BLU: “I would like to see Ubisoft take a look at the spectator UI”

BLU is best known as a CSGO caster where he has cast a number of $1m tournaments, however, just over a month ago, he made a step into the competitive Rainbow Six scene when he was revealed as one of four casters for the DreamHack Winter Minor event alongside Parker “Interro” Mackay, Michael “KiXSTAr” Stockley and Harry “Demo” Dempster. Following his widely applauded debut at this event, he followed this up with an appearance at the US Nationals where he cast once again with Interro as well as his fellow newcomers to an R6 event of this size of Rob "Flynn" Flynn and Samuel “Stoax” Stewart.

With this very sudden and successful entrance into R6 esports we caught up with him to learn more about his history as a caster and his views on the scene:

Firstly, can you tell us a bit about yourself and your history casting in esports?

Of course! I’ve been playing games for years and started watching competitive events from a fairly young age. The first game I got into as a caster was Guild Wars 2 where I got a lot of experience doing small tournaments before eventually moving to CS:GO in 2015 where I’ve had the amazing opportunity to work on a major for ESL along with lots of other events like ESL One and IEM.

An interview with BLU at the ESL One: Cologne 2016 event conducted by Ghassan "Milosh" Finge prior to him joining the R6 talent crew:

How did you get involved in Siege as a player and as a caster?

As a player, I’ve had Siege since pretty early on but I wasn’t a massive fan of the game until the beginning of 2018 when I revisited it and enjoyed it much more due to changes to the way the game played. I’ve been playing it in my free time throughout most of this year and I decided during the summer especially after getting to meet Parker and Michael to put some time into trying to find casting opportunities. Ubisoft was awesome enough to provide me with those opportunities.

What are your thoughts on the way DHW & USN went for you?

The community feedback from both social media like Reddit and Twitter and from colleagues involved with the events was absolutely amazing. I definitely still have a lot to learn but I think this was a really great first step.

You impressed a lot of people right out of the gate, seemingly very prepared for Dreamhack Winter. What does your event prep process look like?

Event prep for both DreamHack and USN was mainly focused on average gameplay expectations for the current 7 maps and the specific teams that were present at those events. Ranger (from Rogue) helped me a lot with getting started and showing me what to expect from the average pro game on a few of the maps. I took it upon myself at that point to watch teams I would be seeing and learning as much about them as possible while learning the remaining maps. During the process of VOD review, I think I was able to pick up a good amount of knowledge about how the current operator pool generally interacted with each other and other gameplay knowledge necessary to cast as a play by play.

What one gameplay change would you like to be implemented into R6?

I definitely would like to see Ubi take a look at the spectator UI. The current UI is very clean keeping focus on gameplay and provides a lot of info but only on the player being spectated. I would guess that this was done to avoid confusing people with too much info about things happening off screen but I personally think it makes the game harder to read for that very same reason putting a lot of pressure on the commentator to make up for things not easily apparent, especially after chaotic firefights. Names being reduced to a few characters can hurt a viewer’s ability to connect what a player is doing on screen and who a caster is talking about because of the presentation of two different names to the viewer. I would love to see this redesigned to be able to show full player names, the current operator, and current health/gadget/drone/utility status for all 10 players at a minimum. If the design space allowed for an abbreviated position (to help with the lack of a radar) and/or current buff/debuff status I believe this would also help to give more info to make the overall way a round plays out easier for a viewer to interpret. It would also provide more info about the way that a round played out to coaching staff/players doing VOD review by providing a better overview of gadget/utility usage and possibly even movement throughout rounds.

What would you say is the highlight of your casting career so far?

Definitely when I did ESL One NY in 2016. Getting to cast for a stadium-sized crowd is an amazing experience and I’ve been relishing an opportunity to rival that event’s crowd.

In what way do you think that your experience in casting other games gives you an advantage in casting R6? What do you think Siege casters can learn from this?

I think that because of my experience the advantage I had coming into Siege was that I was able to focus on learning the game much more than focusing on how to cast. I’ve had the pleasure of doing hundreds of tournaments as a caster and usually in a play by play focused role so over the years I’ve developed a way I usually approach a show/cast and look to mould it to new games/experiences/co-casters.

With regards to what siege casters may be able to learn from my experience, I’m not too sure. For newer casters I’m now more than willing to share what I know especially for those easing into production environments for the first time. Many of R6’s current mainstays know all they need to know about that side of the show, however, so I’m hoping I can learn a bit from them instead about how to show off the game at larger scale events so I can bring my own style to those casts while still bringing the presentation that fans expect.

What do you think that R6 can learn from games like CS:GO as a game as an esport?

I think that in terms of the way it’s played out and viewed R6 is pretty unique when compared to CS:GO meaning there’s a limit to what R6 can learn from CS:GO’s own esports presentations. I would like to see a more direct way to pull stats from games as I do think there’s a lot of interesting details/stats that can be pulled from match metadata/APIs if they were provided, much like how this can be done in CS:GO allowing for very cool sites like HLTV to exist.

When it comes to the way the scene is run I hope Ubisoft is looking to learn from CS:GO and incentivize the creation of an open circuit approach for the R6 scene as a whole. This approach would provide a lot of healthy competition between TOs and add a drive to increase the wow factor, prize pools, and more at these events while still having the Majors and Pro League as the top dog events to avoid over inflation.

Are there any future events we can expect you in?

Nothing that I can confirm at this point but I’m on the lookout!

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We wish BLU the best of luck in his esports career and hope to see him again in 2019!