esports.gg spoke to Paidia Bot about their product and breaking barriers in the gaming industry.
A new tournament hosting solution looks set to make organising esports events more streamlined and accessible than ever. Paidia Gaming have launched Paidia Bot, a one stop solution to get esports events off the ground.
While there are plenty of solutions to host esports events, what seems to set Paidia Bot apart is how all encompassing of a tool it is. That has great implications for every esports scene, from seasoned tournanent organizers to casual communities hosting scrim nights. Paidia Gaming as a company has a specific focus on making gaming and esports as accessible as possible.
esports.gg spoke to Jill Kenney and Taylor Sudermann from Paidia Gaming, to learn more about the launch of Paidia Bot.
Paidia Bot takes care of everything you need to host a tournament
When Paidia Gaming say Paidia Bot takes care of everything you need to get a tournament going, they really mean it. With one command, the Bot creates channels, roles and a tournament web page. You can go on to customise the event. Letting the bot know what game you're playing, what format you will use and more. The bot will then adjust your set up to reflect your choices.
Paidia Bot even handles registration, including the ability to have teams, with players coming and going between them. The Bot even goes beyond administration, with the ability to generate graphics for a tournament broadcast stream somewhere like YouTube or Twitch. This is especially exciting for small communities and streamers that don't need, or have the means to get, specialised branding created.
Paidia isn't just targeted at small scale and community events. They also have white label offerings for larger tournament organisers and hosts. This includes custom web pages and custom bot names. Events could use the functionality of Paidia under the guise of their own brand.
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Both free and paid Paidia Bot options available
There are two bots of Paidia Bot available for people to use. There is a free version, and then the newly released Paidia Bot Pro. Thankfully, the free version of the bot contains everything you need to get a tournament off the ground. The Pro version, priced at $3.99 a month, provides features that could be considered the cherry on top of any event you'd wish to host.
Paidia Bot:
- Registration in Discord
- Single Elimination, Double Elimination, Battle Royale, Round Robin (releasing soon)
- Private Matchroom Threads for score reporting
- Automatically creates roles and channels for each tournament
- Tournament Web Pages for Bracket Display
- Check-in
Paidia Bot Pro:
- Team Registration (add entire roster to your team thread, captain roles, FA command)
- Bracket Command to display an image of the current status of your bracket, great for tournament broadcasts
- Group Stage Bracket
- AI Score Reporting for Battle Royale
AI Score reporting is particularly exciting for events with multiple lobbies running, where private lobbies can be hard to get access too. For example, a kill race event in a game like Fortnite. It can be tedious for admin to review screenshots of each player and update the bracket accordingly. With AI score reporting players can upload a screenshot of their end of match screen and the AI bot will update the bracket with their stats.
You can view both versions of Paidia Bot in the Discord App Directory. The Pro version costs $3.99 a month plus tax.
Paidia Gaming is fighting to break down barriers for women in gaming
For Paidia Gaming, the creators of Paidia Bot, this tool is the latest in a number of initiatives to help make the gaming space more accessible. Paidia Gaming has three arms, says Jill Kenney.
Paidia Gaming operates on three fronts. Our marketing and influencer agency collaborates with brands and creators to deliver customized experiences that are positively evolving the digital space. Both focus on the 'women and diverse gamer space' because we're passionate about ensuring equality within the industry.
The tech division is the third arm of Paidia, and is committed to creating innovative and scalable products that enhance the overall gaming experience. Paidia Bot, one of our proprietary products, was built to streamline gamers' end-to-end esports tournament experience. Our team is incredibly good at listening to the community, identifying their needs, and building products to meet them. We see tremendous opportunity in developing game-adjacent tech products that make the entire gaming experience smoother, so expect many more industry leading products to come
While Paidia Bot is not specifically aimed at women gamers, or any other particular subset of the gaming community, Taylor, Jill and the team are acutely aware that this tool has huge value in making tournament play more accessible for groups.
"Supporting women in gaming and diverse gamers in general will always be the core of our DNA and our brand mission. Our marketing and influencer agency, as well as our community hub help us support that mission.
"On the business side, Paidia is entirely led by women, and as CEO and Founder, it is very rewarding to see the impact of giving women like Taylor and the rest of our team the opportunity to do what they do best.
"Paidia Bot is our first product designed for all gamers, and we have been in front of some pretty hardcore esports audiences lately. You get on the call and you can tell they're hesitant at first to be pitched by a group of women, but the product speaks for itself, and everyone has been blown away by it, and quickly the fact we are women doesn’t matter, we are just a team that is building really strong products. It's great to be able to lead by example, and inspire others in the industry."
Both Taylor and Jill pointed to the statistic that 50% of gamers are women. Despite this, both have operated in very male dominated arenas for most of their careers in tech and gaming. What sort of challenges have the two faced?
"I've turned the barrier into fuel, I would say. Growing up I've always been an athlete and around competitive sports. I've always seen the gap, not just in this industry, that exists separating women from men. When I started my career, I thought, there's no fundamental disadvantage to being a woman in gaming so why is this separation happening?
"I took it personally. It didn't have to be this way. So everything I did, and everything I saw, I was like, wow, I can't believe I'm being almost segregated because I'm a woman and people assume I don't know what I'm talking about.
"Anytime someone assumed I didn't know what I was talking about, I took that as an opportunity to almost level up and just lead by example. Showing them I did know my stuff. Then it became something I get fuelled by. I want to defend the people who maybe feel defenceless when faced by these challenges."
Both Taylor and Jill know there is work to be done, and specifically call out other marginalised groups that have even more barriers in gaming to breakdown. Paidia Gaming has made diversity a priority when hiring, to do their bit to break these barriers down as a company. Paidia Bot has the potential to break those barriers down even further.
