As director of crew operations at Counter Logic Gaming, Summer Scott has spent her profession advocating for her gamers. But no topic the wholesomeness of Scott’s work, she’s spent well-known of her tenure at CLG having to take care of fans who blame her for losses or in any other case construct unfounded assumptions about her honest in the organization.
As esports grows up, organizations are realizing the significance of supporting their participants at some level of every stage of their careers — a convention shift that elevates the urgency of Scott’s participant trend work. Scott’s profession has flourished accordingly. After joining CLG as a participant trend coordinator in 2017, she without warning scaled the ladder at the org, reaching her most up-to-date directorial honest in January 2021. Though participant trend shouldn’t be any longer piece of Scott’s most up-to-date title, it has been a consistent throughline in her work, with participant wellness at the pause of her mind as she ties collectively the plenty of transferring parts that construct up CLG.
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Underrepresented but vital
Scott’s work in CLG’s participant trend department centered largely on gamers’ mental health and what they would per chance well enact to enhance it out-of-sport, including organizing physical and psychological therapy, advocating on behalf of burnt-out gamers and in any other case supporting them as human beings.
I had someone in the trenches, in Summer, who used to be having a glimpse out for me, no longer easiest competitively, but furthermore professionally.
Former CLG Dapper Atomize Bros. participant Kevin “PewPewU” Toy
“I was there to merely take into story how the total pieces were working collectively, with that out of doors lens — how the instructing kinds were blending with the gamers, how the gamers were studying, if it would per chance well doubtless also fair furthermore be accelerated in any respect — overall having a glimpse to tweak and tune the dials for the total folks working there,” Scott stated.
Participant trend is a a must-maintain scheme for teams to enhance gamers as they transition away from active competition. When former CLG Dapper Atomize Bros. participant Kevin “PewPewU” Toy stepped encourage from competition in prefer of an inner operations honest in 2021, Scott used to be integral in serving to him construct the swap. “If there had no longer been a participant trend coach admire Summer, I don’t maintain I’d’ve been ready to easily transition from legit participant to physique of workers,” Toy stated. “I had someone in the trenches, in Summer, who used to be having a glimpse out for me, no longer easiest competitively, but furthermore professionally. The honest of a participant trend manager and head shouldn’t be any longer easiest to be invested in these gamers as rivals — it’s to be invested in their lives.”
Despite the particular price of participant trend for folks admire Toy, many esports orgs aloof underrate its significance; at some level of her early days, Scott recalled getting axed by a company so they would per chance well hire a dwell-in chef. As increasing numbers of gamers burn out or retire from competition, some teams are beginning to achieve the significance of out-of-sport increase — but others are merely continuing the notice of chewing their gamers and spitting them out when they’re done.
“For plenty of teams, it’s only a topic of resource allocation. The teams that maintain the sources and are ready to position out your total suite, they’re doubtless going to enact those issues,” stated Daniel Lee, who beforehand worked alongside Scott as CLG’s industry trend manager, head of info administration and long-established manager. “But for teams where they barely maintain a funds for skill, what’s the next most important thing? Is it the social media guy? Is it the fellow that shoots the videos? I don’t in actuality envy those forms of choices.”
Forging a brand original course
When Summer Scott graduated from Rutgers University in 2013, she wasn’t sure what she wished to enact alongside with her lifestyles. She’d studied psychology, but she wasn’t drawn to pursuing a master’s. She furthermore took residence to be a lifelong gamer who had met her husband interior World of Warcraft.
“I’m a nerd about games, and I’m a huge nerd about the human mind,” Scott stated. “Those are fair the two issues that I’m repeatedly going to nerd out in actuality onerous about, so I was making an are trying to search out a intention so that you just might per chance mix those two worlds collectively.”
I am the particular person to succor make synergy among the pieces that are there.
Summer Scott, director of crew operations at Counter Logic Gaming
The trajectory of Scott’s lifestyles used to be without kill altered when she watched a panel about ladies in esports that featured CLG director of trend Stephanie Harvey speaking about the dearth of female honest fashions in the location.
“As quickly as I realized that getting into into esports would per chance well also very properly be something that wasn’t fair for me, but a reward that I would per chance well doubtless provide diverse folks, my innards fair went on fireplace, and I in the present day started making an are trying to get my foot in the door,” Scott stated.
Scott Googled “esports psychology” and acquired alive to with Weldon Green, an early recommend for mental health increase in esports. She offered to write for his weblog, and her articles in the present day grew to become one of the important perfect-performing on Green’s online page.
That summer, Green asked Scott to succor him in operating participant trend boot camps for Crew Liquid. The boot camps were a hit. When Green wasn’t ready to construct it to the next one, he asked Scott to take care of it — and her profession used to be born. “Whether it succeeds or no longer in launching your profession is barely according to how appropriate you are, and he or she kicked butt,” stated Green, who served as a coach for CLG between 2018 and 2020. “And as well they were admire, ‘forget this, we’re fair going to rent her.’”
Over the next couple of years, Scott worked as a psychology consultant and performance coach for teams resembling NRG Esports, Gold Coin United and Phoenix1 Esports. In 2017, she joined CLG, which is owned by Madison Square Backyard Sports, the operator of the Unique York Knicks and Unique York Rangers, as a participant trend coordinator. No longer as much as a three hundred and sixty five days later, she grew to become CLG’s head of participant trend, a residence she held except her promotion to director of crew operations in January 2021.
Uncared for verbal replace
The development of the esports commerce hasn’t repeatedly resulted in sure commerce. All the scheme in which through esports, beforehand in the encourage of-the-scenes workers admire Scott are more and more turning into targets of fan scrutiny in their very beget appropriate — and they in most cases lack the institutional increase given to gamers in the location. Sustained fan criticism can maintain important effects on esports orgs, resembling former TSM president Leena Xu’s resolution to lumber away the firm in November 2021 after years of fan ire, even supposing Xu pointed to a commerce in industry strategy as the assert impetus for her exit.
At CLG, these rising worry are per chance most visible in the dearth of verbal replace about the honest of participant trend, which has led some fans responsible Scott for the crew’s in-sport struggles. Though CLG is the oldest active crew in the League of Legends Championship Series, the best likely level of North American LoL competition, it has struggled to search out success in contemporary seasons, a hit its closing playoff in 2016.
A cursory search of the CLG subreddit unearths waves of vitriol directed at Scott, including threads criticizing her supposed incapability to toughen the crew’s League of Legends skills. On the unreal hand, the crew’s performance in the arena has by no scheme fallen below Scott’s out-of-sport purview. “Merely save, I am the particular person to succor make synergy among the pieces that are there,” Scott stated. “I will’t repeatedly guarantee that the acceptable pieces are there; if a cog don’t match, it fair don’t match. But for individuals who can turn collectively, I was there to succor grease the wheels.”
While CLG by no scheme deliberately save Scott forward as a scapegoat, some observers at some level of the crew pointed at its outward messaging as one motive for fans’ confusion. “I maintain plenty of the criticisms come fair on story of she had appeared in one amongst our YouTube videos labeled as a ‘performance coach,’ and so folks were admire, ‘wow, your job title is performance coach, and this crew shouldn’t be any longer doing properly, so clearly you’re the self-discipline,’” Toy stated. “Oftentimes, folks from the out of doors easiest get a cramped gaze of issues, and they’re instant to leap to conclusions.”
“There would per chance well maintain doubtless been better verbal replace from the org; I don’t maintain that lumber with the movement of info ever handed down, so I will ticket why fans would naturally lumber in opposition to a particular person they’ve seen in a video earlier than,” stated Lee. “She’s labeled as the head of trend on the online page, and there used to be by no scheme in actuality any more or much less clarification past that.”
Green, who used to be overtly severe of CLG’s higher administration, save the blame in the present day on the organization. “They made a put up admire, ‘we employed a particular person for this job title,’ after which they didn’t put up anything else for 2 years,” Green stated. “I’m hyperbolizing, but their dearth of allege material and verbal replace is emblematic of them being a defensive PR org. Shall we embrace, when Dim Lives Topic hit, every single NBA org used to be admire, ‘we’re going to get in entrance of this and construct a press release.’ Madison Square Backyard used to be the best NBA crew that used to be admire, ‘no, we’re going to take a seat down down this one out.’”
A various disclose
Despite Green’s criticism of CLG’s administration, he — alongside with all americans else who worked with Scott at CLG — had nothing but compliments for Scott’s work at some level of the organization’s entrance place of work. And despite the BLM-connected messaging points, just a few Scott’s former coworkers praised her as a leading disclose for diversity and revolutionary commerce in the organization. “She’s no longer scared if she’s the best recommend for something, or if there’s no longer more momentum, but she knows it’s the acceptable thing to enact,” Lee stated. “When BLM used to be a astronomical thing, she used to be in actuality invited to keep in touch to all of MSG, as soon as we were having these firm-wide discussions, to purchase price on those issues.”
As a biracial Dim and white girl in a mighty crew honest, Scott shouldn’t be any longer the same outdated esports commerce chief, but she wasn’t repeatedly ecstatic alongside with her standing as a honest mannequin. She spent well-known of her profession feeling admire her identification would be a limiting part — which, in the overwhelmingly white and male of esports, it arguably used to be. “I was shy of speaking too passionately in a meeting on story of I didn’t will maintain to be labeled as the over-emotional girl in the room,” she stated.
Since joining CLG in 2017, Scott has scaled the ranks of the organization, turning into more and more assured in her means to commerce the arena of aggressive gaming for the easier. In conjunction with Harvey, she helps lead CLG’s DEI initiatives. “We in actuality think that the inner CLG tradition of being accepting and caring of oldsters must translate to the gaming community,” Scott stated. “We’re no longer keen to pause in our beget partitions.”
CLG would per chance well also fair no longer maintain performed every card appropriate in phrases of its messaging spherical Scott’s honest, but most participants of its roster would agree that the crew made the acceptable lumber in hiring her. Scott’s means to prevail and flourish in esports no topic her nontraditional background is proof that the organization is making appropriate decisions internally, no topic the struggles of its League of Legends squad. In sports actions and esports, aggressive success comes and goes, but Scott’s presence helps CLG’s gamers make skills for lifestyles — after which leverage those skills to succor the organization.
“It’s onerous for me to to find my head up and glimpse spherical and recognize the success I’ve had,” Scott stated. “However the few times that I in actuality maintain, that’s after I’m admire, ‘holy shit, I in actuality maintain in actuality come a good scheme.’”
