Thanks for that introduction, Manu – it’s great for me to have been involved in Tennis Elbow 4 from such an early stage!
So, as Manu said, my name is Darren Kilfara, and I work as a commentator across a number of different sports on television. I’ve been calling ATP 1000 matches for Tennis TV for several years, but I’ve also covered other sports such as ice hockey, NFL football, soccer, basketball and baseball/softball for the likes of Eurosport and DAZN. (More information about me as a commentator, as well as a number of videos featuring my commentary, can be found at
https://darrenkilfara.jimdo.com/broadcasting/, if you’re interested.) Although I’ve been a tennis fan since I was a kid growing up in Atlanta in the 1980s – and I played junior tennis in the ALTA system there to a reasonable standard – I wouldn’t necessarily say that tennis is my best sport as a commentator. That said, I’m learning all the time and working hard to get better, always listening to my matches after the fact and noting what has and hasn’t worked, and I hope that my involvement with TE4 might help raise my profile further as a tennis commentator and maybe help me get more regular work at events both below and perhaps even above the ATP 1000 level.
I’ve also been playing many different tennis video games (and many other sports games as well) for quite a long time, and I’ve logged more hours playing Tennis Elbow 2013 – my favorite tennis game I’ve played to date – than I’d publicly care to admit! So when I heard that Manu was looking to create a new version of the game, I approached him with the idea that I might be able to help him with the commentary system in TE4. I’ve really enjoyed using Maxou’s Ultimate ATP Tour 2016 patch when playing TE2013, and the snippets of Tennis TV commentary included in that are really well incorporated, but the selection of commentary recordings in the patch is understandably limited and gets quite repetitive over time. So my goal is to create a fully fleshed-out commentary system for TE4 that enhances the game and immerses gamers even more fully in the world Manu has created – particularly in the context of the World Tour format, where my main focus currently lies. Many famous commentators have been involved in sports video games down the years, but I don’t think any commentator has ever played as instrumental a role in designing a commentary system and scripting the lines that will be used in a game as I am with TE4, and hopefully that will be borne out in the game we eventually produce. (Just to clarify, I’m scripting all of the lines and will then voice them over as a commentator, so it’s my voice you’ll be hearing when you play TE4 with the commentary enabled.)
I’m currently in the process of scripting unique lines to introduce every round of every main tour singles tournament on both the men’s and women’s tours – so when you’re playing the World Tour, instead of just plopping you into the game at the start of your next match, you’ll get something along the lines of (to use the opening men’s event of the year in Brisbane as an example), “G'day, everyone – I'm Darren Kilfara, and today the new tennis season begins in Brisbane, the third biggest city in Australia and the capital of Queensland. The first Slam of the season in Melbourne is already on the horizon as this year's Tennis Elbow Tour gets underway – next.” (There will be a range of generic intros for qualifying matches on the main tour and for all Futures and Challenger event matches, although the four slams will each have unique introductory lines as well.) One of the challenges here is not to violate any intellectual property rights and use trademarked terms and names we’re not allowed to use, so to avoid any such issues, we'll be referencing terms like “SW19” rather than “Wimbledon”, or “TET 1000” events (for Tennis Elbow Tour) instead of “ATP 1000” events – which I hope will work just as well and be appreciated by you as a gamer. My hope is that you’ll enjoy these little lines and maybe even consciously look forward to them as you advance from round to round in each tournament!
As for the match commentary itself, I’ve been pursuing a modular approach where lines are classified as Exclamations, Descriptions or Summaries, or as Hybrids which encompass two or three of those categories. At the end of a point, you might just hear one Hybrid line, which is more like a traditional commentary line: e.g., after a player hits yet another forehand winner in a match, “Mmmm - that's been his best shot of the day, hasn't it? Time and time again, used to devastating effect.” But with the other lines, you should be able to mix and match different Exclamations (e.g., “He’s made it!”) and Descriptions (e.g., “Fiercely struck – what a shot that is!”) and Summaries (e.g., “What’s next in this set?”) to keep things from ever being repetitive. I’d like to think that we’ll make it so that you’ll never hear the same series of sentences between points twice in any given match…and that we’ll be able to program all of the commentary lines in such a way that you’ll occasionally be surprised how relevant they are. At the same time, I know that most gamers are primarily interested in playing the game and moving on to the next point, not having to stop and listen to extended commentary, so the goal will be to keep all of the lines short enough that they don’t get in your way.
A few additional notes:
--One important element of the commentary system I envision is that I don’t think a first-round Futures Tour match should sound anything like a Grand Slam semifinal in commentary terms. So I’ll be recording multiple versions of the same lines with different levels of intensity and emotion, and/or tweaking lines slightly between versions, to take this into account.
--While I won’t be voicing over any individual player names as such, your player and your opponents will be referenced by nationality (e.g., “the Australian”) and by ranking (e.g., “the world number 7”) in commentary from time to time.
--At present, I’m not really planning to include any doubles-specific match introductions, or many doubles-specific commentary lines, as my impression is that most gamers will be focusing on singles play.
--Head-to-head online gamers will not get specific match introductions, and the range of commentary lines to be used will probably be stripped back a bit, as exhibition matches like these inevitably won’t have the same sort of context to them as a match in a tournament on the World Tour.
Anyway, if you have any questions about our plans for the commentary system in the game, please ask them here and I’ll try to answer them. And if you have any commentary-related suggestions or wishes for the game, even to the point of suggesting specific lines of commentary you’d like to hear, please let me know – I can’t promise to include everything, but your feedback really would be very helpful. I want the game to be as good as possible in every aspect for you, and to the extent that I can play my part in that, I really will be delighted.
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