Every game on the basketball.casa stream now has its own spoken commentary, from tip-off to the final whistle

basketball.casa is a basketball league where every game is simulated, body by body, and nobody scripts the plays. Until now the voices were mostly for the live stream. Now the games on the stream each have a commentary of their own, and the replay plays it with the picture: a fast play-by-play Caller and a laughing Colour commentator, start to finish.

Written from the game, not about games in general

Every game keeps a record of what happened: who shot, from how far, whether it went in, who took the rebound, how the score moved. The commentary is written from that record and from nothing else, so a call is only ever a play that happened. A basket is called for the team that scored it, the score read is the score after that basket, and a name is only ever one the game gave. The lines are chosen from many ways to say each thing, so two games do not sound alike, and a joke word is used at most once a game.

Checked before anyone hears it

Each line passes a guard before it is spoken: it refuses a number, a name or a made-or-missed call that the play's facts do not support, and anything that does not belong on air. A line that fails is dropped, never read out.

Voiced once, in time with the picture

Speech takes longer to make than to hear, so a game is voiced ahead of time, once, and kept. Each line is fitted to the real seconds of its play, and the whole game's commentary is laid on one timeline as a single audio file. The call for a play is placed at that play's own second. When the engine changes, a game's commentary is made again from its new plays; one that is still right is kept.

Every game the stream shows

A game the stream plays is not published without its commentary: the site is checked before it goes up, and a page whose commentary was made for an older engine stops the release until it is made again. That is why a featured game, a tournament game or a game on the live stream sounds like a broadcast rather than a silent replay.

How to hear it

Open a featured game or any of the tournament's games, press play, and turn the sound on.