March 18th, Sunday.
At the Rabbit Tail Streaming ICL League broadcast station, three commentators dressed in suits and equipped with headsets were organizing various data materials on their desks while chatting casually.
The match wouldn’t start for another ten minutes, but the three commentators had already taken their positions, preparing for today’s performance.
Yesterday, Chen Yufeng had visited the FV Club and selected two candidates from the promising commentators recommended by Wu Yue. He chose those with the best eloquence and who had some streaming experience and fan bases to serve as commentators for today’s match.
These two players were originally on FV Team’s second squad. Although they were skilled, the five players on the first team were too strong, leaving them with few opportunities to rotate into matches.
Moreover, they weren’t young anymore. Due to slowing reaction times and decreased energy levels, they were increasingly struggling to keep up with the pace of professional competition and had been contemplating their future career paths.
This commentary opportunity was a good trial for both Rabbit Tail Streaming and these two players.
If the results were good, they could continue commentating. If not, the players could consider returning to professional play or simply retire and focus on streaming.
Since it was their first day as commentators and they might not be very experienced, an experienced field controller commentator from GPL was arranged to guide them. Although this field controller’s understanding of IOI wasn’t very high, he was quite skilled at maintaining the rhythm of commentary. With him present, the trio’s pacing wouldn’t go off track.
This morning, while the two new commentators were cramming and practicing their coordination, the official staff from Rabbit Tail Streaming received first-hand information about the competing teams—about a dozen pages of data provided for the on-site commentators.
These data included the players’ preferred heroes, commonly used tactics, and some habit details, providing excellent data support for the commentary work. Combined with the game understanding of the two current professional players, they would definitely be able to uncover more match details.
Additionally, each of the three commentators had a tablet computer in front of them, on which a dedicated team would push real-time match content, such as: kill distributions on the map, first blood situations, economic trend graphs, and more.
This data came directly from the backend of the Dragon Yu Group and used the same system as the real-time data that would soon be launched on various platforms.
Although the packaging was not yet complete and couldn’t be shown to the audience, it was perfectly fine for the three commentators to see it—they were professionals who could easily understand the information.
All the preliminary work had been completed, and Rabbit Tail Streaming had already done sufficient promotion and warm-up for this unofficial stream commentary on their website. Now it was just a matter of seeing how the commentators would perform once the match began.
Both professional players were a bit nervous.
One of them had previously commented on matches in his own streaming room, but that was a very private environment. Even if there were small problems, only his fans would see them, and they wouldn’t be too critical.
But now they were commentating in a very formal setting. Even a slip of the tongue would be nitpicked, and any professional errors would “ruin their reputation,” so both men were somewhat anxious.
The experienced field controller commentator smiled and said, “We’ve already rehearsed several times this morning, so there’s no need to be nervous. I’ll be responsible for controlling the field and guiding the topics, and you just follow my rhythm. If you’re worried about saying something wrong, just wait for me to toss you a line, and you respond to it.”
The two professional players nodded. With the broadcast about to start, they hurriedly made final adjustments to their ties and hairstyles, looking toward the camera.
…
Meanwhile, large numbers of viewers flooded into Rabbit Tail Streaming, preparing to watch the ICL League.
After distributing the broadcasting rights for the ICL League, the audience at Rabbit Tail Streaming hadn’t decreased significantly; instead, the numbers had basically remained stable!
This was mainly due to the influence of the previous “spoiler incident,” which had left many people with the impression that “Rabbit Tail Streaming is faster than other platforms.”
Although now all platforms had unified their broadcasting times, and even with network issues, delays wouldn’t exceed two or three seconds, once the initial impression was formed, it was difficult to change.
Of course, after learning that other platforms had the same timing as Rabbit Tail Streaming, these viewers were gradually flowing back to various platforms.
But this return flow would inevitably take time, and some viewers had already formed habits. Every time there was a match, they would instinctively click on Rabbit Tail Streaming, so ultimately some viewers would stay.
Today, many regular viewers discovered that Rabbit Tail Streaming’s ICL League live broadcast room was split into two channels by default. Upon entering, they were automatically directed to Rabbit Tail Streaming’s own stream, with the official stream being the second option!
Moreover, Rabbit Tail Streaming had already promoted and warmed up their own stream.
Originally, Rabbit Tail Streaming had allocated a large amount of promotional resources to the ICL League. Now these promotional resources had been completely changed. Although they were still promoting the ICL League, the focus had shifted to Rabbit Tail Streaming’s own stream.
Most viewers didn’t pay much attention to this, as many esports competitions had secondary streams before—it was just some streamers providing secondary commentary using the official match footage, nothing fresh.
These secondary stream commentators were often streamers who mainly showcased their own style to attract their fans. In terms of professionalism and viewing experience, they couldn’t compare with the official stream.
This was normal, after all, the commentators on the official stream were carefully selected professionals with formal training and good eloquence. They could also get first-hand information from officials. Even if their game understanding was slightly lacking, they could make up for it with advantages in other areas.
In short, although most viewers saw the relevant promotion, they didn’t pay much attention to it.
But since the ICL League’s broadcast room defaulted to Rabbit Tail Streaming’s broadcast station upon entry, most viewers stayed to see how Rabbit Tail Streaming’s broadcast differed from the official stream.
After playing the ICL League promotional video, the broadcast station’s image appeared on the live stream.
The three commentators sat formally in suits, wearing identical commentary headsets, each with a stack of materials, a pen, and a tablet computer on the desk in front of them.
In contrast, the ICL League’s official commentators were just two people wearing shirts, with nothing at all on their desk.
“Hey, isn’t that the commentator from GPL?”
“And those two beside him… are they from FV Team’s second squad?”
“Those suits look pretty sharp.”
“Why do they have so many things on their desk—notebooks, pens, and tablet computers?”
“Looks like they’re very well-prepared!”
“Oh, they’re going to analyze match data!”
The match hadn’t officially started yet. The players from both sides had just made their entrance and were still adjusting their equipment, with a few minutes remaining.
On the official broadcast, the director began methodically displaying various data for both teams, such as win rates with a ten-minute economic lead, player MVP counts, historical data on team confrontations, and so on.
The two official commentators were basically just reading the data, occasionally inserting simple explanations, such as high first blood or first tower rates indicating that a team was good at snowballing an early advantage into victory.
Meanwhile, at Rabbit Tail Streaming’s broadcast station, the three commentators were looking at their materials and explaining content that wasn’t even shown on the broadcast.
“We can see that the official screen shows a 74% first tower rate, but actually this data isn’t very accurate. This team has several different tactical strategies. One is a fast-push resource-exchange tactical strategy that focuses on bottom lane hero selection. With this strategy, their first tower rate actually reaches over 90%, which shows they’re very familiar with this tactic. But with other tactical strategies, their first tower rate is only around 60%, and they often can’t secure the first tower and fall behind in the early game.”
“This indicates that the fast-push tactic is this team’s most mature and effective strategy. This time, their opponents will likely counter this tactic with corresponding hero selections…”
Sure enough, before he could finish speaking, the opposing team had already banned two bottom lane heroes as countermeasures.
Moreover, during the ban-pick process of both sides, the two professional players seemed to have received the script in advance, very accurately predicting the heroes that both sides would pick next. When uncertain, they would provide two different options, one of which would invariably be correct.
Because these tactical systems were at the commentators’ fingertips, they could not only accurately predict both sides’ lineups but also elaborate on the tactical play style of these compositions with a simple introduction.
In contrast, the official commentators only began to retroactively guess the tactics both sides would employ after the heroes had already been selected, based on the heroes’ characteristics.
If you only watched the official commentators, there would be no problem, as they fulfilled their task of explaining and illustrating well. But as soon as you compared them with the two professional players at Rabbit Tail Streaming, the difference in commentary quality was obvious!
The comment section was already flooded with “666” (meaning “awesome” in Chinese internet slang).
But that wasn’t all. After entering the game, the gap between the two broadcast teams became even more apparent.
The two professional players at Rabbit Tail Streaming provided detailed explanations of early-game tactical arrangements, including why wards were placed in specific positions, how multiple players clearing wards could gain experience faster to reach level 2 and achieve lane pressure, and the jungle clearing routes and speeds of both junglers…
It could be said that no detail of any player’s performance escaped the commentators’ eyes.
The observer at Rabbit Tail Streaming was also different from the official observer.
The official observer kept the camera on the lanes, but both sides were playing cautiously, occasionally trading damage, not missing many last hits. The commentators didn’t have much to say, only commenting “good last hitting, very solid fundamentals” after a player perfectly last hit a wave under the tower.
Meanwhile, at Rabbit Tail Streaming, the observer, at the request of the two professional players, focused the early-game camera mainly on the jungle heroes of both sides and opened the detailed hero data for viewing.
Many viewers were puzzled—what was so interesting about jungle clearing?
But the two professional commentators quickly provided an explanation: one player’s jungle clearing had poor details, with a speed 5 to 8 seconds slower than other top-tier players. The other player had clearly done his homework and anticipated this, so he deliberately skipped one camp and went to the opponent’s jungle to wait in ambush.
Sure enough, half a minute later, the two junglers encountered each other. The faster one was waiting at ease and immediately comboed the opponent, forcing him to retreat. Then he comfortably took all the opponent’s jungle camps, establishing an economic advantage in the early game.
The Rabbit Tail Streaming broadcast was once again flooded with “666”!
The two commentators had been setting up the context from the beginning, saying that this jungle player was slow at clearing, and the opponent precisely exploited this 5 to 8 second window to invade and establish an economic advantage in the early game.
In contrast, the official observer hadn’t even been aware of this point and only showed the camera when the two players encountered each other. The audience had no idea why these two had met!