A FanZone GoodBye

by Jodi "PunkLit" McClure

Back in 2013, when the LCS first took steps to become the more polished and organized entity we know today, I created a blog called LCS FanGirls. For a year, it was just a place for me to post weekly game schedules and pictures of the pros, and, like the LCS itself, it was enjoyed by a very small handful of fans. If I saw even 50 views a week, I was surprised - and the site would likely have stayed that way if not for Snoopeh, Bjersen, and the Cutest Pro NA contest.

Snoopeh, the undisputed leader of said contest, retweeted one of my tweets about it, and he and Bjergsen joked about the results, and suddenly, my little fangirl site exploded with 50,000 views. I was a bit giddy that day, and not just over the numbers. It was the fact that Snoopeh and Bjerg had even responded to one of my tweets!

Determined to take advantage of the views that week, I started to write actual esports articles. While I was no journalist, I was a novelist, so it wasn't a hard jump for me to make. The views, of course, waned off after the contest hype, but I had gained a small new audience who stopped in weekly for the 'at-a-glance' schedules and standings and I was very happy with that. This new audience had opinions though, and the one that registered the most with me was that, in this mainly male dominated LCS scene, the 'fangirl' theme had to go.

So one year in, I redesigned the site. I changed the name (to LCS Central,) the logo, the layout, got rid of the pastel color theme, and added a question of the day and LCS fan art page. The weekly viewer numbers started to steadily grow and, in a bout of ambition near the start of Season 4, I reached out to the community to see if anyone would like to join me in writing. That initial inquiry brought me budding esports writers Joshua Kon, Jeremy Heimann, and Pieter 'antdriote' Cnudde, and together, we took our first unsure steps towards trying to create a 'real' esports news site. The views were still small...I think we averaged maybe 300 views a week then...but whenever we posted articles, we'd see a little spike. This also brought about my first attempt to post one of our articles to Reddit (which was immediately removed by a mod who cautioned that linking to a blog was a no-no.) I had a ton of LCS twitter friends though, and I was the only person at the time posting about esports on Google+, so we still found ways to get views.

A few months later we were joined by Andy "Bloodvayne' Del-Ray, and since he expressed interest doing interviews, I reached out to a few LCS pros. Sjokz was our first, followed by YoungBuck (whose response brought about several hours of our unrestrained joy on Skype) and Gambit's Darker, whose interview made the front page of r/LOL. That brought in an even larger audience and our views began to hoover around the 20k monthly mark. And that's when I started thinking the site could actually be something. I bought the FanZone domain name, moved the site, redesigned it again and made it a logo..and in June of 2014 I put out another request for writers. That brought me Chase Wassenar's LCS podcasts, Hussain Moosvi's brilliant analytics, Louis LeMeillet's awesome topics, Jerrod Steis' mega-successful support guides, Matt Lee's great writing and Reece "SabrewoIf" Dos-Santos' infamously prophetic weekly predictions. It also pushed us into the realm of 50k monthly views for a little while...but holding those numbers proved difficult in the long run.

Our weekly views jolted up and down so hard, our charts looked like something you'd find in a cardiac unit, and after half a year of trying to keep that beat from bottoming out, I ultimately failed. Because the fact is, FanZone was still a small site with a single owner who didn't have the money to put into its growth and promotion, and after too many months of dwindling numbers, the work it took to maintain it started to feel thankless. This depression worsened when, after multiple attempts, I couldn't even get a single response from Riot for media passes to cover MSI. At that point, between editing and making graphics and keeping all the schedules, results and standings updated, watching 20 games a week and trying to keep up-to-date on all the latest news on Reddit, etc, I started to resent the tax on my free time and ultimately, I stopped caring. There was a time when my passion for the games and players outweighed that time commitment, but lately, I haven't had the same passion for it, and I think the combination of those two problems has led me to this point. It's clear that right now I can't move forward and I don't care to go back, so FanZone, for now, is going to go into hibernation, and if at some future point, I find that passion again, we'll give it another try. 

In addition to the names above, thanks to Anel Musinovic, the only one of us who ever really mastered Reddit, Michael "Tribble" Godani and his extensive and relentless coverage of the LPL, my dear friend Sandie Gade, who snagged the first interview with Santorin after he was picked up by TSM, and excellent writers Ethan Akey, Kennan French, Tristan Jakobsen, Josh C. and Jeremiah Egbert. And again, thanks to Matt Lee and Reece Dos-Santos, who both handled a shit-ton of stuff for me when I wasn't around.

Everyone who contributed here was part of our family, and you guys all stuck around through thick and thin and I'll never be able to aptly express my gratitude. I've been damned lucky to have every one of you write for me!

Lastly, thanks to my beloved LCS twitter friends for your support through the years. This is a difficult field for amateur writers to break in to, and support can be pretty sparse for people who don't write for corporate sites, so you guys were the true stars! 

In the meantime, Twitter is home...and that's where I'll be. ;)

And now, because he's awesome, I leave you with an Andy'ism: