdehBox" Harmati, Austin "Boggs" Bogdanovich, Ryan "Laz" Lazauskas, Nate "Pineapple Philips" Jensen, and Conner "cernersandals" Rhodes.

Please note that the full interview can be found below on YouTube, while the transcript has some key snippets from their conversation. Note that especially in this case, the transcript only scratches the surface of what our seven assembled casters offered about their respective careers and what advice they'd offer to new casters.

Why do you do what you do? What inspired you to start casting?

BirdehBox: After several years of playing and coaching it came to the point where I didn't want to deal with the drama of actually being in the scene anymore. But, I still wanted to emphasize how much I enjoyed talking about the game. Especially at a theoretical level, explaining to other people what was important, how you could think about it getting on a deeper level than what you could see at face value, and I think casting was a great opportunity to do that. We'll also be able to just help other people out, help myself out, in my own way.

Boggs: I always loved broadcasting, from my days playing hockey and everything Steve Carroll was the radio broadcaster for the Anaheim Ducks — absolute legend, kind of an inspiration for me in general. It's kind of for the love of the game really. I enjoy watching it, I enjoy telling a story about what's going on, and sticking through North American Counter-Strike through its ups and downs.

Whatever craziness makes up this region, we have to be here to support it if we want to have teams that can compete at the top level. It starts with people watching. It starts with people supporting the teams — grassroots teams like Bad New Bears, Party Astronauts who are still around, we need to support those teams if we still want to have events like Dallas.

You've all had different paths to where you are today. What is one piece of practical advice and a piece of spiritual advice you'd give.

V1nson: I'll start with the second one. How to approach, philosophically, every game is valuable. There's not a game that doesn't matter to anyone. There are some games where it matters to somebody, so it doesn't matter what you're casting, put everything into that and make it important. A real tangible piece of advice on how to improve and how to move forward — actually go look back at your VODs and look at what you're doing and do some vocal warm-ups as well.

ynoT: My thing about casting is that when you start casting as a solo caster, typically you're the only one doing it. As you move forwards, you have to realize your strengths and your weaknesses. Over time you'll be able to either build on your strengths, or realize your weaknesses and work on them. Over time you also need to realize that sometimes there's not something you can do about all of your weaknesses. That's how you find your duo.

That's something where, you find somebody who can aid and remedy the things that you aren't exactly able to figure out right. As you work on your strengths, if you have someone who's able to, either: A. expose your weaknesses to you or, B. emphasize your strengths to you to make them more apparent. But, even with that, as a caster you have to realize your weaknesses. You have to realize your strengths. If you aren't actively working to become better as they are, saying then you'll never get better, and if you go into casting expecting to be the same player in the same caster that you are, you'll never improve. You'll never find your way at a higher level, because no one will see you for anything more than you started as.