The Liminal Effect

Esports Needs To Learn How To Walk Again

The Story

After coming through the hurricane unscathed and driving down to Atlanta only to be met with the plume of a chlorine fire that has been burning for days on end, these last few weeks have been stressful and overwhelming to say the least. The town just a few miles to the south of us was completely destroyed by flooding from the hurricane, and countless people in our community have been affected. One estimate said that the amount of rain dropped over Appalachia was enough to fill Lake Tahoe; some 40 trillion gallons. With all of this as the backdrop, I attended the Esports Summit put on by Skillshot Media and Ghost Gaming to reconnect and gauge the current status of esports. I hadn’t been able to attend something in quite some time. Maybe a few of you can relate, but going from the pandemic to being a stay at home dad, travel wasn’t really an option. We don’t live near family either, so there’s really no one to help out on short notice. Let me just say that while I found some big needs after attending the conference, I was happy to have met quite a few people in-person for the first time 😄.

Were you impacted by Hurricane Helen? If so, please reach out for resources.

The conference had incredible potential, but unfortunately was low in attendance. There were no doubt some extenuating circumstances that prevented many from making the trip, but I think this was the first clue into the current state of esports. For those who don’t know me as well, I’ve been in the industry for a number of years now. I started as a collegiate head coach and director. Built 2 separate programs, designed the facilities, and then proceeded to consult on a number of other esports projects for colleges and high schools. Now I work with or helped found a number of brands and work in numerous capacities. Unfortunately, I had to leave higher education a few years ago as the pay rate was vastly too low, and I had to put my family first. Moving into consulting full time, I began to share my experiences and lessons learned. With a decade of experience in higher education, I knew both the esports scene and struggles of universities in the current ecosystem. I developed a passion for structures and building the foundation through which esports can thrive. My work has slowly made its way across the landscape, and while I’ve seen such incredible growth, the current state in esports is one of backwards sliding and plateauing. The momentum has stopped. The low attendance at this current summit was a direct outcome of the unsustainable pace of growth and the cost of burnout among many. I can’t tell you how many people I’ve seen posting about taking a break from esports for one reason or another. This means that the lifecycle is changing. It’s progressing and maturing, but it takes a different mindset to sustain than it does to build. Many people get excited to start a project, but very few finish them.

Before we all start to get worried, note that this is a common occurrence across burgeoning industries. As Jorrel Batac said in our recent conversation, these are growing pains. All industries have them. Esports isn’t unique, and here I feel like I need to stress this point again. ESPORTS ISN’T UNIQUE. Sure, it combines both video games and sport in a way that makes it vastly different from traditional sports, but it isn’t unique as far as what it actually takes to build and manage organizations or define an industry. It follows the same patterns as everything else. Esports has been in perpetual startup mode (credit for that goes to Cora Kennedy). We have to think past the “go to market” strategy and begin building industry pillars that will define the next decade of our industry. It’s the first iteration of where true change management practices can come into play for our sector. We have to shift our thinking towards the long term. Those in the trenches often times can’t afford to think past the next semester or year, and for good reason. They don’t have the time, support, or resources to be able to do so. For those of us with the ability to help, we need to begin planning and implementing long-term ecosystem support structures so that these coaches and teams can thrive far beyond their current, struggling, capacity.

With that in mind, I’ll be changing the name of my newsletter as both a constant reminder to myself and to provide insight to others. The current name, Leverage, was meant to showcase how to leverage resources and knowledge to build something on a limited budget or with limited capacity. I still believe in that mission, but as esports seems to be stuck in its current iteration and struggling to transition to the next phase, it’s time to unfreeze traditional esports thinking and begin the work of change management to build a more wholistic approach to esports. Hence, the new title of this newsletter, “The Liminal Effect.” Let’s bring esports from it’s childhood phase into adulthood.

Organizational Lifecycle

Almost every organization, especially community and member focused ones, will go through a cyclical growth cycle. Sometimes its more literal and sometimes figurative. If you’re unfamiliar with this growth cycle, I’ll outline it below:

1. Birth

2. Childhood (Vitality)

3. Adolescence

4. Adulthood (Equilibrium)

5. Grandparent (Decline)

6. Death

I first came across this in a different way than many others. Growing up a preacher’s kid, I first learned about this type of lifecycle through the church. It can sometimes be literal as church congregations aged and weren’t replenished, but it also had its figurative meaning when general attendance was increasing or declining. Sometimes the cycle was generational, and sometimes the whole cycle took place in the span of 5 years. Nonetheless, this same model ties into esports.

Over the last 25 years, esports went from birth into childhood. These stages each lasted about a decade. Currently, we’re stuck in adolescence, which is also known as a liminal stage, a place in between states. Now, don’t get me wrong. There are plenty of people pursuing a pathway into what I coined “Esports 2.0” awhile back, and these organizations working on this trajectory are going to see signs of stability much sooner than the majority of groups still trying to implement the failed Esports 1.0 model from the professional space. It’s with this understanding that I want to devote my attention to moving things forward. Much of what I do falls under the umbrella of change management. It’s one of the facets of organizational management that interests me the most, and while esports as an industry is stuck in a liminal state, each team and organization may themselves be in various stages within their internal lifecycle. We’ve already seen some hit the death cycle and cease to exist; not that death is the end here. It is a cycle after all. But, it’s the failure to incorporate change management strategies that make ‘death’ the final chapter for many organizations. The main example of this in the collegiate space would be Arizona State University which cut funding after building spending around $1 million on it’s facility. On the professional front, we’ve all heard the news about the closing and laying off all staff, and let’s be clear about this. The coaches for these teams shouldn’t be responsible for taking an organization into the next stage of its lifecycle. We hear a lot about players, coaches, and managers, but we rarely, if at all, hear about those making the decisions that led to closure. Those that are managing the entire company/organization have a responsibility to those coaches and players that they rarely meet.

The same is true in the collegiate space. Too often is an esports team/program created and then left alone by administrative staff. It’s this failure of management to properly invest in and engage with new programs that often leads to failure. Now, more than ever as the enrollment cliff comes in full force, university administrators need to be fully aware of the trajectory of their esports programs. Yes, they do have to be aware of programs across the campus, but the biggest way to see something die off is to give it hope and then leave it without any support. On that note, I’ll say this. If you’re a coach or director trying to figure out what the next steps should be to solidify longevity for your program, please reach out to me.

If you’re a university or school administrator of any kind and want to understand how to help your esports programs and move them into the next stages of success, I’m more than happy to talk with you. It takes a village to raise a child, and esports needs its village now more than ever. We learned how to walk, but as with approach adulthood, we have to re-learn much of what we forgot.

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As always, a big shout out to my teams at SERENDIPITY gaming, Fantastic Athletes, and Squid Academy. We’re building support for each sector of the esports ecosystem!