Before starting my Interview there I needed to do an observation of where the Players usually spend their time. This was my fieldwork observation on the Discord server where they interact.

Stiven Hernandez 

Writing for The Social Sciences 

April 12, 2022 

This observation was made on a Discord server. Discord is an app that allows users to create Servers in which they can have separate groups and voice chats. Discord is used by the majority of PC gamers. I will be taking notes on the Discord server of the competitive team TideWater Esports, these are Valorant players. Valorant is a game developed by the company Riot Games, a well-known company. 

Some Discord servers are nicely organized and look very appealing, this was not the case. Their chats had no emojis and were not separated into sections. They had 11 chat rooms and 3 voice chat rooms. The first chat room is named “announcements”, here I found the roster for the team and the official Twitter for the team. Surprisingly there are no tournaments announcements, they have only announced recent players that have joined the team. 

The second chat room is named “General”. In this chat room, they speak on a regular basis, mostly about the game. They also send some plays (plays are things they have done in the game that can be considered really good, like when you make a great move in a chess game) and humor that relates to Valorant. Every conversation seems to be about the game, team or something related to them. 

The third chat room is named “availability”. Here is where the players can let each other know when they will be available to play that night. They can also let each other know if they will not be able to practice that day. This chat room was very repetitive, all I could read was that the players listed the days they will have free for that week. 

The fourth chat room is named “Scrims-schedule”. The administrators of the server post the future scrims for the team in this chat room. Scrims are games against other teams, these games are not official, they are only used for practice against other teams. Some players also hype each other up in this chat room, for example, one player said, “Lets goooooooo…. we go this”. 

The fifth chat room is named “information”. They mention changes in the practice schedule and information about the team overall. One admin mentions the standing in the league being 255, it was an old message.  

The 6^th chat room is named “Blacklist”. This chat room was empty, with not even a description of the purpose of the room. My guess is that this chat room is for people who have been banned from the server or that are on time out. 

The 7^th chat room is named “Pay”. The first time I read the name of this chat room I was intrigued. How much money do they make in tournaments and things like that? They only had the PayPal and cash app for the players to get their cuts of the tournaments. No mention of how many they will be getting, and I think that is for the best. I had no idea they were getting paid in this team, I thought it was more like an internship where you work for the experience, not the money. 

The 8^th chat room is named “tournament-info-only”. I thought they were going to put information about tournaments here, but no. They chat room only asked the players to put their information so they can submit them whenever they apply for a tournament. They have to use this order, “name, Riot Id, Discord Id, Email, Twitter.  

The 9^th chat room is named “tournament bans”. It is not much here; they only post the Maps that the opposite team has banned. The maps are the area in which they will be playing, and the teams are allowed to ban one map that they may not be good at or that doesn’t fit their team composition. 

The 10^th and 11^th chat rooms are both about game compositions, 10^th is named “Heaven-composition” and the 11^th is named “Defense-heaven”.  The 10^th chat room has the name of the players and next to them the name of the character that they will be using in the game. For the 11^th chat room, we have images, they look like plan boards. The strategies that they will be using in games are posted here, they have different names like “aggressive at C”, ECO, pistol agro”. This seems to be one of the most important chats on the server; they lay down their plans to win tournaments, it’s similar to how the coaches tell the team what strategy to use during a 30 second time out. 

On the surface, the Discord server looks boring, without life, but that is not it. I am very used to seeing colorful and decorated chat rooms, but this server is just very professional. They take this seriously and have no time to lose on aesthetics. When you enter those chat rooms and read what they have to say or the plans they make, you will notice how much more there is not the server. I was impressed with the formality of the players; I did not expect that from gamers. The fact that they are getting paid impresses me, now I wonder, what if I become a professional gamer? What does it take? Hopefully, this will be answered once I interview some of the teams that play for this team.