Social Media, Gaming & Esports: How I Got Here

Disclaimer: long-form writing isn’t my strong suit. Maybe that’s why I love social media so much. I have 140 characters or less to get my point across. But this is long and I apologize. I want you to have context. Maybe this is too much but whatever.

In the three years I was at Riot Games, one thing remained the same; any time I engaged with esports fans or League players, they’d frequently ask me how I got my job. Sometimes it was just wanting to know how to get hired at Riot but recently I’ve noticed that there are a lot of questions in general about how to get into gaming, esports or social media.

First, a warning: what worked for me may not work for you. There are some lessons here that I think can be helpful when looking for a job, but my path wasn’t conventional and it sure as hell wasn’t pretty. I languished complacent at a job for a half-dozen years. I didn’t go to college but for a semester of summer school at a community college. Do as I say, not as I do.

Gaming has always been a part of my life. My dad died before I was seven and my mom was probably struggling to keep me busy when she decided to get me an Atari 2600 for Christmas. I remember spending long hours playing Joust and Pitfall while one of my nephews held the cable at a very specific angle to keep the failing joystick working.

Skip ahead and I’m 18 years old and not sure what the hell to do with my life. I hated school and had the grades to show it. I got out of school and I was delivering pizzas and waiting tables. But gaming was still a passion of mine. I was broke as hell but I still managed a Nintendo 64 in the apartment I was sharing with two other people and we would play Mario Kart to settle arguments like who had to be the designated driver to parties we wanted to go to.

A year goes by and I’m back at home, and I have a gaming PC (thanks mom). I’m playing Everquest a lot. Too much. Many hours spent raiding late at night, even falling asleep at my PC at one point. I wanted a new graphics card so I head to a CompUSA where I’m helped by this dude named Chris and he convinces me that the TNT2 Ultra was the card I needed.

While talking to Chris at the store, it somehow comes up that he lives just a few blocks from me and he convinces me to bring my PC over to his place where he can help me with the install. Once we were done, we and his roommates end up playing Everquest into the early hours next morning. This was the start of an awesome friendship and it was SO freaking random.

A few weeks later, Chris hooks me up with a job at CompUSA. It was a welcome change from waiting tables and bartending. I’m working in their upgrades shop, even though I’m super under-qualified. I’ve hardly got any hands-on experience with fixing/upgrading computers but I can read an instruction manual real good. One night, I’m having issues with installing a Sound Blaster sound card and I call Chris because one of his roommates works at Creative Labs. While on the call with his roommate, trying to troubleshoot the issue, he asks me if I’d be interested in working at Creative. The answer was easy.

Needless to say, this isn’t how things happen now. But this was a different time. This was just before the dot-com bubble burst. Getting a job in tech felt like 25% what you knew and 75% who you knew. I got hired at Creative as an entry level Test Engineer. It’s a nice way of saying Quality Assurance. I sat in a lab with a checklist of tests to run on hardware or software before they went to release.

After a few years, I got moved to developer relations. I admired what they did ever since joining the company. They helped developers support Sound Blaster technology called EAX in their games. It was as much about managing relationships as it was about support. It also gave me a great opportunity to network at trade shows. Unfortunately, I got laid off because Creative was undergoing a massive downsizing.

One of the people I met while working in DevRel worked at Corsair and I gave him a call about 30 minutes after signing my severance paperwork. He had something I could do but it would be a bit humbling because I’d have to go back to testing hardware. I didn’t like the idea of being unemployed so I jumped at the opportunity to work on cool hardware with people I knew.

Unfortunately, the job at Corsair wasn’t a great fit and I was struggling. I didn’t know the hardware well enough and I moved to technical support to learn more. I volunteered to try my hand at how-to videos in an attempt to find something I was good at. I had VERY little experience editing video and even less with creating how-to videos but I needed to do something. What I produced wasn’t going to win any awards but they got the job done(here’s an example). This got me out of the doghouse and gave me something to build up. I was creating videos and writing blogs. I created Corsair’s Facebook & Twitter and suddenly we had a new way of talking to our customers. The videos were doing well. I was learning on the fly about how to create content in a budding social world where Facebook was just getting their sea legs and Twitter wasn’t yet a household name.

Sometimes when you do good work, other companies notice. I’m not going to name any names but a competing company offered me a job which was effectively a promotion and a raise and gave me more control over what direction I took things which sounded amazing. Unfortunately, the company suffered from poor leadership and they were bleeding mid-level management. I joined them to manage social media. I ended up managing social media, managing PR while also being asked to oversee the customer support team. Not many take-aways here other than do your research on a company before taking the job. Glassdoor is your friend. While this was a setback and felt really shitty while I was in it, it was the best move I had made because it led me to Paragon Studios.

About a year into the job, I had lunch with one of the guys I met while I was at Creative, Destin. He and I met shortly after I started at Creative when he was doing QA for a MMO. Now, he was the Studio Director at Paragon Studios, the company responsible for City of Heroes. He mentioned they were looking for some help with community management. I had no direct experience, but I know how to talk to people online, I know the game and I love games in general. I thought I could help them improve their presence on Facebook and Twitter while learning how to do traditional gaming community management. I interviewed and, four days later (the day of my wedding) I accepted an offer.

To get to know people at Paragon, I played League of Legends quite a bit. It was a studio favorite. My friend Chris also played and we would play with our close circle of friends at night. I played and watched League so much that before the announcement that the studio was closing, I bought tickets to the Season 2 World Championship at Galen Center.

The job at Paragon was much different than what I had been doing previously. This was community management with a bit of social media. I had to learn how to talk to players about changes to the game, messaging downtime, and ultimately, helping the community through the cancellation of the game. It was a tremendous opportunity. I learned so much about treating players with respect as well as respecting what the game means to them.

Between the game’s cancellation announcement and when the servers came offline, they needed a skeleton crew to help out with what they call “sunsetting.” During this time, I was free to look for jobs. I reached out directly to the guy who was head of Community Relations at Riot at the time, Steve “Pendragon” Mescon. I know this is unorthodox as fuck but I was desperate (I actually don’t recommend doing this). I told him what I did and what I hoped to do for Riot. I sent him my resume. He got back to me and said someone else was coming in to head up community and he’d pass my resume along. I thought that was the end. It was a risky play and I thought it backfired.

One thing that happens behind the scenes when a studio closes down is HR teams from other studios reach out to try and find talent. Paragon’s parent company, NCSoft, put together a mixer of sorts and invited a bunch of studios to come out and talk to people who were now displaced. A lot of people landed jobs from this and I was super happy for them. Unfortunately I wasn’t one of them but this really gave me a feel for how close knit the gaming community is on the professional side.

This was the scariest timeline. If you look back at 2012, it wasn’t the best time in the US economy. I filed for unemployment for the first time in my life. I put my resume in at every gaming company who had something related to social media or community management. I wanted to stay in gaming now that I had got there. I had multiple phone screens. I had a handful of interviews. I think most companies looked at my resume and got caught up on the fact that I had less than a year’s experience with working in a game studio.

I get an email one day from Ilja Rotelli at Riot. He was the head of Community at Riot and Steve actually did pass him my resume. “ I don’t have a specific role opened right now, but I’d like to hear what your fit and interests are in case something opens up.” I’m game. Talking is better than the alternative.

We ended up having a pretty casual conversation about games, about talking to players and about sunsetting City of Heroes. Unfortunately, like he said, he didn’t have anything open. This was the end of October in 2012. I didn’t hear anything from Riot, or anyone else for that matter, for the rest of the year since it was the holidays. My wife and I hadn’t even been married a full year yet and we were struggling. I was getting scared.

January 2013 came and there were some new job listings at Riot. There were three Social Media positions available but this one stood out:

Social Media Coordinator (eSports)

Why did this job stand out? I played sports for years. I’m hyper-competitive. Oh, and I had experience with esports at Creative Labs. We had a partnership with Fatal1ty. Not to mention I loved League and saw their investment into esports first hand at Worlds. Game on.

When I put my resume in at Riot, I felt the same way a lot of people do when they apply at Facebook, Google, Blizzard etc. There are so many people applying for this job. I need to bring my A-game. I didn’t just put in my resume, I read up on the company. I did a ton of research. What are their strengths and weaknesses in social media and engagement overall? What could I do when I got there? What are their philosophies toward hiring and people? I watched GDC talks by Brandon Beck and Travis George. I joined their Linkedin group to see what other candidates were asking and saying. I was playing the game more than ever. I was fucking READY.

What I realize now is that this role was at the perfect intersection between my passion for video games and competition and my knowledge of social media and community engagement. When looking at a job description, it should speak to you on some level. You shouldn’t think “oh, I could do that.” Your response (I think) should be “shit, this is ME.”

So, needless to say, I got the job. It wasn’t an easy process though. It’s been said elsewhere, but the interview process at Riot is a gauntlet. But when that call came and they offered me the job, I was fucking ECSTATIC. It was a tremendous weight off my shoulders and I got hired by one of the best game studios on the planet. /all worth

But getting hired was just the start. Once you’re there, you WORK. “Esports never sleeps” wasn’t just a motto out of nowhere. For a while, I was working 3 days a week on broadcast prep and promotion and then working both the NA and EU LCS broadcasts. My wife and I were living apart for the first 10 months while we figured out how to get her down to Santa Monica since we were in the Bay Area when I got hired. I had a dog for a roommate (RIP Quinnie, you were the best) and I spent most weekends working the LCS like much of the esports team in 2013.

I was partly responsible for establishing a social presence for the biggest esport in the world and it was incredible. I learned a lot on the fly. It’s fucking challenging working there because everyone’s so damn smart, you can’t help but want to be better. I had great mentorship. Once I proved I was capable, I was empowered to expand my team which brought even more challenges.

If you’ve read this far, thank you. Here are my key take-aways from this ride I’m lucky enough to call a career:

• When applying for a job, do your research. The interview is just as much about them as it is about you. Come prepared with questions related to the company and the job.
• Don’t underestimate the value of networking. Every job I got once I stopped working in restaurants came from talking to someone I met along the way.
• Find your angle. What makes you stand out from other candidates?
• Keep learning once you get the job and look for opportunities to grow.
• If you’re in the position to, mentor people. You’re not only helping them, but you’re helping yourself get better.
• Be resilient. At top companies there are hundreds of candidates for entry level positions. You’re not always going to get a call. Be polite and gracious when you do and follow up after the interview with a thank you.

Man, it’s late and I’ve been typing and editing and deleting and whatever for a while. I’m sure I missed something. Hit me up on Twitter if you have any questions. Thanks for reading this. I hope it helped.