H3cz
Other Interests
Family
He and his wife have a daughter, as well as five dogs. He also has a younger brother.
Gaming Origins
H3cz’s family moved to the US in 1993. He then grew up mainly in Chicago, IL.
He first started fishing when he was thirteen years old and he started designing graffiti during high school as a way to impress girls, as he would offer to draw their names for them.
He started playing Call of Duty 2 as soon as it was released in late 2005 and immediately became addicted to it. He has been maining the franchise for the most part ever since then, aside from when he got side-tracked by Minecraft and Fortnite when they released in 2011 and 2017 respectively. He still plays Minecraft sometimes.
Prior to going into fulltime content creation, he worked as an Account Analyst for AIG and prior to that, he worked in mortgages.
Professional Gaming
He joined OpTic Gaming in 2007 and helped run it behind the scenes, until he took full ownership of it in June 2008, and later gave some shares to Nadeshot. At the time, OpTic mainly focused on providing a platform for Call of Duty sniping content creators to show their skills on OpTic’s YouTube channel.
He first started uploading montages to his own YouTube channel for fun in November 2008. In early 2011, Hutch suggested that he approach Machinima with his content in the hopes of getting partnered so that he would be able to monetize his gaming content. As soon as he realized that it was possible to make money off of his content, he became determined make a living out of it.
H3cz was between jobs and his wife was struggling to support them while pregnant. On the side, he was uploading YouTube videos of him creating Graffiti plates, which he would then sell for $40 each. Although they entered the pro-scene in 2010, it was only things turned around for him with the release of Call of Duty 4 and OpTic’s subsequent rise in the pro circuit and therefore CoD fan base, especially after their team walked away with a $400,000 USD first place title at the 2011 Call of Duty XP tournament hosted by Activision and Xbox. Over the years, his organization slowly grew, both as an esports organization and as a talent support organization for streamers, and they slowly branched out into other esports such as CS:GO as well.
In 2017, H3cz and his co-owners sold the majority shares of OpTic t Infinite Esports and Entertainment who were then acquired by Immortals GC in June 2019. Three months later, he announced that he would be leaving OpTic altogether and moved on to become the new co-CEO of NRG Esports.
Streaming Hours
Inconsistent due to his professional commitments.
Quotes
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[When you’re planning on starting an organization,] don’t have any expectations. Sure, have some goals, have some ideas about where you want to take it. Have some aspirations, but don’t take it too serious in the beginning. Find some people that you’re cool with playing, because… to make it in esports, you don’t necessarily need to have the skills necessary to be a professional in any genre. To be involved in esports, to have something that you’re passionate about, it’s all about having fun and then with that, be motivated to create something with that. And if luck has it, somebody starts watching your stuff… and that’s how you can propel your career to the next level. But, my number one advice is, ‘do it for fun at the beginning’ and then if something happens out of it, awesome but no expectations. Don’t let yourself down.
Sources
Gaming Setup
Streaming Setup
