Blue Dawn Gaming

Blue Dawn Gaming is a California based gaming organization that is currently active in Call of Duty: Black Ops, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Heroes of Newerth, and StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty. The organization and two of it's founders were featured in a CNN International mini-documentary on the gaming community.
History
Beginnings
Blue Dawn Gaming was founded by Kyle "Achilles" Jorgensen, Aaron "Doc Taylor" Aguilar and Ryan "BlueAnubis" Richardson in August of 2008. The trio began wearing the current tags during this time as well. On August 28th the domain bluedawngaming.com was reserved and web space purchased from PowWeb with their first game server being purchased three days later. This server would come to be named *HC* S&D and would remain largely unchanged until its cancellation in April 2010. Achilles, Doc Taylor, and BlueAnubis would populate the server for the next few months until it began to populate on its own, acquiring many new members along the way. During this time the three founders implemented very loose and subjective recruitment policies that barred few from entry. Server population became continuous and recruitment was halted due to extremely high amounts of applicants. During early December 2008 Achilles, Doc Taylor and BlueAnubis worked with the clan to form a new recruitment policy that relied on member input. During the last weeks of 2008 the clan experienced low server population and had few members online. During this time the server was upgraded to Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare Patch 1.7, but the server did not populate despite the efforts of a handful of members.
Post 1.7
After the Christmas season had passed many members returned to playing again and the server began to populate. Within a month recruitment overtook the Founders' ability to review applications and recruitment was temporarily suspended. During this time they reduced the backlog of applications and redesigned the recruitment system once again. Achilles wrote the code for the new system which ran using forms in an attempt to make the entire process more efficient. It was met with some criticism at first as the new system did not include any member input so the applications were handled by the members through voting, although the final accept/decline was still controlled by the staff.
First Fragmentation Crisis
A group of members and one staff member switched the rcon password on several of Blue Dawn's Servers and proceeded to kick and ban members and staff from entering the server. This required that all passwords be changed and a full investigation ensued. Several members were removed and a few others went with them to form a new clan from BDG members. After this event the Founders greatly reduced the powers of the staff and kept all GameServers logins separate from rcon passwords.
Inter Fragmentation Period
After losing members to the First Fragmentation Crisis, Achilles began working on a set of rules for the clan, he worked closely with longtime member Garret "GenMiquin" Clark in creating the four page document. The Ruleset, now known as the Directive, outlined basic rules for conduct and the distribution of power among the Founders and staff. During this time Blue Dawn began fielding several very successful teams within the TeamWarfare League and had a stable recruitment system under DarkHope.
Second Fragmentation Crisis
While there is some controversy over when fragmentation began to occur the earliest estimates put it at just before the dissolution of Blue Dawn's rival clan SuP. Blue Dawn created a second competition team within the same TeamWarfare League ladder to allow more people to play. This team was called the "B" team while the original team was named the "A" team. Some members believed being that they should be on the "A" team even though they didn't make the cut and began to resent the "A" team players. After an intra-clan match in which the "B" team won "A" players began to defect to the "B" team and both teams became fairly homogeneous in terms of skill. The "B" team attempted to change their name as they believed they were no longer at a "B" skill level and the "A" players fought against this. The ensuing infighting led to the resigning of both captains and the loss of a top player. It would be another 5 months before the clan would field another team.
Two months after this full blown fragmentation had begun to occur. Due to a miscommunication between the clan and PunksBusted, several members had to be removed including a two staff members NeoSpwner and Mynxness. These two staff members began to both verbally attack BDG within the forums and ingame as well as begin recruiting members from within the organization to fuel their own project, Revolution/Misery Gaming or -M-. This development caused members to resign and join that group which built upon itself. More than a quarter of Blue Dawn's active members were lost in this event. During this time the BDG infrastructure came under attack by DDOS attacks from Revolution (Revolution changed names quickly after seperation to Misery Cult Gaming "-M-"). The Founders were able to pull together the members who were left and continue on despite constant attacks from -M-. After two months of conflict the split was complete and each clan went their separate ways. During the holidays former BDG members came back to the clan bringing with them the news that Revolution had fallen apart.
Post Fragmentum
With recruitment slowing down and no competition team Achilles began to work to create a more dynamic system of recruitment and administration. This led to the acquiring of the Counter-Strike: Source team RoboTrippin. This however was the source of some dissent among the clan as many saw it as an abuse of the powers of a Founder and felt out-of-the-loop. The Founder's worked to integrate both organizations within this period and this cooperation led to the formation of a Heroes of Newerth Division populated by a variety of members. In April of 2010 Achilles and BlueAnubis were interviewed by CNN as a part of a mini-documentary about the online gaming environment.
Stability
With the release of Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Blue Dawn rented a server and despite game stability issues were able to recruit an and maintain a stable population. During this period Blue Dawn experienced little growth, but maintained a consistent group of members.
Expansion
In August of 2010 Blue Dawn developed a partnership with Eugene based clan Aquarium Gaming Syndicate. Members from AQA were given BDG membership as a result. With the release of Call of Duty: Black Ops Blue Dawn bought 2 servers and greatly expanded their influence within the community. In addition Blue Dawn started two subsidiary clans, Blue Dawn Guild and Element 94 Gaming.
Divisions
Call of Duty: Black Ops
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
Heroes of Newerth
StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty
Reference

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See Also

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