The Call
Dave “Dolson” Olson on Being an Entertainer, His Path to The SMITE Broadcast, and How a Tragedy Brought The Casting Team Together
Dave “Dolson” Olson on the analyst desk at the SMITE World Championship, season nine. It was the first in-person event in over two years. Image courtesy of Hi-Rez Studios
Before he was “Dolson,” he was known only as Dave Olson, a data engineer with a degree in management and information systems. Before he solidified himself as one of SMITE’s iconic voices, he was the ‘caster’ for his friends’ pick-up Super Smash Brothers games. The way he tells it, Dave’s improbable journey to casting was a right-place-right-time moment, but his ability to grow not only as a caster but as a member of this community illustrates what works the very best about SMITE’s Esports community—a tightly bonded but intensely welcoming group.
While he points out the good fortune that helped him land on SMITE’s broadcast team, Olson doesn’t direct attention to the many challenges he has faced during his now three-year tenure as a broadcaster. He discusses them when asked, but for Olson, his SMITE story is not one of sustained difficulty; the challenges, as he presents them, were opportunities for personal and collective growth—both for the community at large and for the broadcast team specifically. Without saying the word, Olson describes a family. One with distant relatives he sees only on special occasions like the SMITE World Championship, but who are nonetheless integral to the shared bond that sustains this game.
This framing so effectively captures the profound separation the SMITE community felt during the pandemic, when it had to watch from home one of the game’s most legendary championship runs in its now decade-long history. Or again, when John Finch, revered caster and beloved member of the SMITE family, passed away unexpectedly, the SMITE community longed to be together—to heal, and to share in the making of our game’s hallowed history.
Amidst this community-wide feeling of separation, Olson joined the SMITE team. He was recruited first to Paladins during SMITE’s sixth season, but thereafter transitioned to casting SMITE at the beginning of the pandemic-disrupted season seven. Voices like his helped keep this community together through hard times both individual and shared. For his part, Olson has risen in the broadcast team and has done primary play-by-play for the last two grand finals—both of which ended in 3-0 sweeps, prompting jokes about “Dave’s finals curse.” Following in the tradition of Finch, whose iconic call of the Pittsburgh Knights’ championship-clinching victory remains one of the game’s best calls yet, Olson has himself added his own calls to that list, and in doing so has made himself a part of SMITE’s history—and a part of why that history remains ongoing.
I sat down with Olson to discuss being an entertainer, his journey to the SPL broadcast, and how challenges brought the casting team even closer, among other things.
[The following interview has been edited for clarity.]
The Long Lane: Before we get into SMITE, how did you get into broadcasting?
Dolson: So this is a fun story. My parents always joked about me being a lawyer or a politician or a public speaker or something like that because I've always just had a knack for—am I allowed to swear?—bullshitting, for lack of a better term. I was always very quick-witted, and... we'll call it 'conversational' with my parents during my young teenage years. I kind of nurtured this type of personality through a lot of my interactions with friends and family. But the actual getting into broadcasting, it's a story I always laugh when I tell. One of my best friends in the whole world, still good friends with him today, his name is Dom, and he and I went to the University of Georgia together. And while we were there, his older brother was also there, and we'd go out and go to the bars and then come home and hang out.
And at the time, Dom's brother actually worked for Hi-Rez. He used to work for Hi-Rez, he's at Epic now. His tag is PrettyHair. He did Paladins stuff in the past, I think dabbled in SMITE a little bit, and recently was one of the designers on Rogue Company. So we all went out one night and had a nice night, and we came back to my apartment and we had this big old projector screen in our living room. And my friends, they always liked playing Super Smash Brothers. It was the Nintendo 64 version. And I was always terrible, and I always liked just sitting back and watching people better than me play the games because I always felt like I would get too frustrated just getting beat up. So I was always happy to sit and watch. And it kind of became this joke that since I was sort of the loud, boisterous one, whenever my friends were fighting, and they would play the five stock mode, whenever they each had one life left, I would jokingly start yelling about it and commentating. Obviously with no actual skill behind it. It was just sort of my personality.
And one night we went out, we came back, my friends turned on Smash, and PrettyHair was there. And I did my thing, commentated over the games, had a little alcoholic confidence in me so maybe I was a little extra loud. But PrettyHair had an internship with Hi-Rez at the time, which turned into a full time job. And then when Paladins came out and they started their Esports department, PrettyHair transitioned to a role on that team. Now, this is two or three years after this event had taken place. They were in a period where they needed someone to step in and do commentary for Paladins Esports. They had an opening on their team and they needed someone who was local and, we'll say, cheap. And I wasn't a commentator at the time, so I couldn't really demand a certain rate. And the way PrettyHair, who's now one of my good friends also, tells it, is when they were theory crafting on who they could bring in. He looked back on that one night up in college where I had jokingly and drunkenly commentated some Smash Brothers and thought, 'man, this guy's got a good personality and a good knack for this.'
So he brought me in. And I didn't know anything about Paladins at the time. I played a lot of League of Legends, so we did an example League cast, and we recorded it. I started to learn Paladins, did some practice casts and effectively went in for a tryout and did well enough that they brought me in and I casted a year of Paladins. This would have been 2019, which would have been season six of SMITE. So while season six of SMITE was going on, I was on the Paladins team. Then from there in the last couple of years transitioned over to the SMITE team. So it was sort of a long time build up. And I'm really a testament to knowing someone and being in the right place at the right time, and I fully embrace that. However, I did the most that I could with that opportunity. If I had known PrettyHair and he brought me in and I was terrible, then I wouldn't have a job. So I give myself some credit. But I really just knew a guy who knew a guy. And with some alcohol and some Smash Brothers in me, ended up turning that into a career a few years later.
TLL: You said you were at the University of Georgia. What were you studying back then?
D: I graduated with a degree in management information systems. So a business degree basically. A really good business school at UGA, so it was a great degree. And I somehow made my way through college—c's get degrees—and that was always the amount of effort I could stand to put into schoolwork. So I minored in computer science, majored in information systems. And in those years after college, so before PrettyHair reached out to me, I worked in consulting. It was really auditing. I hated it. And then after that, I went and worked with some friends at Home Depot doing data engineering and database building and stuff like that. So prior to casting, I had done nothing in the Esports or commentary space, but it was always a common theme—even through college and through work—it was always games that kind of won my attention and my time. I guess I always had to rip myself away from playing games to go focus on actual life stuff.
TLL: What games were you playing back then?
D: I think this actually helped me transition into SMITE. I played League of Legends religiously in college.
TLL: Uh oh.
D: From freshman year of college to senior year of college. And I played ranked League of Legends. I was in it from day one. I played a lot of League. I was on a three, four ranked games a day type basis. Obviously you take breaks when it gets frustrating, but I played a lot of League, a lot of Call of Duty back then. I didn't really get into much single player stuff. I guess FIFA. More the party games, especially in college when you get the big groups together. I liked the Mario parties, the FIFA. We had a Rock Band set up in our apartment, and our neighbors had to eventually come tell us to stop because they could hear the drums banging on the floor. But 90% of my time was split between Call of Duty and League of Legends.
TLL: When you got this offer from PrettyHair, it was a little bit of a risk, right? You'd never really done anything like that. How did you mull that over in your head and come to the conclusion that going out on a limb like this was the right decision?
D: It's a really good question. This is now the third job that I've had since college. I did that consulting, auditing job, and I made really good money, but my happiness was low. That job was 90% [for the] money, and then that influenced my happiness because I had extra money, but the work itself was not something I enjoyed. And then I had an opportunity to move to the job at Home Depot. I was a contractor there, and it paid slightly less, but I enjoyed the work more. I almost got this taste for finding the right balance between being happy in the work that I was doing, but of course, needing enough money to live a comfortable life, even with proper budgeting and all that. So I had already made the type of swap where money went down, but happiness went up. And that was a "real job." So that wasn't as hard to convince myself. And that one, if I stay in and I get hired full-time, suddenly I'm a data engineer full-time. So that was an easier decision.
And then PrettyHair comes to me and he says, hey, 'look, we need you.' And he was really hammering me to get me in, and it took me a while. Admittedly, it was not something I immediately jumped at and I didn't immediately say, yes because I'm thinking, 'okay, on one hand, I can stay at Home Depot, this massive Fortune 500 company. I can work my way up, I'll make great money, and I'll sort of have this really comfortable—if it all works out—I'll have this really comfortable life, and I'll be doing something I somewhat enjoy doing.'
PrettyHair was pretty relentless, and my thought process was it was another pay decrease, but it was another happiness increase. So it's another one of those conversations where I had to weigh, 'am I going to be enough of a percentage happier to be okay with the same percentage decrease in pay?' More or less. That was kind of the equation that I had to sort of figure out in my brain. And I come from a very, I would say, privileged position in that I knew if money fell short, my parents are close by, I would never be without home, food, shelter, all that sort of stuff. So I knew that I was in a position where I was privileged enough to be able to take a little bit of a risk. Paladins, that was one and done. It was a one and done year for me. And if they didn't hire me on to do anything with SMITE, I was tiny at the time. I had 500 followers, and I wouldn't have gotten any more work in Esports. And so if that didn't work out, I knew that I could fall back and find something else in one of the previous roles that I had been doing because I had sort of this safety net.
And then one night, I remember sitting there and I was thinking games have taken over so much of my attention my entire life. They've been so important to me in forming my friendships and forming social memories. And even in college, when you're sort of more in this party mindset, there were still video games. At the end of the night, at the beginning of the night, we would sit and we'd drink and we'd play games. So [games] were such an important part of my life. I don't remember what it was, but something just clicked when I was really struggling to decide,' do I stick with the comfort, or do I try something new, but something I could be a lot happier with.' And it really clicked in my head, like, why would I—especially when I was as young as I was, I was 23 or 24—why would I ever say no to an opportunity to work in an industry surrounding something I love?
So eventually I realized that I would regret, even if it was one and done, even if I was done after one year of Paladins, I would have regretted [saying no] and constantly asked myself, what if it worked out? What if you really enjoyed it? Sort of a mix of things. But eventually I realized that a happiness increase while having the added safety net of fallback plans and things like that, it actually became an obvious choice. But it did take me about a month of poking and prodding from PrettyHair to finally tip over the edge. He actually brought me out—season five of SMITE Worlds were going on when he and I were negotiating, because I started working during season six of SMITE on Paladins. He brought me out to Worlds that year, and it won me over seeing all the fans. Realizing I could be in that world made it an obvious choice by the end.
Olson with co-caster Myflin during the SMITE World Championship, season nine. Image courtesy of Hi-Rez Studios.
TLL: Had you heard of Paladins or Hi-Rez before?
D: Yes. But a lot of it was through PrettyHair in college. I graduated college in 2017. So throughout the years in college, through my friend Dom and his brother PrettyHair, and through League of Legends, I knew of some of the alternatives. I was familiar with SMITE, and I maybe put two hours in the game over the course of my college career. So I knew of it, but I didn't really start familiarizing myself with it or playing it until I was actually a part of the company in 2019.
TLL: How did that jump occur from casting Paladins to joining the SMITE production team?
D: That was a fun time because, referring back to an earlier answer, I kind of got the rumblings that, we did a LAN league that year for Paladins, and the viewership wasn't fantastic. There was the overwhelmingly close community and there was overwhelming support. But I guess at the time the decision was there just wasn't enough return to continue doing this LAN league. And so I remember by the end of that Paladin's year, there was so much uncertainty and I didn't know where my job was going to be. I was starting to wonder if I need to start applying to other jobs and getting back to the industries that I came from. And it was overall, not only just for Paladins but for SMITE as well, a transition time for Esports at Hi-Rez. In general, Paladins was reduced in size. We still had a league that following year, this would have been season seven of SMITE. And as such, since we weren't doing a full Paladins league, that team got downsized and there was some turnover in the caster team. With the SMITE side of things, from an organizational perspective, I did a good enough job—and Gore joined me. Gore had the same path as I did. He was with Paladins a bit longer than I was, a year or two longer, but he stuck around and ended up transitioning over to SMITE at the same time that I did.
There was a lot of uncertainty at first, but I always looked up to SMITE. Paladins was amazing, and I love that community, and they were all so close-knit. But SMITE was the one that was drawing the most eyes and had all of this outspoken, loud support. The casters on the SMITE team, they were the ones with the most followers and all that sort of stuff. So I always looked up to the SMITE team. And so at the end of 2019, Hinduman sat me down and was like, 'look, here's how we're going to reorganize things. We want you to be around and be a part of the SMITE team.'
Of course, another year of job security is incredibly exciting. But realizing that I had taken that first step on what could be a longer journey in Esports was also really exciting. Realizing that I had gone from a small, very close-knit, very passionate game to a game that is in a similar spot but a factor bigger, really a couple of factors bigger. It was a step forward for me. However, Dreamhack Atlanta in 2019 was in November. It was season six Worlds. Shortly after that, I got told 'by the way, you're doing SMITE this upcoming year.' And the season maybe started February or March of 2020. So I had that period between end of worlds in November and the start of the SMITE Challenger circuit qualifying in February or March of the next year to learn SMITE. So it was a mix of, 'this is amazing, I'm so excited' and also, 'oh my God, I've got a MOBA to learn.'
TLL: I want to come back to this idea of you learning the game in a minute, but first, you made this jump right at the start of the pandemic—
D: Oh my god, yeah.
TLL: Obviously SMITE was a LAN league at the time you joined, but also those LAN operations were suspended indefinitely. How did that impact the mood with the production team and your attitude during that transition? How did that pandemic wrench kind of get in the way of things?
D: I want to shout out any of the amateur leagues that are out there, the SCC casters. People don't realize how much of an advantage it is to be in the same room as the person you're commentating with and vibing on their energy. Even from a true mechanical perspective, pointing at one another, and hand signals, 'slow down the speed, pick up the speed, give it to me. I'm giving it back to you, I'm out of breath.' Those subtle hand signals make the cast flow so much better. It's so much easier to read energy. There's no internet delay, things like that. And so all the casters out there, whether it's in SMITE or otherwise, I know a lot of the casters that are out there really grinding end up casting online for a lot of these tournaments with their co-casters, and that's not an easy thing to do. So at the beginning of the pandemic, that was my first experience with that because Paladins was all on LAN and I had to learn really quickly how to cast. And I was able to do so because the team at the time was amazing. We had PrettyHair and Raynday, who's off doing great stuff now, and Goremiser really helped me.
But all I had known was casting in-studio, and that's all any of us had really ever known. Some guys, of course, had done online stuff in the past and they were a bit more familiar, but all I knew was how to cast with my co-commentator there with me. There was still more uncertainty. We knew we were going to do a league. And I'll fully admit this, the casters were relatively shielded from a lot of the really difficult decisions as far as structure and how we were going to make stuff work. We were essentially told, 'here's what we need you guys to do.' We had to do all of our own equipment set up because at the very beginning of COVID everyone was being super careful and a box of equipment would get handed off at the front of my apartment, and I would go pick it up. Then we'd get step-by-step video calls on how to set it up. So I imagine for the rest of the team, for the non-casters, it was very stressful because you have, what, 40 players, coaches, all from around the world, who are all living here. Luckily, they had their own homes and we could make that work.
But the technological struggles, I think, weighed a lot on the non-caster production team. And I admire them for how we were able to put on a really good show despite what were really difficult circumstances. But then from a caster perspective, it got really difficult because Gore knew SMITE and played a lot of SMITE, but I did not know SMITE, and I'd only played four months of SMITE and we got maybe two weeks of in-studio reps before COVID had us working from home. So I'm on this brand new game and I'm having to learn on the fly and do a lot of it online. And so much of casting is relationship based, me and the guy I'm with and how we work off of one another, so you're missing all these layers of commentary.
Luckily I was surrounded with, I think, one of the best teams that SMITE has ever had. And I was really lucky to have Aggro and Finch and Myf and Gore. And of course Hindu was still doing some commentary at the time. It was a stressful time for casters and it's difficult to go from only knowing in-studio work to fully online and trying to work through lag. And I'm in my apartment 24/7 now, I don't even get to leave for work, and my room's hot and all this, all these layers add up and make it a frustrating experience. However, it was still so new and exciting that, while COVID was difficult and it weighed on the different teams in our company in different ways, it was still, again, sort of mixed emotions where I'm stepping into this new area, but I'm realizing that it's not going to be as easy to learn as I thought it might be. And now I'm in my bedroom and I'm opening up my life in a totally new way.
TLL: You mentioned how you had to learn SMITE very quickly. I think a lot of the fans, especially over the years, have really recognized just how much your game knowledge has improved. What has been your approach to learning the game both at first and over time?
D: Look, I'll be the first to admit I knew just enough about SMITE to cast it and not sound terrible when I first started. And I think I had a personality and a casting base after a year of Paladins that allowed me to put on good enough casts. But when I look back and when I think about some of the criticism that I faced—and SMITE fans are very particular about their game knowledge, as they should be. It's a MOBA, it's very analytical, numbers based—I will fully admit that I was not up to my own personal standards with game knowledge right off the bat. And so I think I learned very early to tune out a lot of the negative criticism and focus on what the guys on my team are telling me because that's the only thing I really can do and the only thing that doesn't wreck the brain. But I still realized that I needed to really catch up. So the initial approach... I mean, my goodness, even something as basic as learning all of the gods, I remember I was stressing in picks and bans at first because I was like, if they don't pop up with the name of the god underneath them, I'm not going to know who half of these gods are until I've played the game enough. And again, I had four months of wind up time to learn at least the names of the gods. But then you're learning at least four abilities for each of those gods, plus the stance switchers. We're getting crazy. You're getting hundreds of items.
I realized quickly that the best I could do was get in game and play every single god a couple of times at least, and just try to remember them. When I get on cast, I say, 'okay, I remember I played this god a couple of times. This is what they're going to do next. This is what these abilities do,' things like that. And so my personal approach was a little bit stress based, where I knew, like, 'oh my god, I'm going to be in front of thousands of people and I'm not going to know what I'm talking about.' So I had this personal drive where I wanted to not look like an idiot, for lack of a better term. It's sort of a tiered system as far as game knowledge goes. I had a good enough base I would say midway through season seven. We're watching 30 hours of pro SMITE every single week. You learn pretty quickly when that's your job. I realized then the next tier for me, after knowing all the gods and all the items and all of that, is being able to—and this is really not my job, but it is an important part of commentary—analyze what has already happened, talk about the storylines of the game, realize, 'okay, they've put a lot of pressure on right, they've invaded a lot of blues, purples.'
That's kind of that next tier of knowledge. Instead of just saying strictly what's here on face value, realizing what has actually happened over the course of the game and making a story out of it was my next big hurdle. So at first, it was strictly just playing SMITE and watching as much of it as I could, because I just needed to get that base underneath me. From there, I continue to play SMITE during the year. It's a little bit harder because you get a little burnt out. After watching eight hours of SMITE pro, going home and playing more SMITE is kind of difficult sometimes. All of that seems complicated, but in reality it's reps in the gym. That's the way I look at it.
Olson during one of the broadcast teams’ side segments, season nine regular season. Image courtesy of Hi-Rez Studios.
TLL: Obviously playing SMITE is a part of your job. How much do you enjoy it? Do you like the game?
D: MOBAs are tricky, aren't they? I really enjoy SMITE. I'll get that out first and foremost. I do really enjoy SMITE. I think it does the MOBA thing really well. But MOBAs in general, very team based, every single micro movement, micro interaction has an outcome on the game. If I buy one item slightly too soon, one item slightly too late, I step one footprint too far forward, I don't sidestep enough. Those are the types of things that either get me a kill, get me killed, have me lose games, have me win games. And then, as with any other MOBA, you can lose games just because one of your teammates is having a rough game.
I'm just such a competitive person that, while I love SMITE, I've ended up gravitating towards assault and arena a lot of the time because I can do the SMITE thing, I can play these gods and all their cool abilities and have fun, but in a much more relaxed environment. I'm on the ranked grind right now because every once in a while I need a little competition. But I have found my happy place most often in SMITE when I'm kicking back, I'm five stacking arena with my friends and we draft a full jump team or whatever. You're kind of messing around in theory crafting. For me, SMITE is at its best when the pressure is off a little bit and that's when I'm able to really fall in love with the game. I think I get enough competition and enough high level SMITE through work and through casting that it's sometimes hard to convince myself to go home and want to play more ranked SMITE. I need something chill. SMITE still is the game that I'll go to when I want to compete a little bit. I tend to play a lot of single player games nowadays.
TLL: You mentioned you're on the ranked grind. What's your rank right now?
D: So I currently have—I know these are two separate things—I think I hit Platinum 5 recently, but I have either Plat 1 or Diamond 5 MMR. So I'm very early in the ranked grind. I've always said people have always asked what my rank is, especially when I was new to SMITE and I didn't know what I was talking about. All the comments were like, 'why do we have dudes who are in Silver casting this game?' And to be honest, they probably weren't wrong. I got high Plat in League, so I know the MOBA thing and I know how it works. But in SMITE, I haven't wanted to touch ranked until I knew that I wasn't going to be costing my teammates games or I wanted to give myself a chance to actually have fun. I didn't want to go in and just get beat up. So I've often said if I really gave ranked a try, I would 100% end up somewhere in Plat. But if I could really grind, I bet I could bust into Diamond. So right now I'm Plat, but I'm still very early on the grind and my MMR has me jumping up pretty quickly. Give me another month or two and you might catch me in the Diamonds queues. But I think the moment I hit Diamond 5, I'm done. I gotta log off. I've done my thing, and that'll be such a grind that I need to take a breather after that.
TLL: To your point, when fans would say, 'why do we have a Silver casting the game?' Knowledge is not the same thing as being charismatic, being able to be in front of a camera and be entertaining. So I think it's a bit about balance and I think it has paid off in terms of having you learn the game. And now, of course, everybody loves you.
D: If you don't mind, I want to touch on that a little bit, because it's a really poignant point, because it doesn't only happen in SMITE, it happens in esports in general, where, for one, the commentators are never going to be as good. Some analysts are ex-pros, and so maybe that's sort of an incorrect statement. But it is infrequent where the casters are as good as the pros and there are oftentimes members of chat or the community who are much better than the casters are at the game. While being knowledgeable and able to read the game and understand the game is one of the most important parts of commentary, not only does game skill not correlate to on-camera personality, there's even a difference in being able to understand and read the game and being able to play the game at a high level.
So even with commentary, just because a gold player gets in and mechanically might not be good enough to do X, Y and Z or maybe can't think quick enough on their feet to break into Plat, Diamond, Masters, whatever. If the ability to zoom out and watch from ahead and look forward in the future and look back and analyze the game is there, you can still be a really good commentator without having to be a top 1% player in the world. It's happened in the past. F. and I have talked about this because F. was in a similar position to me where he and I were both average ranked SMITE players and we would catch a little flak. And luckily for me, it started to happen a lot less. I don't hear much of it anymore, but I think he would agree. And so I feel for my goldheads out there who are out there commentating and they're doing a really good job, but then they load into the ranked game and they struggle to get it done. I feel for them, but I'll be the vocal one and say just because you're not the best at the game doesn't mean you don't understand it and can't commentate it. And that's my soapbox.
TLL: In season eight, kind of in the middle, the community was shocked and devastated by the unexpected loss of Finch. What was your relationship like with Finch and what was that sort of grieving process like for you and for the casters?
D: That was one of the more difficult moments I've ever had. I've had plenty of loss in my life, as we all have, but commentary is such a unique job in that, everyone has coworkers and folks that they work with, but so much of commentary is being compatible personality wise with those that you're working with. And you spend so much time in the green room, on the cast, and, in COVID's case, in discord calls with one another. You spend 50% of your time directly conversing and working with these people. Whereas in traditional jobs, you're sending emails here and there and you have your coworkers and you can get very close with coworkers and other jobs. But commentary is so unique in a position like this, where you're working year-long seasons together, you get very close with your coworkers. And Finch, I think really because of COVID I our time being able to hang out outside of the office and outside of work was cut short. But that caster team with Finch and the casters who came before me had such an infectious personality. It was so easy to feel comfortable doing my job and knowing that if there was feedback from Finch, it was always going to be in a very constructive and positive light. I never felt like I was disappointing him or the rest of the team, especially in those early days of me casting. So, of course, he and I were really good friends because we spent so much time through work with one another and with commentary. When you get a bunch of big personalities in a room or in a discord call, who knows what's going to happen? And people get moody and we're all getting sassy and we're just bullshitting with each other constantly. And we had just such a close-knit team.
It was like losing a great friend. I know that he and Ryan (Aggro) and he and Myf were almost at that brother level. And I wish I had more time to get to that point with him, but he and I were great friends. And from a work perspective, he was who I was chasing. He was the GOAT. I would listen to him cast... it could be an SCC game on a Thursday at 10:00 A.M., and we're groggy and low energy, and he still finds a way to kill it. And I listened to him cast that Pittsburgh Knights World finals. And he killed it, of course. Losing Finch, and a personality that infectious and that important was heartbreaking not only to us but you could tell in the community how important Finch was to everyone and how important he was to the cast. God bless Hi-Rez. They gave us enough time. There's never really enough time. They gave us a few weeks to kind of sit back. There was no way any of us were going to be able to get on and do any type of work. And even the next couple of months after that, going into the office and trying to cast in a normal way without Finch being there was desperately hard.
And so I look at myself, Goremiser, Myfflin, Aggro as the four casters who were with Hi-Rez, and of course, Hindu. We got very close and all of us were heartbroken. It did make work difficult for a while. It was hard to go in and feel as passionate as we did before. But we were able to lean on one another and find ways to retain that energy and retain some excitement in what was one of the darkest moments, I would guess, in all of our lives. When you lose one of the five cornerstones of that [team] identity, it shifts a lot of things up. And that was very hard on all of us. I had the honor, the privilege of working with him for a year and a half; so lucky to get so much knowledge and so much growth. Being able to bump elbows with him for a little while and still aspire to be as good as him one day. It's very difficult, even after three or four weeks of break, to get back on the camera and put on a happy face. And I commend the rest of the guys for that because it was a terribly difficult time. But if any good came out of what is a horrible situation, I do feel like it allowed Myfflin, and Hinduman, and Goremiser, and Agro and myself, and of course everyone else in Hi-Rez productions and who are working together on a daily basis to really bond together and lean on one another.
Olson during a broadcast, season nine SMITE World Championship. Image courtesy of Hi-Rez Studios.
TLL: You mentioned his set calling the Pittsburgh Knights [championship], and he had that legendary call at the end, "lightning strikes twice." And you've had a couple of those calls yourself in the finals, "say it three times for the three-time" and "bow down to your kings, the Camelot Kings." Do you write those beforehand or do they come to you in the moment?
D: That's a question I get a lot, actually. In reality, the answer is a bit of a hybrid. It's a little bit of both. At least for the last two finals, my method has been... usually it's Saturday night, Sunday morning, when I know the two teams that are in finals, I do a little theory crafting and thinking about the storyline of the year, of the careers, of the event, as recent as one game ago to as long as the entire career. I make bullet points. I say, okay, for the Leviathans, in this case, Zapman is potentially going to be the first one to win it three times in a row. That's a big bullet point. The Leviathans as a team were an SCC squad that made it to the SPL, people were scratching their heads, why are they in the SPL? Then the following year, it's okay, they're really good, but they choke every single time they go to a tournament. And so I kind of have these themes around the teams, the two teams that are going to be in finals, that bit is prepared.
And then in the last two finals, I would say lucky or unlucky—we could talk about the Dave Curse another time—I've had two 3-0 finals, and usually at the beginning of game three, kind of halfway through game three in both, I've been able to say, okay, I know which team is going to win. That's going to be it, and they're going to win. And that's when I actually iron out exactly what I'm going to say. But going into the actual day itself, I kind of bullet point out some themes and some ideas for both of the teams that are playing. I think I'm pretty talented at word-smithing and turning a phrase kind of in the moment, but with something that big and that important, I care far too much about making sure those moments are correct to just go in and wing it. So I prepare up to the point that I think I need to, and then I let the rest come to me as the set goes on.
TLL: It's become a bit of a meme at this point, even though I think people are sincere about it, to talk about how attractive you are, your muscles, and things like that. At Worlds, you really made a decision to lean into that. Instead of a jacket, you had the suspenders for finals, then you threw the suspenders into the crowd. What played into that decision for you to go along with it?
D: First of all, with the looks, my dad always says it's thanks to him, and I definitely look more like my dad when he was my age. And so every time they read those comments, he always jokes and asks me to thank him. I don't know, maybe that's a jab at my mom... unsure. But there's actually kind of something Hindu instilled in me very early, especially with SMITE, and especially being so new, is kind of finding a brand and an identity and really leaning into that. So it started out with the chair stuff and doing the chair ads and being this goofy, albeit sometimes over the top guy. And I think in the last couple of years, I've kind of found what works, and the right balance between what works and what I'm comfortable and enjoy doing. And I don't mind playing into it.
I think that's part of being a performer and an entertainer is, for lack of a better term, giving the people what they want and finding the right balance between that with myself. So suspenders have kind of they become a thing. I tried it once, I think, maybe in season seven for Worlds, and I liked the look. And then last year for Worlds, I tried it. So I knew at some point over the course of the weekend, I was going to be wearing suspenders just because I like the look, and obviously people out there like it. But what I couldn't decide was, is it too much for Finals? Is that like a Saturday type thing? And what really spawned the idea is that, god, the fan events are so important, but playing up to that crowd and making that experience memorable for the fans and everyone who is in attendance is priority one for not only all of Hi-Rez productions, but specifically the casters. We're entertainers. We want to put on the best show that we can, and seeing people smiling and happy faces really makes all of it more real. And I don't really know what overcame me. I think I was like, 'man, this would be a really good bit.' We're up in the mezzanine. We're overlooking the crowd. I'm going to be wearing them. Why not? Let's take them off, see how the crowd reacts and see what happens. And of course, now I can joke about this—I can be a sweaty dude. And I look back and I'm, like, drenched in sweat. And I was wishing that I had a jacket on.
But a fun side story is that I was nervous with the suspenders because they had these metal clasps on the ends. I don't have the fancy, tie on ones. So I was terrified that I was going to throw it out, and I was going to whip someone who wasn't expecting in the eye. And it was going to be this whole big scary thing. So I was like, 'I'm going to stick them in one of the plushie bags.' Because we've been throwing stuff to the crowd all weekend. I was going to take a plushie out, stick the suspenders in there. They're going to be nice and enclosed, and it's going to be great. There's a little adhesive on the fold of the bag. No worries. And if you watch the video and you really analyze it, I threw it in the worst way possible. I frisbee’d the bag, and so the suspenders rip out of the adhesive part and fly out. And the bag floats down separately. Instead of underhanding it so it all stayed together.
And that was one of the first and only times I've ever sworn on cast. I said, 'oh, shit,' live on cast because I thought I was going to hit someone in the eye. So I think Worlds kind of overcame me and wanting to play into the crowd and entertain and put on a really good show and kind of lean into what's worked, that was an area that I was comfortable with. I passed it through Hinduman, I passed it through production. It was all checked off, so it wasn't just a random thing. I know that a moment like that is a little over the top. I thought it would be some silly fun and an easy way to engage the crowd. And really, we needed it. I think that was after game two, and the Kings had just mopped the floor in the first couple of games. And I was like, alright, we got to do something to reengage a little bit. So it's kind of a mixture of a bunch of stuff. I was terrified I was going to hit that dude in the eye, though. And I'm glad that I didn't. Everyone walked away unscathed, and it was all good. But yes, that was like two days worth of thinking, like, 'do I really want to do this?' And then luckily, it it turned out okay.
TLL: You had mentioned the 3-0 finals Dave Curse a little bit ago. So last question here before we finish up. Let's say that this Worlds, we're going to break that curse in season X. Completely premature prediction—who wins in that curse-breaking finals?
D: Goodness. I guess I have to determine what the threshold is for breaking the curse. Like, does a 3-1 mean the Dave curse is broken? I guess probably. If I get a three one, I would consider the curse over. Oh, man. I mean, Kings are the easy answer, but I don't know if we know how the Kings are going to play into the current meta yet.
TLL: You have to be spicy with it, right?
D: I can't say Kings. I also don't know if I actually think the Kings. I think it's going to be a grand finals between the Jade Dragons and... oh, man. I think. Jade dragons on one side. I don't know if this is spicy. I think the Styx Ferrymen are going to be on the other side. I think it'll be a 3-1. I think the Styx Ferryman win against the Jade Dragons 3-1 in the season X grand finals. I'm putting my stamp on it.
TLL: Well, there we go. You heard it here first. Anything you want to shout out here at the end?
D: Yeah, I think Worlds this past year, and especially Worlds with fans reinvigorated a lot of the casters. But I'll speak for myself, and really, maybe this is sort of to the point about the suspenders and and kind of playing into the crowd—I've really felt the love personally over the last couple of years, and it means everything to me. It actually allows me to really be my authentic self. Instead of worrying about what I'm doing right, what I'm doing wrong, I'm able to just be me and do what works and find that right balance with myself. So really just an overwhelming thank you to everyone who has been along for the ride, because... it wasn't bad, but it wasn't great at the start, and folks were patient with me. While I still have a lot of room to grow, I think I've become a caster that Dolson of three years ago would be proud of. The patience and the support and the love from the community were a big part in that. And really, I love the SMITE community. It's easy for me to stay invested and stay excited when I feel the love from the community in the way that I do. And I bring up Worlds, because I think it was just so important for everyone to get together and celebrate this crazy game that we all love in the best way that we know how. I think that's really reinvigorated myself for this next year of SMITE, and I'm really excited to give it my best. I'm excited to break that curse and bring more suspender-throwing energy into season X.
Olson and the broadcast team will be back in action this weekend during the SMITE Season X Kickoff LAN, starting Friday March 31st on Twitch.tv/smitegame.
