Hello!
Welcome to our second installment of Meet the Manager, a segment dedicated to unlocking the personality of our community managers and opening the gates to their hobbies, interests and ambitions.
Last time, we had our hands on Charles, the community PS4 Manager. We got to learn about his interests in Graphics Design, heard about his favourite drinks on a night out, and were humbled by his goals and ambitions for both the community and himself.
This week, we’re lucky enough to have Tommy in the hot-seat. Tommy nobly volunteered for the interview, and was more than willing to put his name over the second installment of Meet the Manager. He’s a very colourful individual with an excellent variety of experience in server hosting and development here at Validus. It was a pleasure to pick his brain over the last couple of days.
So, without further delay, here’s Tommy.
So how long have you been with Validus, Tommy?
Too fuckin’ long my dude, wait can I swear? My bad if not lol if I was to time it roughly just over 2 years.
I’m sure you can, but we’ll try to keep it to a minimum just in case. 😉 Do you remember who invited you to the community?
Oh god, it was too long ago, if I remember correctly it was through a recruitment site and the very first person I came across was Ekberg. He seemed pretty chill, so I decided to stay for a while.
That’s funny – if Ekberg was the first person I ran into, I probably wouldn’t have stayed. (kidding Ekberg <3) So you’re one of the many managers of Validus, and all of you seem to have a grasp on the community in one way or another – Natha manages the PC community, Charles and Lucky the console communities, and NoSkillieGhille’s the technical manager. What would you say your ‘role’ on the team is?
My role? Honestly, I’m just a massive meme. Nah, in all seriousness though I’m a “general manager”. I do deal with a lot of other stuff: Minecraft servers, Arma 3 servers, a few back-end bits here and there, but as my title suggests I do generally manage a lot. Atleast when daddy Kev lets me.
If he trusts you with the servers, I’m sure you’re doing something right. Could you give us a run-down on the Minecraft and Arma 3 servers? I’m sure there’s a lot of community members curious about getting involved but who might not have all the details.
Well we have 3 Minecraft servers right now and an Arma 3 server. In terms of Minecraft, we have a Survival server, a Creative Server, and a Feed The Beast modpack server. If members are interested, they can join the Minecraft role and find more information in the Minecraft channel in regards to how to connect etc.
For the Arma 3 server, it’s an Exile server. It’s pretty basic right now but we will be implementing some mods soon for more weapons, better loot and better AI in general. If folks are interested in info on the Arma 3 server, we’ll get a channel set up for folks to join and add the information on there for them.
Kev trusts me with a lot of things tbh, that’s just how we Managers are. We’re not really colleagues – we’re friends, probably closer to family really. That’s what Validus is about.
I can see an ARMA 3 campaign with Validus being very fun. :p
Other than those two and Siege, what other games do you enjoy playing in your spare time?
I like trains, especially the big old steam engines (my favourite would have to be the Royal Scotsman!), so it makes sense to play Train Sim World and Train Simulator 2019. Jesus, the nerd in me is really showing now, isn’t it? I also enjoy CS:GO, Atlas, Apex and DayZ SA.
I’m beginning to realize that you play quite a large variety of games. Is there any genre or particular game you refuse to pick up?
Not really no, I’ll happily play anything and everything to be honest!
Moving on from the keyboard and mouse, then, let’s get out of the house – what’s your ideal holiday, Tommy? Where would you like to go, and what would you love to do?
Murica’ land of the free, home of the brave. I’d love to live there, it’s beautiful, especially Georgia but sometimes you can’t beat getting fucked up in Ibiza 😉 I’d love to shoot guns and generally enjoy life in the US of A like a true British redneck would do.
I’ve never had the chance to shoot guns; your idea of a holiday definitely sounds high-octane. :p
I’ve seen you talk about Cricket on the Discord; how big are sports in your life?
Honestly not very, my dad was a massive cricket player and tbh if he was still alive, he still would have been playing to this day. I decided to keep following the sport a little bit.
Sounds like the sport meant a lot to him. It’s fantastic that you kept up with it.
Do you have any goals or ambitions, either for yourself or for Validus, that you’d like to share with the community?
My two main goals for Validus is strong growth and sponsors! Gotta love massive discounts.
Absolutely, especially if those cool Validus jerseys ever come back — would love to pick one of those up.
Final question, Tommy: is there anything you’d like to say to the community as a whole?
Yeah, I’d like to say thank you, without the community as a whole Validus would be nothing. It’d be an empty Discord server with fuck all members. Validus would just be a speck without the main stars of the show and for that I thank them, every single one of them.
