My name is Amber O'Dell. I am 16 years old and I am currently doing a week of work experience at Team Dignitas. At the moment this is sounding like the introduction to a YA novel and I’m hoping that is going to stop very soon. I managed to end up doing work experience here because of my dad, Michael O’Dell, more commonly known to most of you as ODEE. I know what you’re thinking, but no, my middle name isn’t dignitas, or quake, or battlefield! I’m pretty sure it’s not anyway… I haven’t actually seen my birth certificate…

I’ve grown up around gaming all my life, for me it’s just a normal everyday part of life. For someone who has such a close link to the largest esports team in the UK, you’d think I would’ve picked up some skills or at least have good hand-eye coordination, but you would be wrong because I am terrible at gaming. Don’t get me wrong, I do play games but they are games that require a very low level of skill, so probably starting from a PEGI 3 rating. The last game I played (and one of the first I’ve ever actually completed) was LEGO Jurassic World (which was amazing, by the way).

I tend to get very into games, play them for about 2 or 3 weeks straight and then never finish them. To be fair, sometimes there are other circumstances that affect this, like when I was about 10 or 11 and my sister and I would play ‘New Super Mario Bros Wii’. We had absolutely no teamwork skills and I ended up having a lot of gamer rage (THAT’S the trait I picked up) and the disc was actually taken from us by our mother for about a year. I had Mario Galaxy for a while which I loved, I got SO close to finishing it but I ended up getting stuck and just forgetting about it. I don’t even know what happens in the end, is it cool?!

I’m the oldest child in the family and about 3 years older than Team Dignitas itself. I was born when my dad was still playing in tournaments himself from his ‘office’ in my parents’ bedroom which was basically just a desk, a printer and a computer. I knew what ‘frag’ meant before I could write in cursive and heard a LOT of swearing during the evening. It’s a lot better now, with the office moving downstairs, but every so often at 2am I can hear my dad shout “MEPH” into TeamSpeak and I think ‘Is this how Breaking Bad started?’

I’m not going to make this too long, so I’m going to cut this off here. If you enjoyed reading this brief article, let me know! Mentally of course because all my social media accounts are crazy embarrassing. Anyway, this has been an insight for you about what it is like to grow up with Team Dignitas, pretty normal actually… I haven’t even hit 1k on Instagram yet…