My Journey as a Content Creator in Esports (so far)

Opinions expressed are solely my own and do not express the views or opinions of my employer.

I've been involved with creating content for theScore esports since mid-2015. It all started with some videos where a colleague and I would preview upcoming games or discuss the games that just finished.

After previews and post-game discussions, we got more bold with our content and started talking to players directly. I still remember attending my first Wold Championship. It was 2015 and it was the year that Worlds took place all over Europe. It was my first time ever in Europe and as a group, we spent over a month abroad doing coverage of the tournament. Looking back, it was actually crazy, the schedule we had and the amount of hours of work we did. We'd wake up early to prepare and shoot previews of games that were happening that day; then spend the whole day at the venue, watching games and preparing for post-game interviews. Once the games were all over, we'd go and wait anxiously in a tight room, full of press, to get the chance to interview a player. Sometimes, we wouldn't even know who we would get before we got them. On a slow day, we'd get no interviews, or maybe one, if we were lucky. Other days, we'd do 3-5 interviews after a day of games. After completing the interviews, we'd have to rush back to the press tent (which was sometimes set up outdoors, in the cold with no heaters), edit the content as fast as we could, and prepare it for release so that the audience could get the content as soon as possible.

Sometimes, we'd stay up late into the night to get videos out. Other times, we'd wake up early in the morning to get the content out. Whether it was the first or latter, there is no question that we spent more hours than a typical 8-hour work day in order to do this sort of coverage.

At the time, we were one of the few organizations that were actually doing video coverage of competitive League of Legends, and we got a lot of positive responses from the community.

Fast forward to 2016 - we stepped up our game. We were doing weekly coverage of the NA LCS and EU LCS, and providing coverage of international tournaments as well. I, myself, began interviewing players, attending events like All-Star 2015 and 2016, IEM Katowice 2016 and the first few stages of Worlds 2016.

All Star 2015 in Los Angeles was my very first event being the main interviewer, and I remember being extremely nervous. I actually planned out all my questions for every single player that attended the event (I think there were at least 30 players), just so that in the chance I might get a player I didn't initially request for, I would be ready with thoughtful and not be caught off guard. Well, not everything went according to plan, because despite asking for a specific player, I was told that European AD Carry Jesper "Zven" Svenningsen was available at the moment and we would get to interview him instead. Automatically, I started freaking out. He was one of the few players I actually didn't prepare for! In my moment of panic and desperation, I turned to my producer, Nic, who with a deep sigh, grabbed the mic and completed the interview with Zven in my place (bless him).

Despite this "minor" setback, the rest of the event went smoothly and we got a lot of great content. My initiation was complete - I finished my first event as an esports reporter.

Attending events and doing interviews with players got easier over time. Funnily enough, interviewing players is my favorite AND least favorite part of the job. I absolutely love getting to meet and talk to players directly, to learn more about them and hear their side of the story. On the other hand, while I stood in front of the camera, with the player next to me, there's always the voice in the back of my head saying "Don't make a mistake", or "Don't ask a stupid/bad question!". These thoughts haunted me and made me pretty anxious because I knew the LoL community would happily jump on any sort of error/question/awkward smile and use it to bash the content, ignoring all the time and hard work put into it doing the interview in the first place.

In that year, we had many highs, with some interviews getting over 100K views. For a channel that had less than 30K subscribers on YouTube at the time, it was astounding. But as time went on, the views didn't grow as much. The number of views on each video on the YouTube channel aren't a secret - if you go to the channel, you're very easily able to see the views on each of our videos. After a while, it almost seemed like the community got used to the content and wasn't watching it anymore, but for some reason, still expected it to keep coming.

At this point, it's almost halfway through 2017 and a lot has changed. While we haven't attended any events in person this year (yet) to do coverage, I personally feel like we've done some amazing pieces so far and are still continuing to output a lot of content. For example, we have weekly podcasts that delve into esports issues and features a new guest each week. The written content side pushes out interviews with players every week, and not just in League of Legends. I personally have been editing weekly fail videos (which are a lot of fun, btw) and doing a new interview format called You Laugh, You Lose with players as well!

*There's so much more that I didn't mention but they're all worth checking out on our YouTube channel

Looking back, a lot of things have definitely changed since I started doing this in 2015. However, some things remain the same: the amount of dedication and hard work that goes into every piece we do and the rewarding feeling we get when we see someone comment that they enjoyed the piece.

If you made it to the end of the post, thank you for taking the time to read it and I sincerely hope you stick around to see what's to come.

Love,

Lisa

#opinion #esports #reflection #personal