Over the last year and a half, Brennon “Bren” Hook has become a cornerstone of the Overwatch League broadcast. While he’s now a seasoned professional working the desk and the halftimes, that wasn’t always the case. Before joining the League, he was known for his play-by-play commentary and most Overwatch fans only knew him from Contenders Season 0 in 2017. When it came to the serious analysis expected of esports desks, Bren had much less experience.

“I had never been on a desk before. I had never done colour commentary on an actual live broadcast environment. So it was completely new ground to me, moving into the Overwatch League.”

While the Overwatch League was a dream come true, his role required a lot of work. “I was very uncomfortable moving into [analyst work], because a lot of people didn’t follow me before the Overwatch League, but I was a play-by-play caster. That was the only thing I ever did … I had done some analysis coming in – I kind of knew I was capable of it … but I had never been on a desk before. I had never done colour commentary on an actual live broadcast environment. So it was completely new ground to me, moving into the Overwatch League.”

“I still think I’m a stronger play by play caster compared to analysis, that’s just where my strengths lie. But I definitely think I’ve come into my own on the desk.”

“There was a period last year where I was very insecure about my performance on the desk, trying to essentially fit in quality analysis.” With some exceptions, most esports desk are fairly serious and straight-laced. However, as the Inaugural Season went on, Bren started to take a different approach. “I just realised the desk isn’t as fun if we’re all the same caricature, if we’re all following the same stuff and the same formula of just being serious and only talking about analysis.”

“Some people might enjoy that… [but] I also just don’t take myself seriously at all.” Bren let out a laugh. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed that. I just try and have fun with it.”

Bren started to work more skits into his segments, along with ridiculous yet humourous predictions and much more of his own comedic personality.“At the end of the day, you just need to put it in perspective. We’re commentating video games. We’re commentating about a talking gorilla that has a laser canon … Realistically, it’s absurd. The entire idea of this concept, that we’re commentating on these characters… it’s just a wacky concept.”

But despite the crazy premise of Bren’s job, there’s still an awful amount of work that goes into each broadcast. There are numerous meetings, both on broadcast days and on the Wednesday preceding each broadcast week, with production staff and all of the casters. “We talk about general story points of the week, we go into further details and we have a Watchpoint Preshow meeting, where we talk about what we want to discuss on the days of the shows, any skits we want to try, things like that.”

“The truth of it is – and I wish this wasn’t the case, because there’s a lot of depth to the game itself – the majority of people just care about their favourite player and highlights and that sort of thing.”

Everything in the Overwatch League broadcast is planned further in advance that you might think – the meetings on Wednesday usually cover the whole week’s worth of preshows and postshows. Then there’s even more work that goes on throughout an actual broadcast. Each day, Bren turns up two or three hours in advance. He then goes over the day’s Watchpoint shows one more time, hands in his predictions for the day and watches every single match from start to finish in between his segments.

While the games play out, the analysts are on the lookout for plays to feature at half time for the sponsored telestrations. However, it’s not quite easy as it seems. “It takes time to build those [telestration] packages. Firstly, you got to find the play. Secondly, you’ve got to telestrate it. Then you’ve got to build it and then make sure it’s ready. Generally speaking that takes the entire first map of a series and sometimes even half of the second one.”

“So whenever we have these obligations to do these telestration moments, it is quite hectic. You find yourself rushing around…Sometimes it’s a bit off the mark, sometimes it’s a banging job.”

It’s not just down to Bren either – he’s receiving help from a familiar face behind the scenes: Johnny “Reinforce” Larsson. “More recently it’s been more of a 50/50 effort. Sometimes I’ll spot a play I want to run with and sometimes I can’t spot anything but Johnny will see something I don’t. It’s a fast paced game, at the end of the day.”

However, Bren points out that telestrations should ideally fit in to part of the broadcast’s larger storylines for a match. All the segments, from the preshow to the telestrations to the postshow, should work together. “We always try and keep in mind the story points that we ran with on the preshow, for one. If there’s a specific player or head-to-head match up (like the main tanks, the flex supports or the Zarya players), we try to pay attention to that.”

It’s all about following the same story threads, where possible. “An example of this was the Atlanta vs Paris game. In the preshow, my talking point was that Kruise was the win condition for Paris, [with] his aggressive, high-risk high-reward playstyle, where he’s setting up a lot of kills for Paris and their aggressive GOATs playstyle. That’s how they win. Atlanta did a really good job of recognising that. Maasa was denying him a lot of the time, taking 1v1s, booping him, denying him from getting a lot of these engagements. So we hit on that [as a counterpoint]. That was beautiful – it played right into our hands.”

“At the end of the day, you just need to put it in perspective. We’re commentating video games. We’re commentating about a talking gorilla that has a laser canon.”

“Other times, we’re not as lucky. We’ll set up a storyline in the preshow and we’ll keep an eye on it, and – again, it takes time to build these packages – so we’ll be building towards it and sometimes it just doesn’t work out. It just completely flips. You’re still following the thread, but then suddenly it flips and the other team just clicks and they find out what they were doing wrong. Suddenly your storyline has just been destroyed by the team, and they end up just winning out the map and you’re like ‘OK well fuck, now we’ve got to backpedal and salvage what we can out of this.’ It is definitely difficult.”

Despite the hectic nature and increased workload from last year, Bren feels as though he’s working less. “We’re working more than twice as much compared to last year on the desk, [but] it doesn’t feel like it’s as much work. The preshow is produced quite heavily, so is the postshow. The halftimes are where we have to put in full effort, but it’s quite nice after that halftimes are done to just chill out a little bit. You watch the game play out and then just reset yourself mentally.”

“Last year, when you were on the for the day, you had to be paying attention 24/7, because we had the postgame as well.” Sitting in the Blizzard Arena during the Inaugural Season, you could clearing see Bren and the other analysts intensely watching each match. It looked quite draining. Bren laughs. “Draining is one word for it.”

At the start of the 2019 season however, Bren was doing more than ever. With his partner-in-crime Josh “Sideshow” Wilkinson away until Stage One Playoffs, Bren was on camera for every single halftime for each match. And while he enjoys working every day – unlike the Inaugural Season where he had days off – he also found that he had to put in some work to get back up to scratch at the start of the season.

“I came into the first week with a reasonable understanding of GOATS,” he reflected, “but admittedly it was pretty… I don’t want to say poor, because I don’t think I had a poor understand of the meta coming into the first week. But it just wasn’t really up to scratch. [It wasn’t] up to enough of a level to talk about a lot of the intricacies you see with triple tank, triple support. I noticed after the first week. I was like ‘Fuck, ok, let’s fix this.’ I just started watching a lot of Josh’s VOD reviews, because he spent a hell of a lot of time reviewing a lot of the games.”

With such a shift away from the previous 2/2/2 metas, GOATS presented a whole new way to play the game. “The real thing that killed me with GOATS was kind of retraining how you think to cast or analyse a game. Obviously the game is all centred around ultimate abilities, but previous metas have also been mainly about positioning. [GOATS] is more about micro-abilities, like armour packs, bubble usage, leap cooldowns, Winston bubbles. Every small ability really matters.”

“I was a little bit rusty after the big production break too … After the first week, I definitely understood that there was a gap [in my knowledge] there. I made good strides to rectify it. I caught up, in my opinion.”

However, the analysts and casters might possess a huge amount of in-depth knowledge about the game, but it can be hard to find a place to fit it all into the broadcast. “The truth of it is – and I wish this wasn’t the case, because there’s a lot of depth to the game itself – the majority of people just care about their favourite player and highlights and that sort of thing.”

I noted that was the reason Overwatch League works and why it’s been so successful, which Bren agreed with. “That’s exactly why it works. And I’m not saying we need to completely disregard all credible and serious analyst work, but I do think you can find a balance in-between. I can be the desk talent who [leans] more towards the casual user base, which is perfectly fine. You got Josh there to sort of balance it out as well. Me and Soe are falling into sort of the…. I don’t want to say casual role, because it’s got negative connotations. But definitely towards more of a wider audience. That’s who we’ll be tailoring it towards moving forward in the year.”

“We’ll set up a storyline in the preshow and we’ll keep an eye on it, and we’ll be building towards it and sometimes it just doesn’t work out. It just completely flips. Suddenly your storyline has just been destroyed by the team.”

Overall, Bren has gained a wealth of confidence in his role over the last year. “I’ve definitely come into my own. Realistically, I definitely would still like to get back into casting. That’s the end goal for me, 100%, but it’s a question of who I would cast with, for one. I think I would only want to cast with Sideshow … But if that were the case, the desk would be a bit gutted.”

“For now, I’m very happy on the desk. I can get away with a lot of skits and show my personality a lot more than I would in commentary. It’s been very enjoyable.”

The overall message from Bren seems to be about embracing your personality, without shame. “It’s important to play to your strengths, and at the end of the day, my strengths are chugging hot sauce and being a moron on the desk. If that’s what I’m good at, I’m going to continue to do it, you know?”

Featured image provided byRobert Paul for Blizzard Entertainment

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