Interview with Sam “Tech Girl” Wright about her new gaming and esports newsletter

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Sam “Tech Girl” Wright and Chantelle “Chani” Alexander have created a fantastic gaming and esports newsletter filled with local news and events. Signing up is easy as all you need to do is head on over to gamingandesports.co.za and drop your email into the required field. After you’ve signed up, you will receive the newsletter every Thursday. It is the perfect serving of gaming and esports news with a focus on the South African scene.

We caught up with Sam “Tech Girl” Wright and simply had to ask her a few questions. Check out the Q&A below.

Q&A with Sam “Tech Girl” Wright

ESC: Please introduce yourself to our readers and let them know a little bit about what you do.

TG: I’m Sam “Tech Girl” Wright. I predominantly work in esports broadcasting outside of South Africa but locally create gaming and esports content around South African players and teams as well as sometimes get involved with local esports events.

ESC: What was your inspiration for starting this weekly newsletter?

TG: The newsletter was an idea formed by myself and Chantelle “ChaniZA” Alexander. We both felt that there was so much local news out there but when speaking to our collective communities, many local fans of gaming and esports didn’t know where to find it. We wanted to aggregate local news while also being able to showcase gaming websites, creators, tournament organisers etc in a way that provided value to the reader.

ESC: Where do you see South African esports heading in 2020?

TG: Honestly, I’ve given up trying to predict the local esports landscape. I do hope we see less flash and more focus on building communities and allowing players to shine through.

ESC: If you could choose one international esports star to visit South Africa, who would that be and why?

TG: Sadokist… and only because I really look up to his work and would want to meet him and pick his brain. Purely selfish reasons. The guy is one of my idols and I’d love to be able to watch him work and learn from him.

ESC: What are the challenges behind starting a newsletter?

Building an audience/ list of subscribers is the biggest challenge. We’re working on the newsletter only and didn’t feel additional social accounts linked to it would add value. We also wanted to keep a very serious “facts only” approach to it. Much like traditional news updates. So getting the mailer out there and encouraging people to sign up was an initial challenge. Though the response has been rather overwhelming. Our focus is South African news only as well, which is tough sometimes. Hunting down stories or getting people to confirm facts can be a challenge. But we’ve only been going for a month or so, so I’m hoping this will become easier as we go.

ESC: We see you are celebrating local stories and platforms in your newsletter. Is this a “local is lekker” type of movement for gaming and esports?

TG: We wanted to create a mailer that gave easy access to relevant local gaming and esports stories. They’re out there, but the idea was to centralise the newsworthy updates to a mailer once a week that allowed people to click out to stories that interested them. I subscribe to a host of international mailers that are similar and help me find information that interests me. I realised we didn’t have something like that locally. I usually have to open up 5 or 6 tabs and check a variety of websites and social media to stay up to date. Hopefully this way it is easier for the community to find these stories and ultimately also discover new South African websites, content creators etc along the way.

In case you missed out

You will receive an email to confirm that you wanted to sign up to it. Then, you have to confirm that you are not a robot. The first newsletter from Sam “Tech Girl” Wright and Chantelle “Chani” Alexander went out in December last year. Therefore, you might have missed a few, but fear not.

You can head on over to gamingandesports.co.za to check out all the past newsletters, as once the mail has gone out, a copy is posted on the website.

Header image credit: Headshot Hustle