Gaming
ESL’s star commentator tells us how she made it to the top of the eSports broadcasting world.
Lauren "Pansy" Scott is one of the most versatile casters in all of eSports. While Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is her main domain, she also works on World of Tanks, Battlefield and Dirty Bomb, making her one of only a handful of casters that cover multiple games at the highest level. Barely a week goes by where you won't find her casting one of these titles for ESL, whether that be online or at a high-profile LAN event.
Growing up in London, Scott worked incredibly hard to get to where she is today. Now one of the top casters at ESL, and one of the most experienced minds in eSports, with a career that spans a decade already, we caught up with Scott at the ESL Pro League Season 3 finals in London recently to find out what her plans for the future are, and how she manages to keep up with all the titles she works on.
“Oddly enough, I was in the cab yesterday coming back from rehearsals and even the taxi driver knew eSports,” said Scott when talking about how eSports has grown over the past few years. “We started discussing the event and he was like ‘Oh, it’s a gaming event, is it one of those eSports things?’ A random black-cab driver in east London asked if it was an eSports event. I just thought that was really, really cool, and showed how far we have come.”
Scott has been around the eSports scene for some time, with her 10-year career starting back in the mid 2000s. Back when she started out, eSports was less professionalised, with much smaller events and nowhere near as many viewers. Scott recalled an event she worked early on in her career, where she thought that she was broadcasting to as many people as she ever would.
“I was at an iSeries once, and if you have never been to an iSeries, it’s like a local LAN, or at least it was at the time, where you bring your own PC and play some games with your mates,” recalls Scott. “We used to do a CoD 4 tournament and I was casting that to what I thought was a big crowd, although looking back it was probably about the same amount of people who are at the bar right now at this event. But in my head at the time I thought it was amazing, I think we hit 2,000 viewers and I was like ‘Okay we have made it, this is a good as it gets.’”
Scott turned out to be a little out on that front, as the eSports scene’s rapid growth over the next few years has since proven. During this time she established herself as one of the top shooter-focused casters in the world, eventually landing a job at ESL. Nowadays she works across many games, both casting and recently even moving into event hosting. This puts her in an unusual position in the eSports world, where many casters will specialise in one game in order to have the best knowledge possible. Scott, however, sees this as an advantage.
“I think sometimes if you are just focused on one product or one event, you don't get to see the skill or the ability of the other games and how they can be challenging, and you can learn a lot through that,” said Scott. “There is a downside of course, because you can't just focus in, you can't just be purely knowledgeable about one thing. For me I think it makes me who I am to have a variety. I'm glad that I get the chance to do it, but I am sometimes envious of people who just get to focus on one product.”
For many, casting is the dream, and with stories such as that of Owen “OD Pixel” Davies it now seems like an achievable goal for anybody with dedication and a microphone. Speaking over video games may appear to be the dream job, but it’s not all glitz and glamour of million-dollar LAN events in exotic places, and it can be a very difficult job, as Scott explains.
“I love casting, there is no feeling like it, when the crowd is hyped up and I'm hyped up it's like 'oh my god', it's a beautiful moment,” she says. “But it's not exactly the smoothest or easiest of lives. People say ‘Well, you talk about video games, how hard is that?’ and I'm like ‘Well, you're not wrong, but it's also hours in front of camera, tons of preparation and off-camera work and it's the travelling that really gets to you.’”
Despite this, Scott still loves casting even after all these years. But like many casters she also doesn't see herself doing this until she retires. At just 25 Scott still has a long working life ahead of her and mentions that, while she doesn't want to leave eSports, she perhaps won't be casting for the rest of her life.
“I'd like to eventually step away from commentating, but I don't think I ever want to walk away from eSports,” contemplates Scott. “I love the industry, I love the people, I love the fans and I still love watching games, it's still my hobby after 10 years of doing this. I'll never leave eSports unless I'm forced out. I'd love to look towards game development, or helping that side of things to try and smooth the transition between creating a very enjoyable competitive game, and then making it into an eSport. I think in the future that would be an amazing thing to look into and do, but for now I'm still loving casting.”
Scott’s journey to the top of the casting scene certainly hasn't been an easy one, but now she is one of the most-respected casters in the world, and there isn't too much more that she could do in the world of casting. In a few years she may branch out into other things, but for now we can all enjoy hearing her across many of the top eSports at the biggest events.
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