Interview with our Sponsor representative Tt eSPORTS Community Manager, Chris Smith

Thermaltake Technology is a one of the leading manufacturers of PC cases, power supplies and cooling solutions in the world.  Mostly known for their quality chassis, Thermaltake decided to venture into the eSports field and sponsored professional gamers for many years. In 2010, it used that experience to launch a new brand called Tt eSports which targets the needs of hardcore enthusiasts. The product line-up includes keyboards, mice and headsets with more products planned.

We took the time to sit down with Chris from Tt eSPORTS Australia/New Zealand who kindly sponsored the door prizes for the DOTA2 Tournament.

Chris, thank you for taking the time to do this, what did you do before working for Tt eSPORTS?
I worked as a Trainee in the Education department – taking on some freelance marketing contracts in my spare time around eSports related endeavours (Including the TTEAL CS:S nationals in 2010 which led to this job). My original goal was actually to peruse a psychology career through a university degree, but I was offered this job, dropped everything and moved to Victoria.

What is it that you do now for Tt eSPORTS and how long have you been in this role?
My official title is the eSports and Community Manager for Australia & New Zealand – I cover all marketing, PR, social media and sponsorships for this region and started in January 2011.

For the uninitiated, can you tell us Tt eSPORTS and their involvement in Australia’s eSports community?
We try and get involved in growing eSports through many different avenues – whether it be gaming teams, tournaments, LAN parties, community give-aways, reviews, personality sponsorships or even charity events.
Currently we sponsor two gaming teams (SYF Gaming and MEKA.Tt), sponsor at least 3 LAN parties per quarter, do consistent community reviews for champion products (See: http://goo.gl/3GQ8o7) and run plenty of events like our TTHUB CS:GO series - There’s always lots going on.
I love to support the ‘grass roots’ because we all have to start from somewhere right? But you can’t forget helping out the pro’s at the same time – it’s a really big balancing act!

How often do you game yourself?
I used to play at a high Australian level for Battlefield 2, Bad Company 2 and then CS:GO (didn’t reach too highly in CS:S) – but for me these days it’s just matchmaking CS:GO with mates and Dota 2 non-ranked queuing.
Recently I've been quite unwell with the flu, so I've caught up on a lot of game time! Usually I don’t game as much these days as I’d like – it makes me feel like an old man!

What was your first PC?
My first personal PC would have been a Pentium 100mhz overclocked to 133mhz by my father. It had so many HDD’s that some were double sided foam taped to the lid of the case (thanks mum!), which meant that cords would sometime catch in my CPU fan and make it crash.
This bad boy served me well for AOE2, Red Alert 2 (the) and B-17 Flying Fortress. Even if the HDD’s were so small I could only have two save games on RA2 at any one time.

What are your favourite games?
CS 1.6 would have to be my overall competitive game, but BF2 was what I grew up with and spent so many hours on. If you can look past the glitchyness – it was an amazing game both in pub and competitive.

Judging from your FB profile (not to be too creepy), you’re quite a social person, do you make sure that there is a good balance between work and play?
Have you also been watching me sleep?!
But seriously, I found after a while in this field that it’s very important to differentiate work with play at times. It’s very easy to get sucked in to eSports 110% and make it your whole life – a lot of us have been there before, but eventually you’re going to burn yourself out.
These days we’re so contactable. At any time I've got Facebook messenger on my phone, phone calls available, STEAM and xfire open on the PC and even Skype quite often running on my phone or personal and work PCs. This means you can get enticed into working late into the night just by simply talking to people. Sometimes it’s good to just respectfully say – “chat to me tomorrow”.

Can you tell us about any major events that Tt eSports are doing over here in Australia or abroad?
We’ve got some things in the planning for 2014 in our region, here’s hoping for an October launch!

Any future plans for yourself and Tt eSports?
I've always said my personal goal is to help eSports reach the ‘main stream’ in Australia and New Zealand – I also get a kick out of helping people. So I’ll continue to do both.

Thanks for doing this Chris and is there any last words or shout-out?
Thanks Fred for this interview, if anyone wants to get in contact about my job, products, events, teams or anything else you can find me at @smithymao on twitter or www.facebook.com/smithymayo on Facebook.
Shout out to my company Facebook also – it’s my baby and takes a lot of my attention! www.facebook.com/thermaltakeau