GN Media Kit (In-Depth)

GameNation – Media Kit

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GameNation

http://gamenationpro.com

2010 Media Kit

GameNation – Media Kit

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Contents

Overview…………………………3

Demographics………………….4

User Submission program…4

Website………………….………...5

GameNation Coverage………6-7

Head Staff Bios……..…………..8-9

More Information...………...10

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Overview & History

GameNation is a gaming news organization based in North America that at it’s roots was founded back in June of 2008. What began as a small community project under a different name, soon blossomed into an amazing journey to try and become one of the main places for gaming news in the country. We strive for professionalism around every bend, and we think that the staff that represent us are beyond professional in every aspect of their lives.

We currently have members on our site from the USA, Canada, England, and more. We believe that a strong global reach is key to making a successful organization. We also believe that with the ever changing video game market, that integrating console and PC gamers alike is the wave of the future, and no longer is the only attraction in competitive gaming major PC games.

GameNation has a competitive base of players as well in addition to our staff of talented writers, videographers, and web designers. Although we began as just a small blog a couple of years ago, we have grown into well more than that sporting a major news site, forums, and more. With this, we have gathered up players that compete around the world with support from GameNation. These players compete at the highest level possible and we as an organization look to help grow them as players and teach them to become more professional in their journey to the top.

We have participated in and covered every league imaginable. We have also had people work in every league imaginable. We have members from previous gaming organizations that come to GameNation to put their talents to use as they have learned them. We have had staff work for most of the top gaming leagues in America. We know what it takes to work on the highest level of gaming, and now we are taking that knowledge and applying it to an organization of our own.

We regularly compete in and cover Major League Gaming (MLG) events, World Cyber Games (WCG) events, and other online events such as GameBattles, the Electronic Sports League (ESL), the Global Gaming League (GGL), and more.

Some of our staff members competing at the WCG Grand Finals in 2008 and 2009

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Demographics

The average gaming audience is males between the ages of 18-34. The major demographic of the top professional gamers are males 18-24. Our staff represents this demographic perfectly. Our site and forum’s content receives approximately 11,000 unique views every month combined. This includes weekly streams, articles, forum activity and more. All in an effort to help grow competitive gaming. We currently have an active user base on our forums that competes regularly in online events as well as other offline events such as MLG, WCG, and more. We encourage our members to compete in these events to help grow competitive gaming as we jump into a new decade of gaming this year. GameNation is looking to take your events and make it hit those demographics using every tool the internet has to give us. With the unlimited resources around the web, GN has found ways to help promote events to all ages via social networking. Data compiled via Google Analytics

User Submission Program

While GameNation is in its youth as a site, our staff is wise with experience after numerous years of covering events for different organizations. We are proud of the experience we have gained so far and look to take that experience and pass it on to other people as well. We have a strong contributors program to allow any young writer to be able to write things for us. If you write a piece and we accept it, then writers have the chance to earn some kind of compensation, and are also noted as official contributors when posting on the forums. As young writers we all knew how important is was to have clips of our writing saved in an online medium to present to future employers, and this is a great way to do so. We are looking to help develop new talent to work with us through this program. Many times people can’t get to events unless they are local. We encourage these writers to go to the events and provide coverage as we will usually have people there as well. We work with these writers and teach them the proper way to go about learning interview techniques, proper writing style, and more so that they can contribute to not only GN, but also learn techniques to write better in school, and in later life.

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Website http://gamenationpro.com Our website is very active, providing the latest news about what is happening in eSports, special events that are going on, and even special events that we run and live stream over the internet. We try to provide event details quicker than almost anyone thanks to our prior experience.

Our forums allow a great place for community interaction, and became a huge success when launched. They have become the main portal of communication for the members of our community.

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GameNation Coverage

GameNation strives to bring event coverage that is second to none. Our editorial coverage draws from years of experience where we have covered multiple gaming events, and even non-gaming events. Our staff has expertise in covering sporting events as well as sports broadcasting experience. Through these experiences, we have learned so many tricks of the trade and we want to help carry those over to helping you run an efficient event by taking all the hassle of producing editorial content away. Live Blog – We can run a live blog throughout the entire event from start until finish. GN utilizes the CoverItLive (CiL) technology that is above and beyond the best in it’s field. With CiL, all of our staff can update things constantly, even when we’re not near our computer thanks to the mobile app for CiL which allows constant posting, on top of being able to post pictures, video and audio on the fly straight to the live blog. With CiL, you can also post up a scoreboard to run scores live on the live blog, as well as take user comments and choose whether or not you want to publish them to add to the conversation.

Stream Promotion/Event Page – GameNation can help by promoting your stream via our page. We can create your own event page (as shown below) where we can place our CiL live blog, list your event’s sponsors, place your stream (if applicable), and more. We can list leaderboards, brackets, groupings, and more.

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Don’t have your own brackets or online event coordination? GameNation can also help produce brackets for your event and make sure that people around the world are kept in the loop on who is winning and losing in your event.

Social Networking – GameNation has trained it’s staff in learning how to fully utilize and integrate the most popular social mediums into your event to help spread the word and gain viewers. We will take sites like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and more, and use them to fully promote leading up to, during, and after the event. We know that a few tweets doesn’t get things done the right way, and that there still needs to be publicity throughout the event, and even afterward to continue to show people recaps and potential future events. Daily recaps – Our crew of writers will make sure that after each day (and at breaks in the action during the day as well), that we will write full recaps of the event’s action and let people know the full details that a quick update on CiL or Twiter may not show. We’ll dive into the full details and help the players earn a little recognition as well as showcase all of the top matches that took place during the day. Video/photo work – Our crew has years of experience behind the camera to help produce recaps, promos, and other media to help promote your event before and after. We travel with our own video, sound, and photo equipment and can provide photos/videos to recap your event in a way that will show more than editorial coverage can.

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Head Staff Bios

Jon Lunceford (Founder/President) Jon “Phoenix” Lunceford came up with the idea for a news site about 2 and a half years ago to help cover the world of console eSports. The idea grew over the years, and after starting a community forum for Gears of War, he decided to merge the community idea with his news idea, and GameNation was born. With the help of fellow staff members Michael Murray, Zach Wolters, and a few other patrons, Lunceford was able to grow GN into the site it is today. Lunceford had previously worked with the Cyberathlete Amateur League (and a minor stint with the CPL) as well as spending a year on staff with Major League Gaming. He has also worked with sites such as Gameriot (formerly Amped eSports), and he was the Lead Content Manager for MoB Gaming, and also the Asst. VP of Operations for vVv Gaming before leaving to run GameNation full time. Lunceford has also spent his time competing in games on top of covering them. He is a two-time World Cyber Games Team USA member, competing in both Cologne, Germany in 2008, and Chengdu, China in 2009. He was also a Gears of War Pro Coach who has coached numerous teams to professional finishes at MLG events, including MoB Deep, AmazYn, Get Bronco, and more. Lunceford is 23, and is from Birmingham, AL where he worked for two years on the radio as an intern and assistant producer for WJOX 94.5, the main Alabama ESPN radio affiliate, where he covered Auburn football and basketball. He was also a college football player at Birmingham-Southern College in 2007-2008 before having career ending surgery, which also led to him leaving WJOX and him transferring to the University of Alabama with a major in Journalism. He now spends his time out of school working with GameNation, and casually playing games. While still in its infancy, Jon hopes to grow GN to be a prime source for eSports news, and a leader in editorial event coverage for different events around the country. Michael Murray (Editor-in-chief) After his teenage years of gaming, Michael Murray looked for something more than the typical late night session of playing which only ever resulted in a lack of sleep. Upon discovering the eSports scene via GotFrag, Murray shifted his mentality towards learning all that he could of the competitive gaming landscape. Having gained experience across the field of competitive eSports, Murray found himself wanting to lead rather than be led. Diving headfirst into a rather ambitious project, Murray put whatever insight and resources he could produce into the growth of GameNation. Murray's competitive career may have been the start of his determination to produce a

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portal for gamers to learn from. He gained most of his competitive experience from Counter-Strike and Call of Duty 4. Most of the knowledge that Murray holds is from the management of numerous LAN centers spanning both the PC and the console world. Years of organizing Counter-Strike and Gears of War tournaments on the East Coast led to the binding of communities in which Murray was directly involved with. Along with his participation in competitive events, Murray had spent years covering events for a number of outlets. Originally providing coverage with GotFrag in 2006 for their DPad console subsidiary, Murray found himself becoming employed by Major League Gaming in early 2008 to produce content for the Gears of War and Rainbow Six Vegas 2 Pro Circuit. In 2009, Murray was directed as the main content producer for Gears of War 2 competition. Leaving Major League Gaming in early 2010, Murray was determined to bring together the best of the PC and the console scene as one. At 23 years of age, Murray resides in Brooklyn, NY. He had previously been a hardware consultant for the Goldman Sachs corporation. Spending most of his time in school for Film Production, Murray has a minor in Journalism at CUNY Brooklyn College as well as enhancing his technical skills through testing for a number of certifications. When not focusing on GN or the Information Technology field, Murray finds himself still competing in Counter-Strike and Gears of War as well as keeping up with newer competitive titles and major tournaments. If there is anything that Michael Murray hopes to do, it is to see GameNation rise and become a multimedia powerhouse that caters to not only to PC and console competition, but the entire gaming community as a whole. Zach Wolters (Head Administrator/IT) Zach "zsta2k7" Wolters has been with GameNation since the re-launch in 2010. Participating in the professional gaming scene for 6 years now, Zach cut his teeth playing in GGL's FIFA ladder, and online qualifiers for WCG USA Halo 2. He has had a rather successful career, highlighted by representing Team USA in WCG twice in 2008 and 2009, three WCG USA gold medals, as well as top placings in multiple other circuits across three different genres. Zach brings a wealth of technical knowledge to GameNation. With five years experience in IT under his belt, he makes sure GameNation is kept running optimally, at the forefront of emerging technologies. Zach co-produces the GN Live gaming stream, generally acting as POV for tournaments and community events. He also acts as tourney director for tournaments and events held by GameNation. Zach hails from Grand Rapids, MI, is 22 years old, and currently attending Baker College for Computer Programming. He has worked at Imperial Computer Solutions for five years, helping expand the residential chain from one to six locations, as well as attract businesses for on-site service. Outside of gaming, Zach is an avid hockey fan, as well as an amateur drummer.

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More Information More information about our organization and about who we are can be found on our website (http://gamenationpro.com). I have also provided you with our head staff’s contact information here. All of us at GameNation thank you for taking the time to look over this, and we hope you have a wonderful day. Jon Lunceford [email protected] Twitter: GN_Phoenix Zach Wolters [email protected] Twitter: zsta2k7 Michael Murray [email protected] Twitter: GN_Murray