The State of Creatives in Esports

Kaleb Meyer
3 min readAug 14, 2021

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Since the beginning of Esports, there have been organizations battling for the title of the best in the world. While the faces of these orgs compete in multimillion-dollar tournaments, studios are working around the clock behind the scenes producing graphics and videos to make sure the social media accounts and websites are stocked with the freshest content. Today, I spoke with Fear (@fearvisuals on Twitter) about his opinion on the state of creatives in the Esports industry.

Fear, a video editor/3D animator, opened his first video editing software around 4 years ago. He said at this time his editing knowledge was very basic, and consisted of mainly cutting clips and putting them together to make YouTube videos. A little over a year ago, around the beginning of a nationwide quarantine due to the COVID-19 pandemic, he became interested in editing montages of the game Fortnite, and was inspired by popular editors and content creators at the time. He became integrated into the Fortnite scene and began to work with smaller organizations as an editor. At this time, he was asked by a manager for one of these organizations if he could create a 3d animation of a character floating in space for a montage. While this may not seem like a difficult task, it meant learning how to use an entirely different software, Blender. This software is very popular among Esports designers, editors, and creatives in general as it has all the features of a multi-thousand dollar 3d software, but for free. In this software, you can create your own models or edit ones made by others to create still images or animations, Fear mainly doing the latter. He mainly taught himself the program through experimenting and trial and error. Eventually, he figured out the basics and created his first animation. After this, he knew this was something he wanted to keep doing, and he has stuck to it. Little did he know, this would land him a position on one of the highest-tier studios in the gaming world.

When asked whether or not he thought creatives of Esports organizations were often overlooked or underappreciated, he said “it really depends on the organization.” In general, he said creatives are very underappreciated in the Esports scene, often not receiving any payment or even credit for the work they create. “There are so many orgs out there where creatives are hidden entirely,” he said. He also said that “creatives are the backbone of organizations, doing a large amount of work for little or no credit. Without creatives, the social media pages for organizations would not look nearly as put together or professional as they do.” He said he would love for these circumstances to change, and encourages other organizations to properly credit and compensate creatives for their time and effort. “Creatives provide a large amount of value to organizations, and they deserve credit for that.”

Fear said he enjoys working behind the scenes, but would also enjoy the recognition competitive players or content creators get. “Most creatives transition to content creation when they become popular or gain a following, losing time for actual creating or commission work.” Being a creative myself, I have talked to many others in the field who originally had aspired to be content creators and only started designing or editing to make videos or thumbnails for YouTube videos they planned to upload. Because of this, when they gain the following to be able to transfer into a content creator, most creatives take the opportunity. Fear said he’d love to find an in-between, with the popularity and recognition of a content creator but still being able to edit like he loves to do.

If you’re looking to find yourself in Fear's position, he says it’s all about connections. Start by building a small audience, which he says is smart for anything, and start building a network. Don’t be afraid to reach out to people, as the worst thing you can hear is no. He also says to make friends that are willing to help you perfect your craft, while making sure to help them as well. At the end of the day, Fear believes that the biggest tip is that in the Esports industry, connections are key. “You could be an average designer with a ton of connections, and get a position over someone who may be more qualified, but does not have the network that you do. You need some sort of skill, but connections are everything.”

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Kaleb Meyer
Kaleb Meyer

Written by Kaleb Meyer

Aspiring Esports Journalist based in Pennsylvania.

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