please can you introduce yourself, and for those who don't know you tell us a bit about you and what you do in esports?

Hi my name is Steven and I'm an eSports Specialist for Heaven Media, where I run the TEK9 and Esports Heaven website among other projects and I also have my own company called Gamevibes where I manage projects such as the Antwerp Aces, the GamerX Series, Outpost on Fire and the Antwerp eSports Festival.

Around 6 months ago tek-9 became part of the heaven media group as well as cadred, crossfire and other top esports sites. Can you tell us the and the readers of the interview the benefits of this move for tek-9 and also how we can see this move evolve?

The move towards Heaven Media has helped us a great deal over the past six months. We are now able to fully support our staff by sending them to events and our growth and stability has been guaranteed and actually increased quite a lot over the past six months. The team over at Heaven Media comprises of some of the biggest talents eSports has to offer and I feel that there is nothing we can't tackle as a company. The support everyone is giving is simply great and it's been wonderful so far.

A question regarding Tek-9 from Arno Poot - How did the idea of making TEK9 a top community website became the truth? How did u manage to keep TEK9 such a stable website, which such a good news writers, for example JETSET, who is the main person of making tek9 so big?

A lot is owed to JETSET who is not only a phenomonal writer but also a wonderful person. He is always there to help out and works like a beast and without him we wouldn't be where we are now. I think that quite often a bit of luck is needed in coming across the right people and you will always have ups and downs. We were fortunate enough that we came across Camiel and the rest of the staff such as Daniel,Joachim, Matt, Will, Liam,Jimmy, Armin and the rest as they are also fantastic assets to the crew.

Speaking of heaven Media, last year we see them involved with The Gadget Show and also your attendance there, again heaven media will be involved in the 2010 edition. What can we expect from heaven media and there partners at this event?

You can expect the biggest and best game show in the UK. We will have plenty of partners supporting us during the event and our booth will be a lot larger then the last time so we will have more space to show off the latest products and games, do competitions and give away prizes. I would suggest that anyone who is interested should travel down and make the trip as it will definately be worth it and you will also be able to meet quite a large portion of the Heaven Media staff.

You also organize your lans, namely the Outpost on fire events. In the summer We look forward to a 4th installment , what can you tell us about what we can expect and how plans are going so far?

There isn't that much I can say about the summer event (yet) but what I can say is that it looks like there won't be an Outpost on Fire event this year, but a larger event in the form of an Antwerp eSports Festival. This means that the location will change and that we will tackle everything with a different setup but as I said not much details are known and we will release more information soon. Keep the last weekend of July (30-31 and 1st of August) free in your schedule if you are a CSS or COD4 team!

Following on from my last question, 1 of our own players Roy "obama" Godschalk had the following question to ask - Hello Steven, i was on oof3 last year with my team the imperial. We faced a lot of PC problems with the computers because every player is using different settings, not only cfg's but also mouse fixes and drivers. Would you reconsider to use the same system as tex does to clean the pc's for every round so you wouldn't face that problems for your next big event ?

I can already state that we are looking at an option which should get us more and better PC's, which should already solve a lot of the issues. Furthermore we will be looking into a system like TEX's to completely whipe the PC's after every game and make sure that every gamer can start with a clean sheet. We are constantly trying to make improvements to our system and I was already quite happy ast time that the delays were kept minimal and there were only slight delays during 2 out of 6 match days, an improvement over the previous event.

I see a question coming up in other interviews and wanted your views on this. Different event organisers are coming up with very good cash prizes as well as products and taking months before actually giving out the prize pot. I personally feel this is unacceptable as do a lot of other people. Whats your view on this?

I've personally done it all. I attended (and won ;-)) some gaming events, I've travelled to them as a manager and had teams that won prize purses and I've organized gaming events of our own. I can understand the grievances of players and manager quite good as I have had them myself but in the defence of the event organizers there are a lot of factors that could mess things up. For instance the past Antwerp eSports Festival we had some problems with the prize money as well but overall we are striving for a 1-2 months payout policy. A lot depends on the teams though because of Belgian law we are required to hand forms to the winners and have them signed before we can pay out anybody. Once that is done though we try to pay out the prize purse within two weeks and for our last event I can gladly say that was even done within the week after receiving the filled out forms.

Back to your own projects. You recently announced the Gamerx series a Project of Gamevibes BVBA and Tech Data Belgium. What can you tell us about it? and can we expect more projects and partnership coming from gamevibes in the future?

The GamerX Series are a series of gaming PC's intended for the Belgian market. The Belgian market seriously lacks such a PC aimed at gamers and the GamerX Series aims to bring an affordable solution for gamers who want to buy a PC and start working with it from the moment they purchased it. These PC's have been built and tested by gamers with the latest products and come with an extensive warranty should anything go wrong. You can certainly expect more news and partnerships for the GamerX Series in the future.

Another 1 of your projects is the Antwerp Aces , being announced shortly after tek-9 moving under the Heaven media banner. Since announcing the Aces how has the development and progress gone?

The development has gone well but not as quick as I wanted it to. However I rather take it slow and good than fast and bad so no worries there. I'm positive we have made the right choice and I love every single player in the team. If you want to come say hi we will be at Frag-O-matic on valentine's weekend with nearly all the players and management!

Question from [R]Duffer regarding The Aces - In the past we see tek-9 competing at the top in cod4, can we see this from Antwerp aces in the future?

It is not unlikely but as it stands right now there is no team that fits the profile. The concept of the Antwerp Aces is different from TEK9's in the past and we are not interested in the top team in the world anymore and sending the to endless events. We are looking for Benelux players with the right attitude and that comes first for us.

COD MW2 has proved to be incredibly popular, and a great success across all platforms. Do you think that their decision to not have dedicated game servers has affected the PC market for competitive play?

It definately has and it also set the tone for other developers to follow suit. It's an inevitable route many developers will follow but it's a shame that too often they go for the money route. It makes perfect business sense and I won't hold any grudges because of it but I will think it's a damn shame.

what do you think is missing from esports and what does esports need to do to get there?

I think sometimes eSports could use a little bit more maturity and stability as the projects and initiatives in eSports are often quite good, but get brought down by their own inability to build in some stability. Far too often do I see good things coming to an end that with the right business sense behind it would have stood the test of time.

Who, in esport would you like to meet that you haven't already and what would you want to ask them?

I've been quite fortunate enough to have travelled to many places and met a lot of different people, which is part of why I do this job. There is no one that springs to mind immediately because practically everyone I wanted to meet I've met.

Thanks very much for the interview , Do you have any shoutouts?

No problem and thank you for the kind interview. I would like to say hi to all my friends and followers, my good friends at the TEK9 crew and the rest of the staff at Heaven Media and Esports Heaven and also the Antwerp Aces players, staff and management as I love them all so much :)