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The Basic Guidelines of Working within Competitive Gaming [StarCraft II] Welcome, my name is Michael Cohen/Torte de Lini. I'm writing this with the idea of both ensuring people who are interested in working in the industry are aware of what to look for, how to get involved and what to expect when working within this scene. Also, I hope to advise those who manage volunteers, players, contributors on how to not only treat them properly, but to also sell your organization over others. Upon reaching 20,000 posts, I've come to realize both two things: the misconception of what people should seek or understand when wanting to do that little extra in this E-Sports scene and how organizations, big or small, usually treat their volunteers/contributors. This guide aims to both state the obvious of fair treatment, considerations of both sides and draw upon my own experiences to both outline what's to be expected for up and coming contributors. *This is based on personal opinion, experience, views and understanding. Everything read and said should always be taken with a grain of salt and not with the intent to hurt or promote a group over another, but rather to inform the intended readers.
Index:
Part I: The Basic Guidelines
Part II: Becoming a contributor of E-Sports
Part III: Being a mindful organization
Part IV: Fin
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Uncharted and Unsung [Getting what you put in]
Motivation is a strong force in the human mind to go that extra step. To change from just a spectator, consumer or fan of E-Sports to a cog of the many organizations that propel itself to both victories and media exposure. Your work is the community's gain. For every iconic person to do something great for the community, there are at least 100 other people who have their own form of contribution without a single mention or recollection of their name. If you want to get into E-Sports, you need to have the right reasons lined up: - There is no money involved, this is not some scare-tactic, a harsh way to keep your expectations low. There is very little money involved and if there is; it is very likely never going to come to you. Everyone is an investor: an investor of time, financials or hard-work. You can be too, the currency in E-Sports, not just StarCraft II, is passion. There is no green in competitive gaming, but there is a ton of passionate people wanting to do that little bit to make something big.
- There is no fame. There is, however, a lot of self-promotion to those who don't quite get the idea that long-term work and effort pays out much more than short-term recognition. In E-Sports, it never mattered how many people knew you, just those who can do something or give you further opportunities. How many people can you name that have come and gone after their brief stint in the spotlight (I can name maybe 8). Now, name me the top 6 people who are the most influential to you; can you also name me what they've done and how long they've been doing it? One day, everyone may know you or what you have done, but its beyond the foreseeable future. For now, focus on what you can do, how you can do it and what it does overall to the scene and to the people that rely on you.
- The reward is making cool things happen. Whether hosting a fun tournament, managing a fun team, or even helping people at work follow along to games they can't watch, E-Sports is filled with people who do what they do simply for the sake of doing it. If you want to get involved in the E-Sports scene by donating your time, energy, and money, it should be because of what you want to do with it, not what you want it to do for you.
There is a common misconception about this section of professional gaming that there is a lot of money either being withheld by the big boys up top or being spread around in large quantiites to the recognizable names of today. Neither are really true and in reality, everyone has dumped in more than they can pull back to sustain themselves. That's just how the industry is today and the reason why E-Sports relies heavily on volunteer staff to continue to both propel this world into the mainstream lifestyle as well keep it from falling apart with the lack of organization and professionalism.
In the end, however, it's never truly work unless you don't enjoy it. If you don't like the steps you are walking up, then getting to whatever top you aim for will always be more difficult, time-consuming and difficult to endure than you hope. What you'll gain from E-Sports is both the experience to work on projects you want to sincerely succeed as well as meeting new people who are worlds different in personality, understanding of the world as a whole (not just E-Sports) and experts in areas you've yet to try or even know about.
This is neither a warning or a suggestion, but rather just an outline of what's to come.This is both coming from personal experience and my own point of view, but to tell you what will happen with what you want to do and will do in E-Sports is to expect something in a scene that is always unexpected and growing positively. I hope to work with all of you in one way or another and know you can do everything possible.
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Contributing to what you love - Becoming a contributor of E-Sports
There are many organizations within this e-sports scene (industry, sector, scene will all be used to describe e-sports and its attached community) ranging in activity such news reporting, tournament hosting and organization, team and player management and finally: entertaining or educational webshows. I don't think I need to mention that organizations can fulfill a variety of these categories and vary in size and workload. But it's because of the above categorizations and diversity that helps create a vast number of different positions and forms of contribution for people, such as you, the reader, can involve yourself in.
So where do you start? Where do I start? What do I want to do and how do I go about showing that I can do it? There's no real or true way to get involved, you sort of just do. I'm sure many of you heard of the common Day [9] line: "If you want to do something, just do it!" and that still has a strong pertinence to how you can get involved. There is no reason why you can't start from the bottom and essentially learn how to do whatever task tickles your fancy or may be relevant to your university degree.
+ Show Spoiler [personal example] +To take a personal anecdote, my first involvement into the StarCraft II professional scene started with  VT Gaming where I met  Mirhi (Frank Fields, now with IPL). From there, Frank taught me the basic guidelines of how to organize and run a tournament, the amount of time, work and patience it asked of a person and some general guidelines in both managing players and approaching sponsors. I got to meet players such as HuK (who, then, had left to Millenium), learned formal writing and business understanding of what sponsor companies look for in a team and how to assist players in the best way possible as a player-manager.
The beauty about this scene is that everyone is learning and the most valuable currency with each organization is the cooperative nature of everyone, their time and patience. What you don't know how to do, there are plenty more experienced willing to not only help you, but get you to improve and refine your technique in accomplishing each job asked of you.
Figuring out how to get involved is perhaps the easiest problems to resolve. All those organizations hosting amazing tournaments, writing amazing articles, providing invaluable players and creating content for you has a team of many dedicated people who are always looking for an extra hand, another head to count or another voice to hear. But just remember that once you get involved, people will be counting on you and you will have some duties and responsibilities expected to be accomplished. We will elaborate on this further on.
There's no reason either that you can't start your own organization, event or local community. You don't need to be a leader to lead new ideas or develop something new. University clubs, depending on your university, are more common than you think and most universities welcome unique associations or centers of interest. Research a bit on the steps to start your own university club and see where it takes you! No time is truly wasted if you're absolutely passionate in what you want to accomplish and create! In the end, what you do, do it will the full intent to complete it. There's also no reason why you can't inquire if there are other people like you, looking to start a BarCraft, a University Club, maybe a local LAN? We all, at one point or another, wondered the same things you did.
Flavors of Effort [What you can do and how to find volunteer work]
When it comes to working and finding the right kind of work that you love doing, know you can do well or want to learn more about, E-Sports is right up your alley. You can be a graphic artist, writer, reporter, interviewer, tournament organizer, Liquipedia contributor, match observer/refereree, StarCraft commentator, editor, consultant, match-ticker, marketing/sponsorship liaison, BarCraft host, event promoter, chat moderator, player-manger, gaming director, etc. There are literally tons of work being created and finding people both designated for this kind of work and dedicated to fulfilling what it demands.
Once you figure out what you want to do and what the duties entail, try contacting each and every organization you think could use your help or interest. Ask them if and how you can help as well as in what ways they would like your help. You can contact these organizers either through Twitter, private message on Team Liquid or going through their main website and scrolling to the bottom of the page to look for either words of "jobs" or "careers". Something relevant to work offerings for you.
The Expected Reality and Environment
The expected reality of all this is the obvious notion that there is no money invovled. The likelihood that you will receive a salary of any kind (even below minimum wage) is slim to none. Even those who have been doing this for many, many years (including yours truly) have never received any forms of incentives.This is normal, to be expected and not necessarily bad, the alternatives are often sentimental as well as simply enjoying the work that you're doing. As strange as that sounds; being amongst people with like-minded goals, a collectiveness to ensure the productivity of an organization and to see your work read, viewed, achieved [if a player], referenced or heralded as something noteworthy to the general community's attention is a feeling beyond what you'd typically get at a 9 to 5 minimum wage job. The sentimental reward of both doing a good job, feeling like you've contributed to the competitive scene and being appreciated for it is something that both organizations should aim to uphold and volunteers should try to keep in mind. If you're not enjoying what you are doing, there is no reason you should do it.
Depending on the organization, they may different ways of functioning. For many organizations, some form of task management website will be used ranging from Podio, Asana to Team Lab or even Google Docs! You don't need to know all of these forms of task management and in most cases you will be walked through the process of what you need to know and to use to cooperate with other volunteers. In addition, organizations may work through hierarchal form of communication and delegation of tasks (in other words, tasks will be posted on management websites such as the ones above and assigned to individual people). Smaller teams or organizations may work through constant communication and team-building. This involves using task managements websites to publicly display what everyone is working on and creating organisms of contributors to further the product with everyone's expertise. Both of these staple forms of work have both upsides and downsides which will be elaborated later on.
If you do not like the work environment, the organization or the work you find yourself associated with: quit. Of course, do so professionally and not leaving those who relied on you high and dry. But wrap up any unfinished business or affairs and move on, try a new field or group of people. There are endless opportunities awaiting and there will always be as the future unfolds, don't feel like you need to find a new home now. See what it is like back as just a regular community member, see what worlds of this sector that you feel need to be improved or that you can improve.
To reiterate: - Material or financial incentives for good work are rare and limited, do not get your hopes up, but E-Sports is a great place to meet new friends, obtain experience that looks good on your CV and get a feel for how professional some work environments can be.
- If you don't like what you are doing there is no reason for you to continue to do so. Ultimately, your happiness reflects your work and productivity, if you are not enjoying what you are doing whatsoever or in any aspect, there is no reason you should keep doing it.
Seven Things to be Aware of 1. Organizations that promise you the possibility of travel should clarify what that means. In most cases, if you are within proximity of the event (same state for example), they will help pay for part of your trip. This is not always the case and usually; no travel is actually included (especially if you don't live anywhere near the venues). 2. Communication is the key to working the best alongside other contributors. Don't hesitate to ask questions, volunteer a new task or duty and see what you can make out of it. E-Sports is new and so trying new things within the scene is totally acceptable. 3. Remain professional; outrages, demands, taking advantage of publicly used features the organization offers (such as PPV content paid by the group) for personal use over work-related content is typically frowned upon. 4. Being genuine and asking questions when unsure or how you can further improve yourself displays a real sense of character and admittance that you have much to learn. No matter how much previous experience you have in something, be mindful of the idea that in some areas, you are not entirely an expert. 5. Although E-Sports works largely on reputation, impressions and relationships: treat everyone as people and not potential opportunities. If you treat people like business opportunities, you will only get missed chances to succeed. Genuine interest in others comes around and goes around. 6. Try to avoid arguing when in disagreement: Behind every contrasting thought is a logic, whether emotional or rational, that forms within someone's mind. Figure a line of reasoning that shows how benefitting you ultimately helps benefit themselves. 7. Based on personal experience, organizations that are clear in what tasks they seek, job title and are thorough in their interviews are the ones who care the most about their contributors and will generally be more appreciative of your work [subject to vary, this is based on personal experience]. 8. Know the team, know the staff, know the players. It's one thing to know how to do your job, as mundane or obvious as it may be, but it helps work fluidity, cooperation and understanding of your place if you learn to be familiar with everyhone and friendly. There are expectations of professionalism, but remember that everyone is there to have fun doing something contributory to the culture around. Appearing cold, moodless and unopionated may sometimes turn people off and cause a shift in independency leading to less opportunities and even less projects for you to be a part of. Get yourself introduced, be a bit personable and approaching and from there, establish a real connection with the organization to further your own reasoning to work with the group.
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Helping those who want to help - Being a mindful organization
Standing above the rest [Selling your organization]
So you think you are unique, special? Your organization works as a family, you say? Good, convey that to the interested party. The real bottom-line about all organizations that offer volunteer work is that everyone else is offering almost exactly the same deal. In part, your namesake may have some weight, credibility and worth, but its how you convey a good experience and an effective productive work line that will entice people to switch over. Selling your organization is imperative to have people willingly come over, by showing your interest in the other person, they ultimately become attached to your group and see its uniqueness in both approachfulness as well as valuing participants of their organization.
Take the necessary steps to convince candidates that your organization offers an experience unlike no other. The process should be professional and yet, relaxed and within the confines of flexible in both expectations and standards.
Your process in searching and acquiring new people for your organization, consider these suggestions: - Your Careers/Jobs page should be specific both in what the duties and responsibilities are, what the rewards are (or are not) and the amount of time it asks of each applicant.
- Your application page should be specific in what it asks, what you are looking for in an applicant and what kind of message they should write towards in when applying via e-mail and/or telephone.
The two images above are examples and although each organization may offer very great experiences and great forms of work, only one of them properly lays it out while the other is ambigious, making it harder for applicants to approach them. Showing what you need helps future applicants connect and understand if they're personally qualified or not.
- Take the time to interview each applicant and be thorough in your application. Ask them to describe their past experiences, what they're looking for from your team or management. Highlight what is possible, impossible, what the direction of your organization is and what is the ultimate goal of the team.
- Sell your organization. What is its achievements? What can they do for the applicant and what makes them better than anyone else? This is a reiteration of the this entire section, but it should be mentioned a thousand times because it really is important to approach everyone formally rather than just a point-blank question of: "You wanna join?" Yeah, I'd love to join, but why should I? While your website and content was of interest, it doesn't really seem like you any real interest in acquiring me. Organizations need volunteers and volunteers need experience, keep this circle of interest in mind at all times.
Don't color me Pavlovian [The small forms of reward]
You don't have to have money to reward your contributors. All rewards have a sentimental inheritance to it and some incentives come within the job (so it makes this part a lot easier). Depending on the job, incentives can be offered in various ways or rewards. However...
Crediting, Appreciation and Recognition are the best rewards to a person.
...Indeed, as long as you keep these in check and personalized to each and every person, you will not only have a maintained stream of content and productivity, but you will also ensure happy workers and a lighter atmosphere. You must keep personalized connections with your employees and put their reputation before your personal own (don't worry, it's the organizations namesake above all).
Showing appreciation is everything, it is the ultimate payday and it should be constantly kept in check. Thank them for doing a good job, say it to them privately and in meetings and/or publicly on various networking sites. Credibility is making sure that the right people get accounted for what they did and recognition is helping to spread the news of someone's work or achievement.
*Please note that recognition should be selective, you don't need to scream to the heavens about every small piece one of your writers wrote about, just like you don't need to frame every piece of graphic art your artists have done.
Rewarding your people helps keep connections with them to the name or brand. It also makes them feel like they're a part of the team and prevents forms of alienation.
Here are some examples of how you can reward specific people with their specific jobs - Writers: writers is perhaps the easiest job to reward. Crediting is just professional and having them publish it and spread their pieces on major community sites with your own personal backing on Twitter/Facebook or with the brand's social media accounts is commonly done and needs no reminding. Giving them opportunities to be creative with their work (e.g opinionated) or perform interviews with some very known people are great ways to keep their job unique and different as well as giving them the proper freedom that helps them remain motivated.
- Managers: managing a team is difficult, it requires a lot of time and patience. They are the unmentioned workers and the behind-the-scenes responsible contributors. They keep your players stuffed and happy. They are creating a personal relationship with the players to the organizations and are, typically, your main form of communication with these professional players. Why not offer them a jersey to show they are a part of the team? Why not have the players show their thanks of him in interviews? These are all ways of underlining the duties of a manager while also showing a connection between the players and the manager/team/brand.
- For websites like Team Liquid, a generic icon depicting what a person's general duty is helps with both giving an implicit recognition of their work as well as show that there is a team of similar icon members of (for example) the art team, writing team, moderators, etc.
The Do's and Don't's [How to view and address your contributors]
This is your workforce, this is your troop of men/women willing to do what it takes to bloom your organization into something full-fledged, real and legitimate. They are also volunteers, let's remember that and so they should be treated as people taking time out of their lives and day to do that. While I highlighted the fact that you both need each other, only one of you is getting the better deal (arguably).
- Organizations should note that these are volunteers, not employees. There are responsibilities, duties and expectations, but to work under the idea that "you must do what I tell you" is both a bad way to approach your workline and shows a misunderstanding of how the organization-to-volunteer relationship works. When you must draw the line of delegator to worker, there is no longer a common goal in each other's minds and so the relationship should be reassessed. A volunteer does not work for you, he works for the experience and with you to achieve what your organization desires. While this may seem like a semantical way to see things, there is a huge distinguishment of how to perceive the connections within a company.
- The more is not necessarily merrier. Having too many people delegating too many tasks and sitting on titles is not at all useful or contributory. Everyone should work with their duties in mind and be proactive about it. Titles summarizes one's potential strength and for informative purposes for people on the outside of the organization (so they know who to contact about what).
- Leaders are not positions of power, but positions of direction. This doesn't mean that you cannot manage a team of helpers, it just means that you can't order them to do what you want them to do without considering their own personal schedule. Leniency is asked on both sides and consideration that, yes, volunteers want to volunteer, but they also have other obligations in life and you must be aware of that. Those who go up and beyond for the organization should be awarded and commended for that.
- Make sure everyone is on the same page. As an organization grows, so do the forms of communication and the number of times you need to tie your shoelaces. That is to say that things become loose the longer the strings of workers and the bigger loop-backs you must make. Weekly meetings help with this as it serves as an information center point, realigns everyone's common goals and highlights who does what, who can help with who and what's on the way in terms of content and future plans. Weekly meetings reorients everyone back into seeing each other as communicative and approachful human beings while also assuring everyone that this is still a team effort.
- Everyone is here to help. As simplistic as that sounds, some organizers or leaders of an organization tend to forget about this when things get a little heated. Despite things not going exactly as expected or a person is not doing up to par to your expectation, it's generally understood that that person is there to help you and your organization. Treat him or her with some understanding and although the finished product is lacking, the effort is still there and that that person is working with or for you for the sake of the organization's livelihood. Knowing that, finding a concensus on where to best put one's talent and ability to it's maximum's use is best.
- Know the extent of what you're asking: sometimes you may be relying too much on one person that is a three-man job. While it is great that some volunteers are more productive than others, do not over-extend them to multiple tasks that require a lot of attention or devoted time. If you need someone to manage your social media site on the fly? Find the suited member of your team to do the job rather than pile on that "little itty bit" to someone's who's already doing so much more. Knowing the lengths you can ask someone to do something as well as realizing that they mainly want to do what they were recruited on (unless specificed otherwise), helps ensure low stress levels and fluidity of delegated tasks assigned to the right person.
The Staple of Work Building [Differences of two forms of organizational work]
Earlier in this guide, I had written the following:
In addition, organizations may work through hierarchal form of communication and delegation of tasks (in other words, tasks will be posted on management websites such as the ones above and assigned to individual people). Smaller teams or organizations may work through constant communication and team-building. This involves using task managements websites to publicly display what everyone is working on and creating organisms of contributors to further the product with everyone's expertise. Both of these staple forms of work have both upsides and downsides which will be elaborated later on.
Well, here we are and indeed both organizations have their good and bad side. Both of these forms mostly use a task management website or software for documenting purposes as well as organizational purposes:
Hierarchy: The hierarchal sense of work creates a lot of content and no longer creates an insecurity of trust that you need to rely on others to get what's needed. If asked to do something, the person will typically do it because of a power of authority as well as the fact that this is his or her role within the organization. It stifles personal relationship and releases people from being proactive to being passively productive which may ultimately give you a lot of content, but little uniqueness or creativity (seeing the same old generic questions in a thousand and one interviews on over a hundred websites and news feeds is not necessarily just the consequence of a hierarchal organization, but it could be play a role in this). In a world where everyone is doing a lot of the same things and trying to refine their technique or trying to one-up each other in terms of unique and different content, exclusives and/or maintain productivity, a hierarchy is a good way to power your way to the top, but it is also a very frail and fragile way to build up your organization.
"When he looked into the history of the organization, he found that hierarchical management had been invented for military purposes, where it was perfectly suited to getting 1,000 men to march over a hill to get shot at. When the Industrial Revolution came along, hierarchical management was again a good fit, since the objective was to treat each person as a component, doing exactly the same thing over and over."
"If most of the value is now in the initial creative act, there’s little benefit to traditional hierarchical organization that’s designed to deliver the same thing over and over, making only incremental changes over time. What matters is being first and bootstrapping your product into a positive feedback spiral with a constant stream of creative innovation. Hierarchical management doesn’t help with that, because it bottlenecks innovation through the people at the top of the hierarchy, and there’s no reason to expect that those people would be particularly creative about coming up with new products that are dramatically different from existing ones – quite the opposite, in fact." - Michael Abrash.
Organism: Organisms is a lot more liberal with work and contributors. There is a core group of workers with many loose branches coming in and out to help and contribute. This loose form of foot-work has the upside of keeping the production line happy and persoanlly fulfilling, but content rolls out a lot more slowly and the quality may not necessarily be up to par to expectations. This is usually suggested with smaller organizations since it maintains personal relationships and makes motivating your volunteers a lot easier and creates a dependency effect that develops with people and creates a sentimental attachment to their duties and obligations. Team-building divides a project to various people and helps them build off one another to improve the product, however the consistency sometimes comes into question and it doesn't provide the security that your people will do what's expected of them.
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On September 28 2011 08:03 Torte de Lini wrote:
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On September 28 2011 08:03 Torte de Lini wrote:
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Credentials
Below are my credentials and experiences with various organizations.
+ Show Spoiler +Volunteer experience - Event Planning- Gaming LAN of ÉTS
- Anime North Gaming LAN Tournament
- BarCraft Montreal of MLG Orlando
- BarCraft Montreal of MLG Providence
- Gaming LAN of ÉTS
- BarCraft Montreal of MLG Columbus
- Exposition of White-Ra: A Masterclass Series Event
- Blizzard Entertainment StarCraft II W.Championship Canadian Qualifiers Seeding
- Anime North Gaming LAN Tournament
- NASL Finals Season 3 - Toronto
- BarCraft Montreal of MLG Raleigh
Volunteer Experience - Organization/Team Management- VT Gaming
- Concordia University StarCraft Community
- Team Dynamic Gaming LLC.
- Quantic Gaming
- CyberActiv.ca
- Infinity Seven
- BarCraft United
- Root Gaming
Volunteer Experience – Writing & Social Media- VT Gaming
- Concordia University StarCraft Community
- Team Dynamic Gaming LLC.
- ESFI World
- Infinity Seven
- Pony Tales V
- BarCraft United
- Definitive E-Sports
- ESEA League
- Team Liquid’s Pony Tales VI
The Credits
All content, ideas, images, writings and guidelines were done by Michael 'Torte de Lini' Cohen and/or their respective original creators and does not necessarily reflect the official position, view, value or opinion of TeamLiquid.net or its staff members. All quoted material are accredited to the respected original writer and edited purely for accuracy.
The following users have also helped improve this guide with verbal input, corrections and/or suggestions: -
![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/images/forum/star.gif) Jibba
- Heyoka
- HawaiianPig
- Kiante
- Plexa
- ]343[
- Liquid`Nazgul
- tree.hugger
All forms of constructive criticism is appreciated and considered!
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Everyone smile for the family portrait!
*self-promotion: @TorteDeLini
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You are just amazing.......
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Those boxes are amazing too.
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United Kingdom14464 Posts
I haven't read it yet, but I'm sure it will be amazing, you always do good stuff Torte. I feel like at some point I really need to get into contributing to esports other than just trying to be nice on forums.
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Absolutely loved reading it. I'm just starting to poke my head into eSports now, and I'd love to find a way to make a positive difference. Having realistic expectations of what I can do for, and what I might receive from, the scene was really helpful.
Thanks
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good lord....TL...DR....omg lol
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Holy balls, batman. Gonna read this when I can, but wow. Respect!
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I really think all the volunteers and contributors as well as employess behind the scenes should get a lot more recognition. I would have loved to say thanks to the guy at Dreamhack Winter who fixed the volume of the stream pretty much immediately after a reddit post pointing out it was too quiet.
I think getting involved is becoming harder and easier at the same time.
When I started doing interviews, the environment was completely different. There were lots of organizations just starting to posture themselves and a lot of independent small contributors. This has changed drastically. The eSports environment is now more and more dominated by big players. That makes it harder on one hand to contribute independently but makes it much easier to get involved within these organizations. It's a much more defined environment if you want to call it that.
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I have the strong feeling this is a must-read.
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EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/XF55N.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/tjWY9.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/l2tpR.png)
![[image loading]](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/a414da1ed817a47e30145b94d6159a8d?s=304&d=http%3A%2F%2Fbattlelog-cdn.battlefield.com%2Fpublic%2Fbase%2Fshared%2Fdefault-avatar-304.png%3Fv%3D7909)
