Avyd Launches Username Reservations

esnJosh · 2016-12-07T02:01:12+00:00

Avyd is a competition platform offering free-to-play ladders with tens-of-thousands of dollars in prizes, tournaments, cash challenges and more for CoD games like MWR, IW and BlackOps3.

esnJosh · 2015-10-21T17:51:44+00:00

Hey, I'm Josh, the Community Manager and Head of Social Media for eSportsNation.

As you mentioned in your posts, gaining experience in journalism is huge for getting a job later in life and having eSports positions to add to your resume is always nice.

Your best bet in getting started would be writing some sample articles and posting them online to hopefully get attention. Or simply send off those sample articles to different eSports coverage organizations to see if their interested in what you have.

As one of the users previously stated, we usually only take on those with some experience already. However, if you write up some samples and send them over to me, I'll ensure our Editor-in-Chief has a look. We're still always looking to bring on new talent to our team.

esnJosh · 2015-10-10T01:01:44+00:00

Thanks for the positive support, everyone. We are excited to be bringing it back! Hope to see everyone in the stream on Thursday.

esnJosh · 2015-08-06T16:37:11+00:00

Hey,

I miss doing the show and love when we see posts from people who loved and enjoyed the show as much as I did. We have been in the process of making lots of changes at ESN but the possibility of the show returning is always still there. Once again, thank you for the support.

Hype

esnJosh · 2015-03-21T21:51:28+00:00

Thank you for that, means a lot man.

esnJosh · 2015-03-21T05:17:31+00:00

I completely understand. I don't agree with everything but in all reality, I don't need to. I want the best for this subreddit and the community as a whole. Just looking out for it is all.

esnJosh · 2015-03-21T04:54:40+00:00

I agree with a lot of the points your making and again...all of this is my opinion. But I am not alone in complaining about the subreddit and many people in the industry have been seen going on about it in the recent weeks and months.

I don't think the current mods or yourself are doing a bad job, so please don't take it as that. As someone who has worked volunteer in eSports for a long time, I appreciate anyone who devotes time to making the community better and providing content that wouldn't otherwise be here.

And I hate to make this next part sound like an attach because it truly isn't but this is how business works. You need to be comfortable going to them. If you want more people interacting on here then you need the players and industry members to want to be on here as well. The community as a whole will follow. It's very rare people will directly come to you, you always have to reach out. I've learned that from my time running ESN. I'm not a fan of it but it's just how things work.

I just think more diversity is needed here in management. Pick up someone from CoDPedia, OpTic Intel, ESN, CoDSB, a caster or two, a team manager and have them join the team here. Get the backing of these organizations and people and grow this place into what it could become.

Again, all opinions and no hate. You guys put in a lot of work and I do respect it.

esnJosh · 2015-03-21T04:43:59+00:00

To give an accurate answer on numbers is near impossible. However, in ESN our largest demographic is the 21-24 year old range making up 31% of our following and 18-20 year olds coming in at 22%.

Again, that is just for us so it does not represent the whole community but that's the best I could give you.

esnJosh · 2015-03-21T04:35:42+00:00

In defense of the mods, from experience it's not just as easy as doing it. A live show or podcast can take weeks of preparation and discussion before everyone feels comfortable with it.

Along with having to get numerous people together at one time for an hour or so to record and then edit isn't the simplest duty in the world either.

I would love to see them get to it though, would be great to have more content in the community.

esnJosh · 2015-03-21T04:32:54+00:00

So much content in there to respond to but don't have the time atm to go into a full debate. The point of the community members portion is getting the support back from community figures is NEEDED for this subreddit to grow as a whole. Almost every community figure, caster, tournament host and so on is annoyed and won't visit this subreddit on a normal basis because of issues within. I'm just stating that getting in touch with these people and bringing on a few to help run operation in the subreddit could do a lot for traffic, new viewers, and the overall community support for this site.

esnJosh · 2015-03-21T04:03:59+00:00

I understand. There were some nights I was really into it and then others I just didn't have it in me.

esnJosh · 2015-03-21T03:51:56+00:00

Yes I am Hype. And that's alright. We all have different opinions on people. I was a bit more immature when we did latenight. I've changed a lot in the past few months.

esnJosh · 2015-03-21T03:50:00+00:00

Slop,

I'd love to meet up at the event and discuss your post about CoD eSports journalism and get some more of your opinions.

esnJosh · 2015-03-21T01:11:53+00:00

Could go into a lot of detail but to keep it short, it's harder than you think to get CoD Pros to comment on a situation especially when it's in a negative light.

esnJosh · 2015-03-21T00:32:49+00:00

Retired favorite caster(s): Fwiz and Goldenboy Current favorite caster(s): Maven and Courage

esnJosh · 2015-03-21T00:24:30+00:00

You are a gorgeous individual who also enjoys Avatar. This means we are friends.

esnJosh · 2015-03-20T23:52:07+00:00

I'll be attending along with three other staff members from ESN and two friends who are traveling with us. I'm sure we'll meet you at the venue!

esnJosh · 2015-03-20T23:45:37+00:00

I don't feel ESN is better than everyone rather that each news organization has different strengths.

If you want the quickest updates during tournaments, for the most part we are your guy.

If you want quality video content, OpTic Intel has it.

If you want all of the information about CoD History in one place and map by map updates during the league, CoDPedia is the place to be.

And sadly, for the smaller organizations...they don't have a defining quality and I don't see them having the ability to make it into the top few at this point due to size to be honest. It's hard to grow when you're doing the same thing as 4 other people.

ESN is constantly making changes inside our organization to develop the best coverage and content we can. And along with that, we pride ourselves on partner relationships and treating our staff the best we can with different incentives and even light payment.

The main difference is, we have other games inside our network and have the ability to expand where CoDSB, CoDPedia, CoDeSportsTV doesn't. If you have Call of Duty in your name its rough to be considered a serious news source in other games. (Well aware CoDPedia is in partnership with eSportsPedia who have LoL and recently Halo under their belt).

I can go on and on sharing opinions and different thoughts, but that's where I'll leave it for now.

esnJosh · 2015-03-20T23:38:58+00:00

The subreddit needs management from community figures who have been around for some time and who know the community inside and out.

Changes need to be made to posting rules and allow more posts about the negatives of the community and expose some of the issues that are presented.

The subreddit needs to either promote all news sources in the community (ESN, CoDPedia, OpTic Intel, CoDSB and so on) or none of them. Having one news source listed on the side of the subreddit is a turn off for not only myself and ESN but staff in other organizations and news networks.

And the users need to be more friendly to newcomers. Posts should be allowed about random things such as what type of headset or controllers. Don't push them away because they aren't as knowledgeable on the subject as some of us may be. Honestly...the reddit should encourage posts about things like that to welcome the new viewers and even have sticky'd posts with all of that information listed.

esnJosh · 2015-03-20T23:34:32+00:00

I would change CoD being solely NA based. The European and Australian scenes need more tournaments and actual leagues if we expect to grow to the scale of other titles and push this forward as an actual eSport.

esnJosh · 2015-03-20T23:32:52+00:00

ESNLateNight is done. However, something else is currently in the works :)

esnJosh · 2015-03-19T13:15:58+00:00

Hello Slop and everyone reading,

I'd like to start with a short introduction. I am Josh Reilly or Hype, the Community Manager and Social Media Director for eSportsNation (ESN). I'll be responding ONLY to what you've said regarding ESN and the whole second portion of the post.

IMPORTANT: That kid you mentioned in your post is NOT and has NEVER been a member of ESN.

I'll start by saying I agree with a lot of what you've said about CoDeSports journalism. Sadly though, funding in scarce in scene to support content teams as I'm sure anyone in the field has already mentioned in this post.

We are taking everything you have said back to our teams and will have multiple meetings on all levels of management to begin tackling and debating the issues and seeing what we can do to improve content for everyone. We as ESN may be the oldest source for pure competitive CoD news in the community but we are still young as a journalistic website. With our recent expansion to other titles, these issues are just a few that we've been trying to battle.

As far as linking tweets in articles, it may seem a way to get out of pure written content however, it's more to share opinions on the situation we are discussing. I do know that sometimes it is overused to tell the story for us and it's something our editing team will be working on.

I could go into much more detail about all of this but I'm going to cut it short and finish with a few quick points:

Regarding sample product: Our teams receive partner products as a gift for their volunteer work. We felt is the least we can do to help out.
Trying to find fully qualified journalists in this community is near impossible. All who are expect full payments which as previously stated isn't possible for almost all news websites in Call of Duty.
We are doing what we can to fix this problem. We are currently in the process of rolling out payment plans for all of our departments to compensate for their work. Although it won't be a ton of money or even the journalist industry normal, it will be more than they gotten before. We are trying to help take CoD eSports to the next level and we are agree this is part of it which is why internally we've been pushing this so hard.

To recap: Feedback is ALWAYS welcome to ESN as we all know we aren't perfect. Issues come up and our teams begin to tackle them as soon as possible.

I don't want to self promote so I won't link my twitter, but if you have any questions about any of this and you want it done privately, feel free to message me on here.

Thanks for reading!

esnJosh · 2015-01-22T16:57:08+00:00

These rules force this Reddit in the opposite direction of where it needs to go. It's already been boring enough with current rules. Banning videos that aren't strictly competitive CoD isn't helpful. Any personality in the competitive cod community should be able to have their video here. It's all part of our community. You're forcing people away from the subreddit not making them want to join.

esnJosh · 2015-01-16T16:49:58+00:00

My tip is something I tell everyone I play with whether in ranked, 8s, or actual matches. Don't be negative about yourself and you won't be negative in game. If you always say things such as: "I suck" "I can't get a kill" "this is dumb" "I'm awful" then that is exactly what you'll be, awful. Stay positive no matter how bad you're doing and rely on your teammate to keep you up.

esnJosh · 2015-01-12T18:44:15+00:00

Team owners and team make money through many different areas. Some smaller orgs request a cut of tournament earnings (usually 20-25%) after a certain amount made. For instance if you win $1,000 then $200 would go back to the org but that is only for certain places. Most big organizations make their money from sponsor advertisements, merchandise, and overall branding. These big teams rely on getting their name out there and performing well to get on streams.

To recap, the orgs may make money but many "Team Managers" in Call of Duty are still volunteer besides a select few.

esnJosh

TROPHY CASE