Stéphanie “miss” Harvey talks about retirement in her book, Missharvey, gamer and proud of it, which appears this week at Éditions de l’Homme. The one who last year emerged victorious from the show Big Brother Celebrities tells anecdotes of youth that are not so long in the past. No doubt that if his life was a video game, Freedom 36 would probably be the title…
We must nevertheless qualify: a retirement from electronic sport (or ” e-sport as the saying goes) is not a full professional retirement. The gamer became a businesswoman and even a university researcher has more professional projects to come than projects she has turned her back on.
“I’m a bit like a professional player who retires from hockey and then pursues a career as a television analyst,” explains Stéphanie Harvey to the To have to. I don’t think you can take a semi-retirement in the world of electronic sports, it has become too competitive. »
Five-time world champion in competitions related to shooting games and military strategy counter strike, entrepreneur, personality of the small screen and influencer, the current Montrealer has a track record as full as a retiree from any sports league. Except that her own league fills stadiums and arenas by opposing opponents who are seated in front of a screen.
More ceilings
Throughout the 232 pages of her autobiography, the author (another title that she can add to her CV if she still needs a CV) describes herself as a woman who loves challenges, who driven by performance, who has a great intellectual capacity and who never wanted to confine himself to the limits imposed on him. is not sacred Canada’s Smartest Person by the CBC who wants. Stéphanie Harvey also emerged victorious from the third season of this series.
And yet, we learn as we read that his success is sometimes based on decision-making contrary to this description: letting himself flow like a river to circumvent pitfalls, making huge decisions on a whim , melt into the mould…
“I sometimes let things go, in the sense that I will rarely have a defined plan, she nuances. Big Brother fell squarely on me and when it was offered to me, I dove. Same thing earlier in my career at Mr. Net, where host Denis Talbot invited me to participate and I said yes. »
Stéphanie Harvey also thanks in her book the popular host of the now defunct Musique Plus channel and today producer of Radio Talbot, an almost daily video game webcast. Thanks to these two and to a few other Quebec personalities from this universe over the past ten years, we now know that there is more to video games than young people who spend too much time in front of a television in the basement. -parental ground. It is a richer industry and more recognized worldwide than cinema.
This is not an industry that is spotless. A young woman who wants to do like the Mario brothers and smash a few ceilings, in what was and still remains a lot of a man’s world, video games, has to be self-sacrificing from time to time. Not all the leaders of a video game studio have had to negotiate with a landlord who came to visit them with his fly open and his face exposed. Neither should women. And yet. The anecdote does not go back so far in the past of Mrs. Harvey.
Cybercitizenship
The author writes it then says it, and that is understandable: it is more pleasant for her to talk about her future projects than to dwell on memories like these. The semi-retired woman also has her mind full of projects, she who is these days responsible for the development of Counter Logic Gaming (CLG), the electronic sports subsidiary of the Madison Square Garden Company, a New York giant of the sports and entertainment.
Raising awareness of electronic sports in Quebec is a priority. “We play video games more in Quebec than anywhere else, but thee-sport remains very little known to the general public”, she notes.
That could change in the coming months. The University of Quebec at Trois-Rivières should announce later this fall the creation of an ambitious research component in electronic sports. Stéphanie Harvey will address ethical and business issues. Video games are a gateway for many young people to cybercitizenship, another subject that struggles to establish itself, both at school and in family discussions.
This is where Mrs. Harvey hopes to have the biggest influence. Making tomorrow’s citizens responsible cybercitizens will correct many flaws in today’s digital worlds: cyberthreats, cyberbullying, cyberaddiction… And if it takes other books to get the word out, the “gamer” is ready to pull out the pen, which, according to the saying goes, is often mightier than the sword.
Even the sword of Geralt de Riv, the game’s popular hero The Witcher, of which Netflix has declined a TV series and which the young entrepreneur loves? Maybe. “I already have an environment like this in mind. It just lacks a story,” says Stéphanie Harvey, the “gamer” who won Big Brother.