Jason Baker, a freelance esports broadcast producer and director with nearly two decades of experience, sat down with Upcomer last week to discuss his time with the Overwatch League, what it’s like to work on esports production, how the recent Counter-Strike: Global Offensive major went, and his return to CS:GO. We even get his take on the esports dress.





Baker has worked for the aforementioned Overwatch League, as well as ELEAGUE, MLG, and ESL. He returns to broadcasting CS:GO events at the upcoming BLAST Pro Series Sao Paulo event later this month.









So first question, regarding the hottest topic in esports, what are your thoughts on the esports dress?





Baker: There are plenty of female esports fans that would definitely love a product catered to them. You should have a female design your clothes and that might help. I do not know the CEO of that company, but I have met [others like] him so many times over the years. It is “I have this great idea, I think I see this niche market, I’m going to advertise it, and I’m going to talk out my ass as if I know what I’m talking about.”





So you’ve seen multiple iterations of this guy over the years, is this up there as one of the worst?





This one is borderline offensive, but it’s not scamming people out of their money. I think the esports cruise people, in recent memory, bothered me the most. And they actually approached me for a job! I get an email from them saying they’re looking for a producer, and the first thing they tell me is that they have someone who worked with ELEAGUE working on it, and I worked at ELEAGUE, and I don’t know who this person is. It was literally someone who handed out flyers, and that’s who they’re touting. They wanted to do Overwatch as well, and I asked if they had a contract with Blizzard.





I’m guessing they didn’t?





They had never even heard of such a thing, so I already knew they were absolutely full of shit.









So you’re making your return to the broadcast side of CS:GO at the upcoming BLAST Pro Series event in Sao Paulo. What goes into putting together a production team for an event like this?





Well lucky for me, BLAST already has a big part of the team put together. At this point I’m coming in to help out their production and help make a show, but their staff has already been working hard for months on the event. Whatever success happens from these events, I’m just a small part of it. At this event, I’m producing the broadcast, and there’s an arena producer as well. Every once in a while we converge but then go on to our own things. For an event like this, sixty people isn’t out of the question.





So after Sao Paulo there’s BLAST events in Miami and Madrid, will you be a part of these events as well?





If they don’t fire me. I hope not to fuck up. In the freelance world there’s always a chance we don’t see eye-to-eye, or for logistics reasons they want to use a local person.





Do you know where the events after those will take place?





No comment.





Do you prefer shorter events like this, or a longer stretched out season format?





I think for esports to survive, I think you need both. One to serve more people by quickly travelling to towns and putting up these great shows, and one to put on long-form events. From my standpoint, having a studio show is the greatest. You walk in everyday and the equipment is working, you concentrate on putting on a show, and then you go home and come back the next day and put on another show. When you travel in, you’re constantly up til the last minute making sure all the wiring and communication is correct, it’s a constant scramble, but I do love it. There’s an adrenaline rush to it. It’s chaos and beauty tied into one.









What’s the most important lesson you learned from your time with Overwatch League?





I learned the pros and cons of working that close with a developer. Being able to get things changed in the actual game with what certain buttons do, how camera locations work, there are still things I designed last year that are being worked into the game now.





Because Valve is typically very hands off when it comes to the majors.





Except at the actual majors. When they’re with you at the majors, they’re recoding builds on the fly to help with the broadcast. At the ELEAGUE Major we had some user interface we needed to move, this was before everybody was doing custom displays, and they quickly made us a new version of the game, and that was amazing. So working that closely with a developer can be rewarding, but it can also be a curse. They want to see the game certain ways, and they have their own ideas.

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And if they’re running the league then it’s their decision and not yours?





Yes, and so even with things like camera switches I’m getting asked to do things that I don’t agree with. By people who I don’t think are qualified to make that particular decision. But they’re the boss. That’s just how it goes. I think I said “no” multiple times, and I don’t think after I left anyone’s going to say “no” again.





Was the decision to split with OWL mutual? And what do you think led to that?





Their decision. I was promised certain things and they did not deliver. And I was not ever made aware of their unhappiness of anything from my side.





What do you think is the most important thing for OWL going forward?





They need to find better ways to connect the audience to the players, and to the emotion going into the match and the stakes at hand. From personal stories to in-game reactions to personal profile pieces, they need to tie in the audience even more. The fans are dying for that content. I think the format is great for a league, but not great for instant gratification. The team can win 3-0 but then they have to play another map.





Yeah it would have been a lot better of a moment when Shanghai ended their losing streak, if it just ended there at 3-0. The crowd was already emotional and into it, and then they play another map? Like shouldn’t they be dropping confetti?





Yeah, you’ve had your emotional “fuck yeah” moment, and I’ve told this to the developers and the league people, and everything you said you should include in the article. I’m a producer and now I’m producing this interview. Everything you said is correct, and it takes the audience out of it, and I think it really hurts them trying to get mainstream. I also think they have too many game types going on. Or maybe [they need] a new game mode they haven’t designed yet, one that really hooks people in.





They’re going to launch a new game mode one day: the defenders have two sites to defend, and the attackers have an explosive package.





Yeah, exactly. And you have thirty heroes with four game modes, each with its own objectives and win conditions. Trying to get a casual fan to understand what’s going on is hard. There’s nothing to grab you, and I enjoy it as an esport, but I don’t think it’s the mainstream esport that Blizzard wants. Counter-Strike did not start out with the one perfect game type. It started out with hostage maps, and jailbreaks, and assassinations. And then they started narrowing down what map types were good, so when defusal maps came out they started dominating. As a community we started working on rules, and changing things to make the game better. I went to the big organizer at the time, who was CPL, and got them to change the round timers because nothing was happening in the first minute.





How long ago was this?





This was like 2004/2005. We did that using hard data from many matches and experimentation, and right now there’s zero experimentation in Overwatch. There’s what Blizzard says and that’s it.





Well Overwatch didn’t spend much time in the hands of independent tournament organizers.





No they took it away pretty quick. To me, Blizzard will never understand esports because they want to control it. They want to control the messaging around it. And they can take credit for the popularity of Starcraft all they want, but they had nothing to do with it. World of Warcraft was the most popular esport and they just ditched it.





And they sold off Dota! And now Valve has two esports juggernauts in Dota 2 and CS:GO. Do you still feel like CS:GO is the second child compared to Dota 2?





I think to Valve it is, but their hands off approach has allowed us to do lots of things. I’m sure if I think about it I could come up with a whole wish list of things I would like them to do, but with the current system I’m happy with all the different style of events. I think this ESL major was really nice with innovation. I actually wanted to the reseeding at the ELEAGUE major, but we weren’t allowed. But there are lots of things we did at ELEAGUE that ESL has copied into their broadcast, and that’s great, because everyone else wants do more things as well. I thought ESL did a fantastic job at the major, I think the production level was amazing from every little story interview to highlights to great reaction cameras. The amount of work it takes to pull off from a team is amazing, and they absolutely nailed it.





Who do you think is winning BLAST Sao Paulo?





Oh I don’t make predictions, I just want a good show. I never do. I used to say I’m rooting for whoever I’m standing behind with the camera, because I want them to make a good shot. I like excellence, so if I see Astralis come out and dominate, I’m not bored with that. I want every team to do well.





I saw a lot of responses to people saying Astralis is “boring”, but I think I will just paraphrase what kioshima said: If Astralis is boring, then a lot of teams would love to be boring.





They’re not watching CS if they think Astralis is boring.





I think MiBR vs. Astralis would be the dream grand finals.





As long as it goes to all three maps and goes to overtime, and I don’t care who wins. That’s what I want.