Van Tang

Meet Van, (29): GameOps at

Van (29) works as in the GameOps department of He started as of July 1st, 2019 in the Pasadena office in the US. 

Where did you work before you started at 
I worked for the IT department of a big corporation that had 11 locations. I maintained their different IT systems and infrastructure. I had to make sure all systems were always up and running. Also, for example when they opened a new office location, I set up the IT environment, by setting up switches and running the wires and cables to set up the workstations. When computers or systems weren’t working, I had to drive out to that location or fix it remotely. 

How did you end up working in IT? 
I have been around computers almost my whole life. I got my first computer when I was only five years old, this was in 1995. Computers were still expensive back then. My computer had a 5GiG hard drive and it ran on Windows 1995, but at that time this was pretty good. I’ve always liked working with computers, but more as a hobby. Throughout school I started experimenting with graphic design. I started using photoshop, video editing and apps for producing music. I also made websites. It was more the creative side I was into, I was never really into programming, I only started learning that a few years ago. 

I didn’t go to college to study IT. I got my first job in IT 4 years ago. I had quite some different jobs that I didn’t like before that, but I realized working is more fun when you do something you like. So, I decided to make my life a bit easier, and since I was good with computers, I decided to apply for a job in IT. Besides my own knowledge I did not have any related work experience, but I send in my resume anyway. I talked my way into it, and the company gave me a chance. I learned a lot by just doing the work, besides, there are many things you can look up online. It is learning by doing. 

And what about gaming?  
I’ve been into gaming for a long time. When I was a kid, I used my PC for gaming. I played quite some different games over the years. Right now, I mainly play Dota, which is an online game produced by Valve. Dota is a competitive game of action and strategy, played both professionally and casually by millions of players worldwide. But this game takes a lot of time as there are thousands of levels. If you level up, the skills of your hero increase, and you unlock new looks and weapons for your heroes. Besides gaming I am into producing trance music, so recently I’ve spent some less time on gaming since I spend some more time on producing music. I was working on some new mixtapes.  

How did you end up at 
The company I worked for got bought out and went public. We parted ways because of some disagreements on how the IT department was being ran. I found the vacancy for Game Operations at online. I didn’t have any experience in game hosting, but I really liked what is doing. In the early 2000s I used to rent out a private game server from another company to play Counterstrike 1.6. So I’ve got some experience on being on the client side.  

How is the job so far? 
Since I started the job, I’m still learning new things every day. But so far it only has been two months. It is like learning a language, when you are around it and listen to it, you’ll eventually learn how to speak it. My colleague Bart came over from the Netherlands, and he set up an introduction program and explained all the systems we work with. It is not really an easy job to train for since each request is different and sometimes fairly unique. You cannot really prepare for those, but we closely work together as a team.  

I am the only one from GameOps in the Pasadena office, and when I work, my colleagues in the Netherlands are sleeping, so sometimes I have to figure it out myself, or wait for a reply which I can see the next day. Before I joined the team in Pasadena, the colleagues from TechOps and NetOps would handle the customer requests. I’m looking forward to meeting my colleagues from in the Netherlands, because so far we’ve only talked on skype. 

How does a regular workday look like? 
When I walk in, I check Slack and my email to see if there is anything urgent I should start working on. My colleagues from the Netherlands also hand me over things, since they already ended their shifts. Besides, we use a Trello board for weekly or monthly tasks and projects related to maintenance for example, so I at the beginning of my shift I always check the board. Right now, I am monitoring a customers’ procon server. It had some issues, but now it is behaving fine. I also just got a ticket from a customer who has a hard drive failure in a server. We are the so-called first line, if we can’t solve the issues, we assign them to the right department accordingly and they’ll start working on it.  

Do you think you got what it takes to become a GameOps at

Apply now!