The Weirdly Inspiring Story of Phreak

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you'll get 83 off your purchase plus three months free all while supporting our videos thanks again to surfshark for supporting my channel and all the weird niche esports content we make okay so today i want to share a story with you guys this is something i've stumbled upon recently almost completely by accident uh it's a narrative about an individual in the world of esports who is one of the most weirdly inspiring people that i've ever seen before but this is not a player or coach or analyst like you might expect it's a commentator and one of the most iconic ones in all of league of legends i don't know if people are going to find this as interesting as i do but i want to tell this story right so let me go ahead and begin by rewinding back to the very start of all this for the past few years now i've been making documentaries on my youtube channel about league of legends i've talked about its esports scene its development history and even a few infamous rioters in the past which has been a really fun hobby turned job although there's one part of making these videos that can get a little bit tedious i spend quite a bit of time watching replays of old league matches if i'm doing a documentary on a particular player and their career for instance i want to describe what they were like as a player during their time with the game what unique skills they had what their weaknesses were and of course i want to find moments of casters freaking out over their most impressive plays but to do all of that properly i have to go and actually spend quite a bit of time watching old pro vods this can be fun at first being reminded nostalgically of what old league was like but it can also get very mind-numbing very quickly a huge portion of my day might consist of sifting through hours and hours of old games of league that i already know what's gonna happen before i even begin watching it's one of the less fun parts about video production but recently i found one unexpected upside of this process i've developed a really deep appreciation for league of legends commentators since i spend so much time listening to them i've started to get some kind of nuanced opinions on which casters i think do the best job of creating hype moments or which ones are great at introducing player narratives but of all the casters i've listened to throughout all the seasons of league there's one who in my opinion is king above all others and that is none other than david freak turley freak first got his start in competitive gaming with warcraft 3 where he was a bit of a professional back in the day but as time went on he eventually wanted to get into some form of content creation eventually he found himself commentating replays done by other warcraft 3 professionals where he would record audio explaining just what was going on in a match gearing his casts towards newer players who could maybe learn a little bit from what they're seeing i would typically recommend creeping the null poachers first simply because they die faster unless you get skeletons out and then you just use a little bit of micro to make them refocus so you don't take damage in your dr you never know it can matter he became a bit of a figurehead in the warcraft 3 community and began developing a knack for this kind of stuff so much so that a few years later when riot games released league of legends freak applied for an internship and was hired on as community manager ever since then freak has been with raya doing a myriad of things for the company he's always been engaging with the community on forums he's produced the champion spotlight series but by far the biggest thing that he's done and the reason i want to talk about him today is he is one of riot's oldest and most successful shoutcasters as i said at the start of this video i honestly feel like freak is one of the most weirdly inspiring people in all of esports as funny as that is to say out loud his narrative though and the casting career he's had is a very underappreciated storyline that we're going to be taking a look at and to showcase exactly what i'm talking about we're going to be looking at three separate shoutcasting jobs he's done over the years one cast he did back in season one 2011 worlds one at the beginning of the lcs era in season three 2013 and then we'll also take a look at a cast he's done this most recent year in 2021 of season 11. the specific games i've chosen have been picked pretty much completely at random i knew i specifically wanted a world's cast he did in season one because that was pretty much the only high profile event of season one but other than that i'm not i'm not trying to purposefully select his most exciting casts or the worst ones he's done or anything like that to create a narrative out of thin air i just genuinely think that freak in his story over the years is one of the most interesting narratives there there are in esports so without further ado let's go ahead and jump into game number one this first game comes from season one worlds where freak is casting a group stage match between clg from north america and gamede from europe this is after freak's been officially casting league matches for a little while now but you can still see he's pretty new to this i guess we're getting conflicting reports on who's actually being played uh certainly game is gonna be playing they can just kind of stay there for now uh but yeah we were told you know originally the schedule was team still in mid then it was like no it's gonna be clg then i was like no it's back to normal but now tyler's saying well actually uh clg is game uh oh this is yeah clg game is going forth so uh yes we're gonna do uh game clg one thing worth mentioning about freak is during this point of his career he was almost more of a pro player than a caster throughout season one he was one of the higher rated north american players in league of legends and frequently played with and against professionals whenever he queued up for solo queue honestly he was probably talented enough to play as a pro if he wasn't working for riot but this was a bit of a detriment to his shoutcasts if you ever listen to freak during these years you probably remember how he would often spend time zeroing in on really specific things that didn't really matter a lot like mentioning every time a player would miss cs in game and and he's going to be in good shape as it still moves on chats are going to try to last hit right there misses that one unfortunately the reason he was doing this though was because he was a player and when you play league of legends that's the stuff you focus on what minion you're csing next every time you miss cs who's ahead in cs a lot of this game is paying attention to cs freak was almost trained to focus in on this kind of stuff just through virtue of how much he played league of legends and this made a lot of his early casts really rough around the edges he spent a lot of time mentioning various different information that was relevant to the game but a lot of the stuff he said wasn't really info that served the broadcast by contributing to the narrative it was just a stream of consciousness info dump if sona had you know her passive proctor another q available that would have been the first blood right away picked up but uh still the advantage 500 gold now in game's favor they're doing great for themselves swain's still camping out in mid a hot shot there we go going to turn on that giant crow form we're getting a little bit of free health there last hitting a few of these minions uh the way that ultimate works actually is it cost more mana to maintain over time so you kind of want to pulse it for a little bit get a little bit of health and let it go back down and that's kind of the most mana efficient way to gain health he's pulsing him they're going to last hit a few more minutes freak was still clearly at a learning point in his career where he was learning how to communicate important information to an audience effectively and he was also learning how to speak in a professional way if you listen to a lot of his early casts here he oftentimes sounds a little bit stiff or robotic or sometimes a bit timid yeah wow and it's great because like okay there's a fight oh gosh watch out oh wait someone's lying on wait switch over and i'm actually considering someone's on the headset telling me when to look at a different lane otherwise i've missed all those for those of you who know my commentating so thank you very much for those who are helping i'm actually managing to follow the fights this time uh and the stream is less mad at me because of that so but by far my favorite thing about freak was during this period of time any time he was commentating action in game he would just sort of raise his voice a little bit louder as if that would be what hyped the crowd up no real quote on that one looks like uh in the end though vladimir oh here comes a push on the candy panda they're taking a ton of damage as a soda dance he has dropped down now pushing on save is getting pushed back around a little bit is our staying alive but that was one pretty much free kill great coordination with the ultimates there this quirk in particular is something i find really endearing because this is basically what every youtuber goes through whenever you first get into public speaking be that on the internet or with an actual live audience that you're talking to you go through this weird little adventure where you try to find your voice because in your head you know that you should be doing something to project more you should be projecting your voice so everyone can hear speaking with good diction with a clear and concise tone from the diaphragm and all that kind of stuff but you don't know how to do that so you just kind of experiment and oftentimes it results in really funny examples like the very first youtube video i ever made hello youtube this is gba 99 and today i'm going to be showing you how much elo you can actually gain from playing only one champion in solo queue it's actually a weirdly difficult thing to do speaking to a large audience where you are projecting your voice and talking in a clear and concise manner while also making it sound completely natural that's the hard thing it's really difficult to like read a script or something and have it come out as if you're just talking in a regular conversation as if people don't realize that what they're hearing is scripted and so maybe i shouldn't be super harsh on freak for his voice getting a little louder when he's commentating exciting moments but there's actually another reason that freak maybe struggled a bit early on in his career because honestly freak was asked to do something that nobody in the world of broadcasting is ever asked to do anytime you listen to a broadcast from something like a sports game you'll always hear two different types of casters play-by-play and color the play-by-play commentator is the primary speaker their job is to describe action as it happens in relatively simple terms but with lots of energy and gusto to get the audience watching excited normally play-by-play commentators are traditional media figures someone who went to school for broadcasting and has a professional sounding voice but they still get to be the person freaking out at the exciting moments as they occur think of someone like quickshot in the lec or captain flowers in the lcs the color commentator is the other kind of person that you'll hear during the game who's normally responsible for filling in during downtime their job is to provide expert level analysis and context for what's going on be that with statistics describing strategies or other background information normally that means color commentators are ex-professionals or sometimes coaches or analysts but they're always someone that has a really high level understanding of what's going on in game so they can explain it to the audience the way things typically play out between these two is the play by play caster will describe an exciting thing as it happens whereas the color commentator will then step in maybe with a replay and describe why that just happened what each team was trying to do the strategies they were using and why everything unfolded the way it did the reason this is significant is in those early days of league freak was saddled with both jobs during pretty much every one of his casts he was meant to be both the play-by-play commentator and the color commentator he was meant to do color commentary because he was pretty much the most knowledgeable person there was in shoutcasting when it came to league of legends strategy he was the closest thing that riot had to a retired pro who could break down the high level concepts of in-game strategy for an audience so that was naturally freak's responsibility when he was going into casts but he was also kind of meant to be the play-by-play commentator as well he was an official riot employee he was kind of meant to be the primary broadcaster casting the action and getting everyone excited about league almost as if he was a promoter or something so i guess what all this means is i shouldn't have been so hard on him for whatever goofy foibles freak maybe had in his first year of casting he was saddled with more responsibility than anyone is ever given in the world of broadcasting having to do both of these jobs that normally are just reserved for one person a piece that's really difficult and freak was able to do surprisingly well given the workload he had but thankfully for freak as time went on more people got into casting league of legends there were more color commentators who came into the scene as old pros began retiring and more analysts joined as well as more play-by-play commentators who were really excited to be a part of the game and this ended up making freak's job a whole lot easier the next match i want to show you comes from the 2013 lcs spring split where we're watching team marn up against team dignitas here freak is doing commentary alongside chat an x-pro who is the former jungler for team dignitas and a color caster now as hard as it must have been for freak to do both jobs early on in his career it might have actually been a bit of a blessing in disguise at this point in 2013 he's now able to focus on just one responsibility and improve it that as time goes on but something interesting to note because he is now pretty experienced with both styles of commentary he's able to hop between them in this game we're looking at freak is the play-by-play commentator and here in champion select his job as the play-by-play guy is to really just announce things as they happen maybe talk about each champion briefly as they're locked in but then defer to chat and let him answer any questions about the strategies that each team is employing and kind of prodding him for information but because freak is such a knowledgeable player himself and really understands quite a bit he's able to have a really natural back and forth conversation with chat about everything that we're seeing and even crack a few jokes whoa i was i would i was gonna say kog'maw that's not a kog'maw all right that is corky yeah that's one of the other comfort picks for him of course i mean way back in the day he'd rush the black cleaver on it uh and triple doran's blade and just brawled people all the time that was with the old black cleaver too the one that was like 15 armor shred on hit stacks up to three times and you're like cutie pie that's not a good build he's like we do it because it works it's like you've got to think about for you but just he doesn't need to think and he's successful so yeah he just he just kind of goes like if you ever watch pewdiepie in a team fight he'll just pick brawl at every single opportunity eighty percent of the time it works yeah twenty time he flashes to die you can see there's still a little bit of dead air and a bit of awkwardness but this is really impressive freak is providing a really dynamic voice that you don't get to see that often when you watch any kind of sports commentary he's finding ways to mesh his historical and in-game knowledge to whatever's happening on screen and providing a second voice that you normally don't see because normally there's just one color caster for each individual game i assume from jet's point of view this makes his job even easier and allows for more back and forth discussion freak is able to develop some really solid synergy with his co-commentator in this game now that he's not responsible for everything as well and crumbs uh no this might actually did go to crumbs he did pick that one up clicky d now in a bad spot megan's gonna get the top knocked into the air where they have the damage exhaust going off and a clicky d flashes away from almost everybody look how low he is but mega zero taking damage from kiwi kids clicky these coins are up first blood clanky d picks it up there's the rappel from release kiwi kids still on top of that team mega zero's taunt should be up very very soon he just uses it flashes away from kiwi you can tell that he's getting better i mean it's slight but there is an improvement here freak still kind of sounds like he's just raising his voice to exclaim when exciting things happen rather than feeling genuine excitement himself but i'm believing more of what i'm hearing and i feel like freak is really starting to find his own voice a lot of matters on him there's the pressure look at the ignite on him knocking in the air as well tries to talk crumbs and run away can he get enough no he's not gonna nearly get away from that one 130 gold for the assist 260 for the kill nice gank he's certainly improved a lot at this point in his career but let's go ahead and skip forward to our third and final game in 2021 to hear what freaks shoutcasts sound like today let's go for a late invade they will find the binding there's not going to be a lot of follow-up they can't kill him but they might uh force sword out to a very bad base but a hook back into vulcan he's going to be damaged but now loss is probably forced to flash late game here another vine comes through big damage they're gonna find speak every first blood as the team is still fighting back and forth two for nothing oh no the jungle i believe actually helps to kill off vulcan but you take a two for one first blood on a red buff steal that difference is incredible listen to how much more confident freak is with his voice how natural his commentary sounds here his cadence and how much genuine excitement he can now express and communicate to listeners i mean freak himself is probably the only one who can fully appreciate how far he's come but it's really incredible where he is now compared to where he was 10 years ago there we go forces the flash of the power of evil and hooties getting the damage in but they still got knights coming across megan are into the wall that's a pick and it's right in front of baron that's in 30 seconds only one nib is down but they just one shot perks he had flash up and it didn't matter this is sort of not reached the back line they're gonna just pick off sven and they don't even need a mid tsm's good without one fudge can only run away at triple kill already for lost he wants the fourth it's going to be no problem hoonie will not steal it and all that's left is vulcan where is he even going to go sword down but wait a second this might seem obvious to you like yeah people get better at things the more they do them that's just a natural part of being a human being right and that's a fair point but i would argue normally we aren't given this kind of opportunity when it comes to the world of employment normally if you are hired for a job you are not given extended periods of time to find yourself if you're hired for a job you are normally hired because you're supposed to be qualified for it and then once you learn the ins and outs of that job you are expected to deliver on the work and if you don't you will be let go that's doubly so for super cut cutthroat industries like the world of sports or the world of entertainment or the world of broadcasting i mean think about all the lcs teams out there who will immediately fire coaches or cut players the instant they don't start rising up the standings after a new signing freak definitely wasn't the worst shoutcaster back in 2011 he still had a lot of bright moments like we mentioned earlier but i would say he probably wasn't ready to be a professional broadcaster like if you take 2011 freak and you stick him in the world today if he goes off and applies for any number of sports commentary jobs i don't know if he gets hired but with that being said it's really cool that riot took a chance on him and allowed him to grow and improve as the years went on i mean it kind of took years for freak to get as good as he is today but now he sounds like he's an entirely different human being compared to back in 2011. you know i would probably say that freak might be the best caster in esports just in terms of his skill set i don't think there's anyone else out there that can hop between play-by-play and color commentary the way that he can you know there might actually not be anyone that has that skill set in any sport freak's story kind of serves as a reminder that we should be patient with people that it's okay if someone's not immediately good at something they start off doing that doesn't mean that they can't grow and get better at that thing as time goes on if they're given the chance i mean he serves as a reminder to me that even if i struggle with something when i first start doing it that doesn't mean that i can't improve and get better as time goes on and hopefully become great at it one day it's a weirdly motivational thing i never really thought about this before freak is just a really great and impressive guy man i'm glad that league of legends has him and i hope you enjoyed this little trip down memory lane in this video thank you very much for watching and making it all the way to the very end thanks of course to my patrons for supporting me and helping me make weird videos like this thank you very much to anyone who's watching this or subscribe to the channel and allows me to do this kind of stuff and thank you very much to you freak if you are out there somewhere listening to this video you do a great job man with what you do and i'm glad that league of legends has you anyway though on that note i will see you all in our next video but until then thanks again for watching good luck and soloq and have a wonderful day

Channel: Gbay99

Views: 69,818

Keywords: league of legends, esports, lol esports, gbay99, gbay, lol, phreak, phreak patch rundown, riot games, shoutcasting, casting, broadcasting, LCS, NA LCS, lolesports, league of legends esports, phreak tons of damage, riot, league, s11 lcs

Id: Gje6G9qjJA8

Length: 21min 8sec (1268 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 30 2021