Esports Interview - Kerry Bennett of Team Orbit Pro

Welcome to another one of our Esports Interviews! This time round we have Kerry Bennett, the only female team manager of an all male team in top flight COD Esports. Kerry is the manager for UK based Team Orbit Pro and has been involved in Esports for quite some time now.
Below is her interview, looking at her progression into Esports, her time with Orbit, and her hopes for the future of Esports.

How did you start out in gaming, and what lead you to the competitive CoD Esports scene?

I started gaming when I was around 4,  I used to play PC games so much my mum got sick of me hogging the PC so she bought me a Super Nintendo – my first game on it was UMK3. Since then I was addicted to games, I’ve had every console from Playstation to even Nintendo Gameboy Colour and Advance.
I was a heavy MMO player back when I was 13. I played Runescape for years (about 5 years I think on and off) once again my mum was sick of me hogging the PC so she bought me a Nintendo Wii. It was boring on my own so back to Runescape I went and from there I learned about Halo 3 and Xbox. I sold my Wii, got my 360 and never looked back. I joined the competitive GoW community in 2008 and moved to CoD4 at the end of 2008/2009 when the change to MW2 was happening.

What lead to you becoming involved with Team Orbit, and what are your main duties as Team manager?

After being in Fariko Gaming for almost 2 and a half years I took a break from representing an organisation and decided to do my own thing for a few months. Then, Gfinity and all these other amazing events started happening so I blasted out on my Social Media I was looking for a new organisation to join and represent – Orbit were one of the first people to contact me to join as their head of media. They seemed like great guys and I’ve been with them since.
My main duties in Team Orbit are to cover them at events. Taking photos, video footage, interviews and making sure Social Media is up to date on scores etc. I also plan and organise trips such as hotels, flights and various other things.

How do you feel the CoD Esports scene perceives Girls being involved?

Back when I was the only girl in the UK scene, so 2008/2009 it was fairly bad. You tend to find you get a lot of hate for no reason. What I ended up noticing was if they actually got to know you, they then stopped hating and started being normal. Now, 2014, it’s a LOT different. There are more girls than ever before and I’ve been in the position to be able to do a lot of great things which would have never happened back in the olden days. The scene  has grown a lot but what you tend to find is the fact that the majority of the pro players are now also a lot more mature than they were 4/5 years ago so that helps towards the attitude of girls in gaming.

You have been involved with some interviewing at events, how much do you enjoy that, and will you being doing anymore?

I LOVE interviewing! Not just at events but for my Youtube channel in general. I just love being able to zoom in on people’s faces and really capture their emotions and show just how passionate they are about gaming. I also love a few controversial questions now and again! I am currently hoping more interviewing opportunities arise – but for now it’s just EGL, Team Orbit and my own Youtube I interview for.

What are your thoughts on the current plethora of roster changes and the discussions within Esports of a need for more stability and even a governing body?

I think some of the team changes were needed, others were not. Can we really blame it on the players though? There are no benefits of staying with an oganisation and loyalty seems to have gone out of the window. I think one change that should definitely happen is pros stop using their team names as their Twitter names as it changes every other month and promote themselves instead! I always have the Twitter handle @KerrBearrxo but depending on the Org I represent I change my name to suit e.g Orbit KerrBearr. I think orgs need to offer more benefits for players to stay with them. Although, saying that it is hard because finding money to fund these players is hard for the majority. I think we will only see the community grow and eventually it will turn into a more profitable business.

What do you think Esports needs to do to grow into a more mainstream entertainment?

eSports really needs more advertising. Local newspapers, TV adverts etc. The amount of people that don’t even know about MLG or that people even play games for cash prizes is insane, yet everyone knows about Poker and world tournaments in that area. That’s because it’s advertised. Unfortunately to advertise it needs someone with a big budget to come in and do it. Having an event in the middle of London with a small sign outside and a post on gaming websites and forums doesn’t really help to reach out to the bigger audiences.

I’d really like to thank Kerry for her time in doing this interview and wish her and Team Orbit the best of luck in all future activities.
Hopefully more Esports Interviews will follow, so keep your eyes peeled!

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Peas out chaps! 

 
Neil