A n important way to propagate your culture is through historians. Retrospective content and storytelling is an important way to indoctrinate new community members. Show them the highlights! Exciting moments, opinions, analysis, and comparing current trends are all means of generating interest in your scene.

Who is Thorin?

via Twitalyzer

With a reputation for being mercurial on all aspects except for the consistency of his opinions, Duncan "Thorin" Shields has brought a voice (and face!) to eSports in a way that is rarely so well-consolidated. Competitive video games at the moment is a rather fragmented community, with fans often limited to the games they themselves play. As a result, stories are often recorded and shared among different community members, often with limited voice or reach.





But what happens when suddenly a storyteller becomes a community role in itself?

Via Twitter Counter

Thorin always seems to find himself in a notable speaking role whenever he focuses on a community. Whether it's Quake, Starcraft, League of Legends, or Counter-Strike, Thorin is often ready to share his insights to crowds, streams, or just through YouTube videos. Boasting an impressive history in spectating and documenting even the most obscure of matches, Thorin is able to recall matches with years separating them, yet can tie them together in his analysis in ways that are truly unique. An avid sports fan, he not only ties together different competitive video games, but strengthens the idea of their relation to competitive sports with metaphors, examples, and comparisons throughout his Thorin's Thoughts video game series. Along with Thorin's Thoughts, he has been key in running notable online series such as Summoning Insight and Grilled, keeping his contributions organized and targeted.





In a way, Thorin serves as a means of preserving not only stories, but the overall culture of the industry as we know it. In a community where achievements are forgotten as easily as mistakes are highlighted, the duty of a historian lies within ensuring that community opinion is re-framed with important historical context.













The internet has empowered community members to speak out and communicate immediately - a fact that can prove dangerous. It seems like gaming communities struggle with a serious case of the recency effect when evaluating community members and events. The importance of being able to look at each event as a part of an overall timeline rather than on its own is stressed when community "witch hunts" and outrage seem imminent. Thorin's responses to controversies are often more conservative, arguing for careful consideration and evidence rather than swift impulsiveness that can so easily take place. While at first this may appear as limiting the newfound bargaining power that online consumers are growing accustomed to, the rationality of making decisions based on long-term experience bring legitimacy to a community.













Thorin spectating and hosting an event via HLTV.org





With Counter-Strike (A game series Thorin had closely followed for many years) experiencing immense growth since 2014, Thorin's career looks as promising as ever. A frequent host at the analyst desk (and occasional match co-commentator!), Thorin's status as a figurehead is becoming rapidly evident to a large number of community members. Known for being largely informal and critical, his polarizing opinions commonly create a buzz in social media during important events. Despite facing controversy for his past public statements, he has managed to grow similarly to Counter-Strike: Global Offensive - exponentially, and with near-ignorance of difficulties past.

CS:GO's growth in the last 3 years - via SteamGraph

Look out for Thorin in the coming years - his knowledge is only expanding, as his analysis is well-regarded among various communities. While he has not always pleased his audience, one might argue that the excitement of his strong opinions on casual subjects plays on the positive aspects of controversy, while his patience with serious issues helps to maintain sanity in dramatic times.





My suggestions for Thorin going forward:

Keep being yourself! Your unique skills and personality are your strongest features.

Vary your content - while YouTube videos are popular, you may want to release content on mobile platforms like podcasts.

Interact with your community. While your Reddit responses are often welcome, try to integrate community questions, suggestions, or tweets with your daily activity to keep in touch with your followers.

Address the casual viewers. Your videos serve well as an introduction to people who play and watch video games, but are not often appropriate to those interested in starting. It may benefit you to create a "series" of sorts that introduces people to major "storylines" in competitive gaming (i.e. rivalries, shuffles, etc.) geared towards those who don't know anything about the game. This might be a bit clumsy at first, but can pay off immensely in the long-run.

Consider other communities: Hearthstone, Fighting Games, and DotA are starving for figureheads and content-creators. You can benefit greatly from establishing yourself among them as they grow.





Check him out on his Twitter and Youtube accounts - if you are new to eSports (or fascinated by its history!), consider this a hardcore look into the depths of the community.

This is where Thorin comes in.In a sense, Thorin acts as a sort of "sage" as far as community leaders go.