When we look at stories, the most interesting idea that crosses my mind, most of the time, is about the author. Unfortunately, esports isn’t some long epic poem written by an ancient people—it is a part of gaming history that is being shaped today. So, who better to sit and have an hour long conversation with than one of the foremost authorities on Overwatch and the story behind it? This week, I had the pleasure to sit down with none other than Mitch "Uber" Leslie. Just to set a bit of the stage, Uber has casted a ton of games. Just off the top of my head, we’ve got World of Tanks, League of Legends, CS: GO, Call of Duty 4, and now, he has found his way to Overwatch. He spoke with me directly from the ESL studios in Cologne, Germany about what it takes to cast Overwatch, some of his favorite stories from his past games, and villains.  

First and foremost, thank you for taking time out of your day to speak with me. Before we dive right in—how are you? It’s fairly late in Germany (at the time of the interview), how’s everything?

Ahh, it’s about 7:30. I’m still in the office at the moment, though. I’ve just been going over VODs from the weekend of Contenders actually, that's all I’ve been really doing—sometimes that’s your job, ya know? Sit back, watch VODs, and takes notes. [laughs] So, it’s not too bad.

Was there anyone that really jumped out at you? I know Selfless went through some roster troubles and had to find a substitute fairly quickly. Was there anyone that really stood out to you?

Probably more than anything, the European side of Overwatch Contenders has been quite interesting. One match that stands out in particular is the Lazer Kittenz versus Misfits match. Personally, the game on Hanamura was the most impressive display from Lazer Kittenz on how aggressive they can play. It just makes it such a pain in the ass for the enemy team, if you can do that to a team like Misfits—that’s pretty sick. [Lazer Kittenz] has been a big stand out so far; the way that Mowzassa is showing his development, specifically, is just hype.

Personally, I think you're the only person that comes to mind that actually “shout” casts in Overwatch. You’re someone who actually tries to convey some sort of emotional response out of people by throwing yourself into your casting. Do you think casters should just be themselves or assume some sort of persona to become more entertaining? Should people take on your specific style?

I guess to answer that, If I do get an emotional response, it’s because there is emotional input from my side as well—which is good—but naturally the essence of emotional displays is that it can be a bit slightly scrambled, hard to interpret, or hard to engage with. It can be a blessing and a curse to have that particular style. It has a lot to do with how I got here; to be honest, I’ve always been throwing myself at [casting] and making leaps of faith, so I’ve always had to adopt that “all or nothing attitude.” It’s been fairly easy to live with. Without being too poetic, an “open heart and open mind” and never really being too afraid of holding back too much. It is shoutcasting—I do a lot of shouting. Sometimes, in all honesty, I’d love to find a little more of a balance between the two [styles]. I don’t want to be hedged as a “hype man”, I’m more interested in excellence in technique and delivery. If you take casters like Monte and Doa, they are very academic and measured and very skilled at packaging information in really accessible amounts. So no, I don’t think everyone should cast like me, I cast the way I do because it is intentional. If I style myself like another caster, I wouldn’t be able to distinguish myself from them. I don’t necessarily think anyone should [cast] like me, I’ve always had this style and it has been refined—a lot. When I first came to ESL, I was more of a “race horse” commentator. I valued getting words out instead of telling a story or being able to be understood. So, my phrasing was really bad; I linked my sentences up and was just generally hard to understand. When I first started here in Europe, I got a lot of messages from people, from countries that don’t have English as one of their primary languages. A lot of them said “I just can’t understand you. You sound like you're having a good time, but I can’t engage with that.” It took me a long time to refine that style and I think I’m getting to a point now where I think I can make it work, but I still want to tweak it a bit more. I still want to include a good amount of academia in terms of the way I talk about the game.

* * * “I don’t just want to be some guy that they wheel into the casting room, like Hannibal in a wheelchair, and just pointing me in the right direction and ordering me to start kicking off and yelling.”

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Not to say that I am like that, but it is easy to get sucked into the idea that “Oh, I have to hype this up.” I don’t want it to be fabricated, I want it to come from inside me. One of my biggest problems in the past is that I am very easily excited. [laughs] So, some things maybe are not that big of a deal, but I’m just popping off because I’m loving what I’m doing, I’m loving what I’m seeing—it was a big problem for me in League of Legends. I was the guy who was popping off for first blood, and everyone is all “Why is this guy so excited?! This doesn’t mean shit.” For someone who has seen 5,000 games of League of Legends, maybe they are not so excited or don’t care about that, but for me who loved the fact that I was casting, I am easily excited and I’m very animated in that way. This style is not for everyone. I think a game like Overwatch suits my style, but there is still more nuts and bolts to be tightened.

Speaking of casting duos, personally, I’ve always found it interesting that when casters first start to sprout up in whichever game they choose, they usually market themselves as a solo package. How imperative do you think it is to have a dedicated partner in esports shoutcasting?

I think being able to adapt is a good quality to have. The biggest piece of advice that I give to casters coming up is that they should, ideally, look for a partner. It’s not only so that there is two casters, it’s also important to have someone to get and give feedback to. It’s also important that when you start casting, if you’re trying to do play-by-play and color analysis all together it can become very, very difficult. I think at the beginning you’re not going to be particularly good at both; it’s much better to focus on one approach or delivery. So, I talk to a lot of guys and say “Well you like to really talk about the game, you really like to look at the nuts and bolts. You should try to get someone who can just do a bit of play-by-play” and vise versa.

I tell people to try and develop a portfolio and try and get some material out there, right? And what that looks like is a lot of what you see from people like Skyline and what Kirby was doing, even what Flame does as well. Above all else, the biggest thing is that you need to “play nice with others.” You need to be able to bounce off and work with someone else. A lot of us right now, in Overwatch, tend to get mixed and matched a lot. And for me, that's fine, because I think it’s really important to show that once you’ve made it to this level, you can be flexible. I casted with ZP, I’ve casted with Hex, I’ve casted with all those guys. So, you need to be flexible as an Overwatch caster. In other games, there are established duos, but until you are an established duo, it’s much more important to listen to and focus on what the other guy is saying or talk to them before the game, just to establish a general basis and understanding for your paring during the cast. For example, at the TakeOver event, I had to work with SideShow and Bren. Both who are really good, but have limited experience casting in Overwatch event. SideShow is one of the best prepared casters I know. His preparation is stellar and he knows exactly what he is talking about, and Bren has experience coming from Team Fortress 2, but we had to mix and match a lot and there were some interesting moments. Especially for me, this is one experience that I had while casting TakeOver [...] I’m really intense to cast with.

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“If there is a new caster that hasn’t casted with me before, it’s particularly hard to find the flow and the rhythm of the cast—because, sometimes, there is none. I’m probably just a bit insane.” * * *

When I spoke to SideShow after the game, he’s like “Ahh yeah, it was a really good game, but man I’m just struggling to find the flow with us.” And I’m like “Well, that's fair enough because in Overwatch we have to do color and a bit of play-by-play. Sometimes it just isn’t convenient to segway into the guy who’s doing the analysis when there is a fight about to break out.” And that’s something you see Jason [Kaplan] doing a lot more now with his casting. So, one lesson I learned is that I had to remember to keep trying to just be flexible. [laughs] I have two golden rules for casting. Rule 1: It’s not about me. Rule 2: It definitely is not about me.

After skimming through your two hour long review of your own casting, you talk about the dynamic of “color” versus “play-by-play” in your cast with Leigh "Deman" Smith at the Overwatch World Cup. Could you ever see yourself going full-time color commentator now that you’re 100% all-in with Overwatch?

In all honesty, I had to take color with Leigh. [Because] he really doesn’t play the game very much anymore as far as i know [laughs] he’s played a bit of the game, but never really fully immersed himself in the scene. He was working on other stuff at the time. So, going into those casts, I had to say to myself “Well, this guy is definitely better than me [on a technical level]. His delivery is better than mine, at least at the time.” If you want a hard in the paint (not vanilla, sounds a bit plain) play-by-play caster, you take [Deman], because he’s got so much experience; he knows all the nuances. So I said to myself, “how do we make this pairing as good as we can?” What happened is that I switched to more of a color role and I’m quite confident doing that. I’m not a grandmaster [level] player—I’m probably a mid-masters player—but I watch a lot of VODs and I try to have a balance between them. Some casters only play, some casters only watch VODs; I try to go for a little mix of the two. So at least at a fundamental level, I was able to provide that analysis. I also had to do it at IEM Gyeonggi in South Korea last year.

Sometimes, when you are thrust into a position I can’t always pop off and make all the sound bites. I’ve been with so many different permutations of casting pairs that I’ve had to care deeply about the analytical side of the game. I don’t necessarily expect people to listen or maybe respect me when I try to [analyze the game] because my tone is a little bit eclectic and excited to really suit delivering analysis, right? I’ve [tried] very hard when I’m trying to give someone hard and fast information; maybe I’m giving them an argument or trying to draw cause or links, but I’m still kind of excited while I’m doing it. My voice is elevated, my pace is up—I did this a lot with [Deman] actually. We we’re always pushing the boundaries, always super high energy casts. So analysis is definitely something I am capable of delivering; I think the knowledge is definitely there. I haven’t heard much that analysts have said that I couldn’t probably say myself, with perhaps the exception of guys like Flame or SideShow. They have a nice, different angle on [the game], but it’s a bit on how I deliver that and my delivery of analysis is the same as my delivery of play-by-play. People can naturally switch off to the content of what I’m talking about; they tend to feed of the cadence of my voice and the emotion, because that’s what they are used to hearing. So I don’t want to get hedged in just a hype position, I need to think a lot more about my sort of delivery of different kinds of content in different kinds of context throughout a broadcast.

On a more lighthearted note, I need you to suspend your disbelief for a moment. I’ve creating the next successful esports and I come to you to create “the next best caster.” Rank the following attributes from most important to least: Knowledge, Charisma, Personal Voice, and On-Camera Ability.

Personally, I get turned off really quickly when I’ve got someone who doesn’t know what they’re talking about. So I’d probably go “Knowledge” first, then “Personal Voice,” “Charisma,” and then “On Camera Ability.” Fortunately, a lot of the time, you’re not always on camera—it’s like, in game. So you just have to try just to not look like a complete and utter mess on camera [and] you're fine. You could always just be an analysis caster; you don’t have to be the person who starts the show and throws the breaks and stuff like that, but I still think knowledge is the most important [trait]. I get so turned off when I hear someone say something that is just wrong or not well thought through coming from a game like League of Legends, where I had to know every character name, ever ability name, every item, all this sort of stuff. Like, this is your bread and butter, this was something that [Deman] made sure he was very good at. The one tricky ult in the game is “Transcendence”, because Zenyatta says “Tranquility” and he floats around like Malfurion from Heroes of the Storm. So I think I used to call it Tranquility as well. However, it’s not necessary to go as far as to  say “Soldier 76 is shooting with his Heavy Pulse Rifle”. For me, it’s like driving and knowing when to indicate and when to break—it’s just fundamental.

Most of what I work with is narratives and storylines. What are some of your favorite stories in Overwatch that stand out in your memory?

I think probably one of mine is the pairing of TviQ and Reinforce because this goes so far back to the beginning now. Reinforce was at the first TakeOver. It was the event where we all sort of met each other as the European players and the casters. So it was quite awkward just sort of getting a feel for each other and learning about each other, and Reinforce has a history of working in esports as an observer and stuff like that. But he decided he wanted to go pro in Overwatch. He was actually working for The GD Studio at the time, but [2GD] allowed him to stay at the GD Studios. I think he slept in the lounge room or something like that. So, to start with, Reinforce was not considered to be a great player, they called him a “35%’er”. Which, if you apply that to your accuracy, it’s pretty not that great [laughs], so he always got shit about that. The first permutation of that Rogue team, if you think back, had players like IDDQD, AKM, uNKOE, KnOxXx perhaps later on because he came over from Creation [Esports], but TviQ and Reinforce were in that team.

There were players in that team lineup that didn’t really respect [Reinforce], but TviQ stuck with him all through that. Through Rogue, [and now] into Misfits, it was always the two of them. You’ve got TviQ on one hand, who's probably the most dedicated player I’ve ever seen. During APAC in China, I was sat just playing ranked and trying to catch up on VODs, and behind me, I turn around, and 5 hours later TviQ is still there in the cafe grinding ranked. He’s still there with [Reinforce] grinding ranked. And I asked him “Why?” and he said…

* * *

“Well, we have to win. There's not really any other option but to win”.

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...And they ended up winning that tournament as well, [Rogue] ended upsetting Lunatic-Hai in the final, after Lunatic-Hai spanked them in the group stages and TviQ pulled out this Pharah and just started demolishing them. For me, that’s really important, because TviQ has always said to me “I believe in [Reinforce].” Even though he didn’t come into the game with the pro-player pedigree—even though he has faced a lot of criticism in the past—those two have always stuck with each other the whole way through and I believe it’s paid off. I think [Reinforce] is now a top quality player and I think he’s one of the best. That’s one of my favorite stories, at least in European Overwatch.

Now, the same question again, but what are some of your favorite stories in other games that stand out in your memory? It can be anything from World of Tanks to Call of Duty 4—any stories that people might not know, but should know.

One of my favorite stories from World of Tanks, as a game I worked on for quite a long time, is that Russian teams were able to play in Europe, so they played in that league. There was one team from Serbia, some from Croatia, little mix of a European team, called Kazna Kru. They were just this bunch of 6-7 guys. I started with World of Tanks in about 2014-2015 and there was always this meme that they were the team that always got to LAN, but always came last. And these guys were super emotional guys who were really into the game, but they used to break down so much. They had this “Eastern European” mentality and they had some anger issues, and it always used to boil over so much. They were just so passionate. When they lost, it was their heads in their hands, crying, and their shaking each other by the shoulders. This amount of passion from them [was] so strong. And as time went on, they did improve, but some huge Russian teams started to filter into the scene and they really started to flex their muscles quite a bit. The game is so big in Russia, so teams like [themselves and] Virtus.Pro started absolutely dominating everyone. Kazna Kru, for example, were so exasperated and struggling to deal with them and how to actually beat them. And they eventually did beat them. They beat them at the Season 3 finals in Bulgaria. And they crushed Virtus.Pro in that particular game and I’ve never seen emotion like it. So I’d say that story and another comparable story was a team from the Philippines at the first ever World of Tanks Final, so it was like their World Finals. The Philippine team who were straight off of net cafes in the Philippines had come all the way to Warsaw, Poland and they weren’t expected to do much of anything, and actually ended up beating Fnatic in the quarter finals. And I’ve seen victory celebrations, but these guys were ridiculous, right? One guy was like kneeling with his back to the crowd, with his hands together, like he was praying. I was trying to host the thing and I’ve got 3 of them just jump on top of me because we sort of knew each other a little bit from the Australian scene. And they just jump on top of me while I’m trying to host and stuff. What struck me so much about [World of Tanks] is that it’s not a good game to watch for esports, it’s not a popular game outside of the CIS region, but the emotion is still very much there. Even though they were driving around these tanks, who were historically accurate of course, but at the end of the day—they are tanks. It was really the emotion from teams like Kazna Kru and a team called PvP Super Friends. Coming straight from the Philippines where there are constant militia attacks and bombings to a 5-star hotel and standing on stage in Warsaw, the show of emotion [from them] was ridiculous. People had to try to calm them down and get them to move to the side of the stage so we could even get an interview or something. There was this one player called Batman, who always wore this silicon Batman mask on his face in the heat under the lights while they played. So plenty of good moments from that one!

And a lot of the good moments from Counter Strike we all kind of know. I worked those events and did get to see a lot of that stuff. I think the NiP win in ESL One Cologne back in 2014 with GeT_RiGhT on the ground, the photo of him crying, was definitely amazing to me. There are plenty of them.

Something that I find sorely lacking in esports as a whole is the accentuation of stories. And as a person who is a verbal storyteller in his own right, I thought you would be the perfect candidate to ask: do you find that stories, in a very general sense, can traverse across any medium? (games, esports, books, art, etc.)

So far, yes—to a degree. First of all there are a couple of things in Overwatch that hold us back—firstly, being the fact that is a little bit young. What we’re used to sticking to are the storylines that began the game of where we found the players and teams histories—really, where they came from, which was especially interesting in the case of Epsilon or G2 Esports, which eventually split. Where you had your KnOxXx and your Flippy. So for us, it was a bit of the story of a “sundown” on Team Fortress 2 and all these players played so many hours for so little money. During World Cup, our biggest story was some of the Australian players who ran a Go-Fund Me campaign to send their team to the UK to play at an Insomnia LAN just because they wanted to represent the region. Those stories are present, but we started with where they came from. Like, how is Overwatch a revival for these players? How does it rejuvenate them and give them the desire to compete? After we got off the starting block, there were a few stories present, but what makes a story so powerful is a lot of time,a lot of exposure from the players, a lot of chances to not only build story, but also witness the story and witness these interactions. So, whether it’s interviews on stage or whether it’s people on podcasts—it could be performances at tournaments, and stuff like that. We used the Reunited story: as six guys that came from Battlefield 4, they were the champions there. Now, they're here to stamp their authority on a game that is actually going to pay the bills, something that actually is going to mean something. And how they couldn’t really handle the heat in Overwatch, so they split and splintered, but now, as eUnited, they still are a force to be reckoned, even though they came in as Fnatic and got dropped. It depends on how deep you want to go, because in a game like Counter Strike, which is so rich in history, so rich in information, and content that goes back like so long, it’s quite easy to whip something together like that. In Overwatch, we have some of those things there, I feel, but they need to be fleshed out a lot more. We need more examples of these teams performing and hearing from these players. Drama...while I’m not over the moon about drama, it is important to feed some of this in and trash talk now. The French team of Rogue is such an interesting concept as well. That is a very easy team to build a story around and I know them fairly well personally, having gone to a few events with them in China and seeing them in Korea and talking a lot to the guys. [Overwatch] isn’t really that deep yet; there isn’t this inspirational and emotional story status. There are tons of storylines in Overwatch—it’s the first stop for me when building my prep up, but I believe there will be stories that can transcend the game itself, but the game itself also needs to have that level of exposure.

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“13,000 viewers for Contenders is not going to give you storylines that stand the test of time. [Storylines] that transcend different games, and scenes, and that can manifest in people's consciousness as their daydream. “

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Signed, Uber

Mitch "Uber" Leslie

Joseph “Volamel” Franco has followed esports since the MLG’s of 2006. He started out primarily following Starcraft 2, Halo 3, and Super Smash Bros. Melee. He has transitioned from viewer to journalist and writes freelance primarily about Overwatch and League of Legends. If you would like to know more or follow his thoughts on esports you can follow him at @Volamel.

Images courtesy of Blizzard Entertainment and ESL.