Male Host: Alessandro “stermy” Avallone, welcome!

Stermy: Hi, guys

Male Host: You're a professional gamer, right?

Stermy: Yes, so something a bit different.

Male Host: And incidentally you're one among the best, if not the best Italian, I'm not quite sure.

Stermy: I'm almost the only professional gamer in Italy and I'm the one who's been playing for the longest time.

Male Host: How did this all begin, rather, another question why the name stermy? I suppose it comes from “sterminatore” [the Italian for “extereminator”]

Stermy: Exactly, most of the time i say it doesn't have a real meaning but yes, “exterminator”, because i started when i was 10 years old, with the very old 56k modems that do all those weird noises...

Male Host: We often talk about those here.

Stermy: Anyway, I was a young boy, 10 years old, playing online, i needed a strong name to assert myself against other players, later, growing it became simply stermy.

Male Host: What game did you start your career with?

Stermy: Quake 3: Arena.

Male Host: So, in a way, “exterminator” was the perfect name.

Stermy: Perfect, then later i played 10 games at a professional level during the last 10-11 years, and it remained stermy.

Female Host: And when did you become a professional, then?

Stermy: In 2004, I mean, during 2000 and 2001 I took part in many online tournaments, many live tournaments around Italy, with friends and just as a hobby, for fun. Later I attended the first big tournament in 2002, the Video Game Olympics in Korea [He's very likely referring to the World Cyber Games 2002], with the national team, I was 15. You can picture how happy I was to be able to travel alone. It didn't go well because it was my first international experience and i got by butt kicked hard. But the team saw I had potential and I kept on playing, in 2004 I attended my second world championship, from there I got the first sponsors and started travelling around.

Male Host: Nice, so you sai your career started with Quake 3: Arena.

Stermy: Quake 3: Arena, then I played many other games, always FPS, they're my favourite game genre, but I also play other titles depending on the tournaments and the sponsorships.

Female Host: Do you play on PC?

Stermy: Yes, PC, but there are also console games tournaments.

Male Host: Is it true that you showed up at your first tournament, where you played on PC, with a joystick?

Stermy: [surprised]How do you know this?

[They all laugh]

Male Host: You said it in another circumstance.

[More laughter]

Male Host: I read it, but it didn't seem to me such a shameful thing...

Stermy: It is, because, you have to picture yourself, the hand-eye coordination that a mouse and a keyboard give you is ten times the one of a joystick, so, to put it simply, the precision that you can have with a joystick is a lot inferior to the one of mouse and keyboard.

Male Host: I would have thought the opposite.

Stermy: So, basically you show up at your first tournament, 13 years old, you're the youngest and everybody else has more experience than you, you show up with a joystick and everybody laughs at you. The fist thing i said was “Hear, could you give me 200.000 Lire [roughly 200€ today, according to my father] to buy a mouse?” I bought the best mouse, but I was mediocre even with that.

Female Host: You had to practice...

Male Host: Getting better step by step...

Stermy: Yes, yes, I had to practice.

Female Host: You surely travel the world with all the tournaments you attend but where do you live?

Stermy: Right now I'm here (living in Italy), let's say I became a professional at 16-17 years old, but I started at 13, and since I became a professional i started living and travelling around the world attending all kinds of tournaments and training, I lived in Sweden for quite some time and then in Los Angeles, travelling around America doing tours for sponsor, some tv programs and such. I came back a few years ago to be closer to my friends and family but also to work on some projects, to make esports known here in Italy, to be an ambassador of esports. To explain people that gaming now isn't just time wasting but also a form of art, a sport, entertainment.

Male Host: Most people see video games a bit like a sedentary sport. How much energy do you spend during a tournament?

Stermy: A lot, because of course I need to focus mentally a lot. A bit like poker or chess, those are sports, their player have to train not only as in study and strategy but also as in mindset. When you compete in tournaments there isn't only your preparation, you have to consider that you don't play against the computer, there are no levels, it's a outright sport, every match is different.

Male Host: So you also have to predict your opponent's moves.

Stermy: Yes.

Female Host: Are there any necessary skills to reach the highest level?

Stermy: Dedication, study, a lot of things but the most important is the mindset, like in any sport, setting some targets and reaching them.

Male Host: Great, we'll be back shortly with Alessandro Avallone a.k.a. “exterminator”.

[break]