How to start and become successful in esports and gaming content

Do you want to get into the world of content creation — whether that's making TikToks or producing a full-blown documentary — but you're unsure of where to start? Hitmarker's first panel of 2022 may just be for you.

The event: Hitmarker kicked off its first networking event of the year with a star-studded panel.

• The discussion, titled 'Content; where to start and how to succeed', took place on March 18.
• It was part of a larger networking event. Follow Hitmarker on Twitter and join the Discord to stay up to date with future plans!
• The content-focused line-up featured Zanne Wong (formerly of Red Bull and Riot Games), Karina Ziminaite (formerly of G2 Esports), and Danny Lopez (formerly of Guild Esports, Fnatic, and Galaxy Racer).

Luckily for you, we've compiled some of the highlights from the discussion here in text but, don't worry, you can also relive the panel in its entirety in the below video.

Getting going: "How do I get started?" is undoubtedly one of the biggest questions asked by job-seekers in gaming and esports.

• "Be honest with yourself: identify what you're capable of and what you want to do," advised Ziminaite. "Not every person who likes to play football with friends can be a professional football player and not every person who likes drawing can become an artist. You need to commit to a certain skill. Once you create a product, which can be anything that you're working on, then you have to put it out there. If you just create and nobody has ever seen it, you're not going to succeed."
• Is formal education necessary or should you start from scratch and experiment your way to success? Both paths can be viable! "I did go and get a degree in Film & TV Production which has helped me with my storytelling, my ability to conceptualize and script-write, but it's not always necessary," said Lopez. "I've met some great self-taught people."

Compelling content: Quality is important but it's not everything, so how do you guarantee 'good content'?

• "First you need to understand the audience and what the purpose is," Ziminaite explained. "Good content can be so many different things, what's good for one company is not going to be good for another. You see it in movies, sometimes in Hollywood they splash God knows how many millions and the movie is 'meh'. It's really [about] identifying what you're trying to achieve."
• At the end of the day, how the content is received by viewers is everything. "The reason I came back to [esports] is because the community's going to let me know what's good content and bad content," Lopez said. "They're the most vocal and responsive people I've ever seen."
• In an apt example of giving new ideas a shot, Wong revealed that she almost never pulled the trigger on the LEC's beloved rap battle concept. "It's actually one of the best-performing pieces that the LEC publishes and the first one, honestly, I was about to kill," she revealed. "At the same time, there was an understanding that there is interest in music with the community and there was an interest in cringy content. I gave it a go and it turned out to be the best."

Content is core: Organizations such as G2 Esports and 100 Thieves place content on the same level as competition.

• "This is the only safe way for teams that might not do so well competitively," Ziminaite said of prioritizing content. "There are only so many tournaments, so many winners. It's the way you show yourself to the world, getting the partnership funds and resources, but also this has to have complete buy-in from the whole organization."
• "In all honesty, I think half of 100 Thieves' content sucks," Lopez said, going against the general sentiment of the organization's videos. "I hear it a lot, 'I want to be like 100 Thieves, I want to be like G2 Esports.' You can't be. G2 is G2, 100 Thieves is 100 Thieves. These people have carved out their own brands, their own stories, their own messaging. Be who you're going to be."