This may sound ultrastupid, but the secret of commentary is to try talking to yourself a lot. Imagine you're talking to your clone and try sparking a conversation. While this may make anyone look really weird, and yes it will even make you weird, it really helps being more comfortable speaking. I remember speaking in front of a crowd was my biggest phobia back in the day. Talking to one's self can be an assessment of the following things:
- Pronunciation = because the internet has a lot of grammar and engrish Nazis who try to sound smart against most commentators but are still obviously boosted monkeys.
- Speech Patterns = this is how i assessed mine. In my case, I noticed that i still use a lot of filler words such as uhms, duhs, "like", and even spacing in some cuss words but rarely. I remember how punishing our English classes were.
- Signature terminologies = everyone has them. Just like The Rock's victims, IT DOESN'T MATTER WHAT YOUR NAME IS. Everyone has signature terminologies or Jargons that they use, and these actually help spice up one's ability to deliver commentary.
Its funny. Commentating while playing is seriously a lot harder than it looks. The big problem really is that when people do commentary, they have to make sure that it has either one of two things:
1) You sound super informative, witty, smart, knowledgable, and at times point blank. And you have to sound really natural while doing it. Its harder to be this kind of commentator nowadays since most of the time, people don't really watch a commentator for the game he/she is playing. They watch for the persona doing the playing. But i feel that these kinds of commentators need a comeback because too many boosted tryhards tried to be like POODIEPIE, Chuggaconroy, Jacksceptic, and whoever but fail miserably. (And the funny thing really, I felt that 2014 was the last time we saw Commentators and RETS PRAYERS being at the height of their power. I may be wrong though).
2) Or go the spicy path of chugging some fresh blended steroids + meat products + protein shakes + BACON (because Bacon is love, Bacon is life), Fish N Chips (For the EU people), Rice and Fish (For the Asians such as myself), and getting a much calmer and more "mature" friend to help compensate the bulloads of Aggressive, Manly or Womanly, Roid Powered commentary with loads of humorous (and smexual terms and references, like using the term "Murderc*ck"). Its like you became the
Doom Comic Doomguy incarnate and you have your much more NORMAL and more mentally sane friend to help calm down the commentary.
And then there's also considering the kind of library you have to play to be part of your online persona/character. The Spicy Path works if most of the stuff one would be playing are those that fit the whole theme of bein "SPICY" (Anything with ultra intensity. While most of the time, Bloody ultraviolence is something that's common in the spicy path, anything with intense gameplay works just as good, whether it has blood or not. Gameplay still matters more obviously :))))
Honestly though, the most important aspect of commentary is to simply genuinely enjoy the game one be playing. Corwin of SpicyWaffle says it best:
I'd basically suggest playing any game you enjoy. We've found that it's really hard to make videos on games we can't get excited about, so we just avoid playing them entirely. Start out with something you know you'll love, then branch out to other things later. It's always worth playing some free flash games, because, well, free :P
(This is the kind of posts that could have fit better when we still had the "RETS PRAY" subforum. But since that is long gone and have rested in pepperonis, we can now say stuff like this in ANYWHERE. WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE)