Male Host: If you could travel in time which historical event would you want to see?

Stermy: Honestly I don't know, but going back to today's theme, travelling in the past, I'd prefer not to travel in the past, because if I change history, come back in the present and I somehow screwed up it's my responsibility? I'll leave it to others, I do my thing here.

Male Host: Maybe you run over the guy who invented the first pong with your car, that would be troublesome. Pong is the first video game in history, isn't it?

Stermy. Yes, I think so, I mean, there were many games at the beginning all of them more or less...

Male Host: I remember it, I mean, I wasn't there, but I remember seeing it on TV.

Stermy: It's one of the most famous ones.

[Interview is temporarily stopped to read some of the viewer's tweets]

Male Host: Back to us, you said you've been a professional gamer for some years, how much can a professional gamer earn?

Stermy: Well, in the biggest tournaments, at a professional level, in the equivalent of the First Division (attempt to translate Italian football's Serie A) the prizes range from 30-50 thousand dollars up to some millions and are slowly growing, like in poker. Tournaments follow the same model, the first and second places will earn better than the rest, then there's a lot of stuff behind like sponsorships, advertisement.

Male Host: Maybe there's more interest from video game publishers, comparing to poker, there's always a new video game to promote...

Stermy: The business behind the scenes is very big, now video games are slowly becoming a sport to all the extents, for example in the US now professional gamers have the same visa as athletes, in South Korea it's a national sport, probably bigger than all the other sports. It is slowly growing and even here in Italy. So, I obviously try to work here, i'ts not as easy as abroad but you can see that even here companies are getting more and more interested, this also because the foreign headquarters are investing.

Female Host: So, does it happen that some company gets in contact with you to...

Stermy: Yes, since i started, actually, I haven't focused exclusively on tournaments, because like my mom used to say at the beginning “think about what happens later”, so I always tried to study what surrounded video games, what was behind, so technology, software, business, all of these things, and because of this I now work with many companies for the development of high-performance hardware products for gaming.

Female Host: So, you're trying to secure yourself a career unrelated to gaming?

Male Host: Well, not unrelated.

Female Host: In the same field...

Stermy: The same field, so, you know, I work as a consultant, I do software production, video games, all these things I already do, for example in Italy I work with ASUS and slowly I hope to make everyone know esports, electronic sports.

Female Host: And what about when you began, what did your parents tell you? Since you began so early, when you were 10, you must have passed many hours in front of a computer.

Stermy: Let's say I've always been a boy who knew how to make happy his parents, let's say not only that but what were the priorities: doing good at school, doing sport, having friends, I've always been a guy who did this stuff, I loved football, I have played it for 17 years, a lot of time, but i managed to keep together free time and my hobby, and my hobby at the time was video games, technology, all that stuff. I never thought: “from tomorrow I will become a professional games, I will do anly that.” My parents supported me and I thank them for this, but it happened by chance.

Male Host: I have a very quick final question, since we've talked about gaming being a sport to all the extents, that it is demanding, physically and mentally tiring, is there doping in video gaming too?

Stermy: Well, this was discussed a lot, probably something exists, but only to help you focusing, but this kind of stuff, I don't know, I can't...

Male Host: There are no controls yet, are there?

Stermy: No controls yet, I honestly can't, there were many stories in America about players but in Italy it's difficult to talk about it, really, there they play in stadiums filled with fans and here we still have nothing, how's it possible? The truth is that we're still at the very beginning, genuine, the players that are involved are guys from 15 to 30 years old, very passionate and very honest, they love what they do. It's a clean environment.

Male Host: let's hope it stays this way! When the business starts this kind of bad dynamics also start being involved. Thank you Alessandro, thank you and good luck for your career, we leave you a video and we'll be back soon.