Winter Garden resident, World Champion in Xbox game Halo

Ocoee native and Winter Garden resident Tom Wilson and his team, OpTic Gaming, won $400,000 for playing the Xbox game, Halo.

By Andrea Mujica
| 7:38 p.m. February 23, 2023

Tom Wilson started playing video games at the age of 4 and quickly, the game Halo became his passion.

Sports

BEHIND THE GAMERTAG
Initially known in the gaming community as Saiyan, Wilson decided to changed his gamertag — or alias — last year to Lucid.
“Saiyan was from anime like ‘Dragon Ball Z’ that my brother and I used to watch, so that became the kind of name that was my gamertag for the longest time,” he said. “But, at least with getting more serious, more money more eyes, I kind of needed a name that wasn’t really associated with copyright (issues) so ‘Lucid’ was a word and a name that sounded clean, to the point, simple that I just kind of rebranded to before the release of the current game that we were playing last year. … The actual definition of the word I’d say is respectably fitting for how I am as a person, but I didn’t really even consider it at the time. It just sounded good.”

CONSOLE PREFERENCE
Despite previously playing with an Xbox console, Wilson now prefers to play on his PC as the power and the technology of PCs are much stronger than that of the consoles.

FOLLOW LUCID
YouTube Channel: @LucidTWW
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For Ocoee native and current Winter Garden resident Tom Wilson, video games — especially Halo — have captivated both his time and imagination.

Wilson believes his passion for esports and video-gaming sparked from watching his older brother, Jonathan Beverfjord, play when he was little.

“He’s about 8 years older than I am,” Wilson said. “Always kind of looked up to him, always kind of wanted to hang out and do the things he did so he got me into gaming when I was about 4 years old. So, very young, I started that out, always a big passion of mine just gaming with him and gaming with friends in general, always very into it.”

Wilson grew up in an Xbox household, and his love for the Halo game was born from the first moment he picked up a controller. When he turned professional during his junior year of high school, that was his game.

“I would say a lot of times with getting into any competitive games, especially with where Halo is at, it’s more like a passion type of thing, it’s more where it stems from, I’ve always been playing Halo,” Wilson said. “With my brother, that was the game that we played growing up, and it was super really popular a long time ago. It’s still pretty popular now, but I just integrated enough with it that it became like a natural thing. I’m good enough, now I can go to a competition, and here I am now being able to make this my job. … I’ve dabbled here and there (with other games) but nothing really as serious as Halo.”

And most recently, Wilson and his OpTic Gaming teammates — Joey Taylor (Tripppey), Bradley Laws (aPG), Matthew Piper (FormaL)— were crowned champions in the Halo World Championship Grand Finals at the Halo Championship Series, which took place Oct. 21-23 in Seattle. For the win, OpTic Gaming won $400,000 — 40% of the tournament’s $1 million prize pool.

TRAINING DAYS

The competitive world of esports, specifically for Halo, is usually structured as a 4-versus-4, where players get together, create their teams and intuitively assign one another specific roles during the competition.

“There are competitions for different sizes of teams,” Wilson said. “The most official capacity of competitions in ‘Halo 5’ is four on four, where there are two teams fighting against each other.”

Despite teams in the gaming community varying quite often — and regularly — from tournament to tournament, Lucid, Tripppey, aPG and FormaL have been playing together since last February and have been coached by Jason Brown (gamertag Lunchbox).

Wilson currently dedicates his days to getting better at “Halo 5,” working on his technique and playing alongside his teammates. On a normal schedule, he practices from five to six hours each day. Whenever a tournament approaches however, his daily practice increases to about eight hours daily.

Tom Wilson has been playing with his team since February 2022. He and Joey Taylor are the newest members.

“It can vary, because there is a mixture of what a schedule can look like daily for a player … in the competitive stage of the (gaming) community,” he said. “We (play) a scrimmage against other teams at a set time — 6 p.m. is when we practice for about three hours — and that’s a very dedicated good practice in like a tournament format, (where) communication is actually flowing, it’s all of us together. (But) I (also) can be playing by myself online.”

LUCID’S DREAM

Wilson took a break from his collegiate studies at the University of Central Florida a little more than a year ago; he was two semesters away from graduation. It was then when he began to see the promising future he could have as part of the professional gaming community. Eventually, he plans on returning to school to earn his bachelor’s degree in marketing.

Tom Wilson and his teammates are the world champions in the game Halo.

“I knew this decision was going to be the right one and that I needed to put everything into streaming and into competing, because I want to win,” he said. “And if this is my end goal, this has to be it for now, and I will absolutely say I made the right decision. I’m absolutely blessed and over the moon that this is what I can do.

“I never imagined or set myself to think — even as a kid — that I was going to be playing video games for a living,” Wilson said. “Even now, I don’t know if this is the thing I am going to be doing for 20 to 30 years from now, but there’s plenty of possibilities, now that I’m at the point that I’m at, to kind of work with it. … It’s a very good opportunity, and I had to take advantage of it.”