Fnatic - A profesional gaming team

• Profile: kyoChi
  

• Name: Conney Sjoberg
  

• Age: 21
  

• Location: Grums
  

• Team: fnaticMSi
  

• Mouse: Steelseries xai
  

• Mousepad: QcK+ fnatic edition
  

• Keyboard: Steelkeys 6g
  

• Headset: Siberia red
  

• Laptop: MSi GT740
  

Top 10 Achievements

• i37
  

• The eXperience 09
  

• sb.uk
  

• SCA open
  

• ESL major series (online)
  

• The eXperience 08 (B)
  

• DH winter 05
  

• Assembly winter
  

• Outpost on fire
  

• SLKS.dk
  

Favourites

• Movie: Fear and loathing in lasvegas
  

• Actor: Jonny Depp
  

• Book: Long hard road out of hell
  

• Author: Neil Strauss
  

• Music: METAL
  

• Band: So many
  

• Sport: I dont believe in sports
  

• Car: Audi a8
  

• Drink: San fransisco
  

• Food: Spicy
  

• Hobby: Guitar playing
  

• Player: TorZelan
  

• Map: q3dm6
  

• Gun: ak74u

Hey, KyoChi, to most people in Call of Duty, you're relatively new to the scene, having only become a top player in CoD4. Why don’t you tell us a bit about yourself and your gaming history.
I started out playing in teams when I was about 10, which is 11 years ago. Since then I’ve more or less dedicated my life to e-sports, quitting school and not taking up any jobs really. Was hard convincing my parents in the beginning and I remember these little "Interventions" they had with me to quit gaming, however all that changed and they started supporting me. My real journey to stardom began when I was around 12-13 when I was playing Soldier Of Fortune 2. I remember back then that I didn’t have a computer to run it so I lived at my sisters house and played on her husbands computer after he went to sleep all night, then went up to school and found some corner to sleep in then repeated it all the following night :D (Not recommended kids!). I got hold of my own PC, started a team (#WasteD|.) and snatched of players from other clans and went to come second in my first Eurocup, at the time i played in 2 teams actually, the other being Northern Darkness who I went off to win about a million EuroCups with. I got lured into the LAN business when Doom3 was released and the first competition was announced (CPL Dallas), I was signed up and ready to go, however they changed the rules so you had to be 18 because of the "gore", so i couldn't attend, oh what a bad day that was.
I picked up CS:S and created a team together with Fifflaren, HaZ, z0uLess and ferus, we went on and raided the scene during 2005/06, I quit as my motivation dropped when there was no lans on the horizon.
I started playing CoD4 like a month after it was released for fun, no intentions to hardcore it. That all changed after i ran the first NationCup season with Team Sweden and got a taste of competition again, I started up a team and joined Begrip Sweden and went to The eXperience 08, snatched first place in the B tournament and managed to cause some upsets. After that I was snatched of to fnaticMSi and I’ve been here since.

You've recently moved house and are living in a new part of Sweden, what's it like?
I've actually moved out from it now, it was a really nice house but i had delusions of grandeur, I realized it was too big for me and way to much with the garden and such, was to much responsibility for me. So I’m currently living in an apartment with a friend in Grums.

What about women? Are there any ladies in Captain KyoChi's life right now?
Sure, who can resist a World champion gamer?

And what is it about your personality that makes you so good as a captain?
I've always been running my teams since I was 13, so it feels natural to me. Motivating the team, sort out the schedules and what we need to work on, guess it comes with the experience I have from leading in many different games.

Before the summer lans you were working two jobs as well as practicing with the CoD4 team. It’s fair to say you led quite a busy life. Will you go back to that crazy life style now the summer tour is over?
I've quit both those jobs as of now, have no plans on going back either, gaming and chilling is the center of my life right now :).

What's one thing about you no one in gaming knows?
Probably that I’m an awesome masseuse!

Some people might remember you from the early Counterstrike: Source days when you played in a Swedish team called Adastra which has played home to some legends of the game. How come you decided to quit playing CSS?
As I said above, there was no big lans incoming, so I grew tired of practicing for nothing really.

So now you find yourself playing competitively in CoD4, what motivated you to start playing CoD?
My friends were playing it and when i got into it I saw that it had potential as a good esport game, loads of lans were lined up and I were ready to attend them all, grabbing first place in yet another scene motivated me as well.

With Source and CoD4 being sequels and quite different to their predecessors, there is a bit of rivalry between the two 'newer' esports games. What one do you prefer and think requires the more skill?
It's all the same, shot headshots.

Looking back at everything CSS has had over CoD4, if you could go back and continue playing CSS, would you?
I'm happy with CoD right now, it has speed, something I think CS:S lacks completely. I'd probably head back if the CoD scene manages to implode.

Last summer you were seen playing in the Begrip team alongside rivve, who won the B tournament at TeX, what do you think has been the catalyst for your rise up the scene?
Probably impressing allot of people during my time in begrip, alongside with rivve, we both really proved what we were made of to people. That's what you got to do in the beginning, attend all the lans you can even if it might cost you money, if you do good it will certainly lead to better things.

When you first joined fnaticMSI, the lineup was LINQAN, odx, tidde, Niko and yourself. Obviously since then two players have left in tidde (who's currently the teams 6th) and Niko, but the core of LINQAN, odx, and yourself have stayed. Do you think this has attributed to the teams success? and why do you think you were picked for the team in the first place?
Without us three there wouldn't be a team in the first place as it was us three who started it all up again after CoD5 was released (and instantly killed). We were all really motivated and we said from the beginning that if we were going to do this we would do it for the #1 spot in Europe, so it all rocketed from there really, three guys with the same goal and madskills to make it happen, with help of rivve and stevy we made it in the end.

The first change to the lineup was when Niko left to make place for rivve after you won Assembly winter, who came in to snipe, you then went on to place fifth at i36, were you happy with this lineup?
We all felt that it was a good lineup and given time we'd most certainly manage to end up top3 at the summerlans, we were just un-prepared for the event as the lineup changes was so close to the event itself.

However, things finally managed to click when tidde went inactive and Stevy joined as sniper, with rivve moving to assault you moving to spec ops. Do you think this gave the team more balance as well as options? Why do you think the current lineup works so well? It cant just be the Belgian effect.
Stevy obviously brought even more madskills to the team, more importantly he gave us a motivational boost while playing with his energetic nature. We also changed the structures of how we practiced, instead of just doing our share of playing each day, we started working on what went wrong, how to fix it and in the end we were just running like a well oiled machine.

As a side you have a reputation for being very fast as aggressive, don’t you think this could work in the teams detriment one day as other sides work you out?
In the end I will always be the one adapting and working them out.

The very first fnaticMSI.CoD4 squad were dominant in the early stages of CoD4, did you feel any sort of pressure in trying to emulate their feats and represent an organization such as fnatic?
I never felt any pressure at all from the management here at fnatic, they were all really supportive and they knew what was lying ahead. However there were some jealous minds from the community who didn't take it lightly that someone who just came into the scene was picked up rather then them who had been playing the series for five years. I was just ready to prove them wrong, experience overthrows hours spent in the game at any time.

Over the summer you've attended 3 lans with fnaticMSI.CoD4, are you happy with the outcome (2 1st place finishes and 1 2nd place finish), or do you think you deserved a clean sweep?
We lost the final on paper at OOF, but we all feel that we "won" that tournament considering our performances in the tournament.

At OOF3, you guys went 11-1 down versus reason gaming only to come back and win the match 16-14. How mentally tired were you after the match and what happened at half time to motivate the team after going so far behind?
I remember having odx on my side and he said; "I've never been so sure in my life that we're going to take this" or something along the lines and i just replied "I know", even though they were 2 rounds away from winning i just felt so dead certain that we'd take it and after the match i found out that the rest had the same feeling during halftime. It just shows that we're a team that just wont stop no matter how far behind and mentally abused we are. This will serve as a constant reminder to all teams we're facing in the future.

What do you have to say to people who've critised your teams attitude and how vocal you were during the comeback versus Reason? What were your reasons for some of what was said?
It was all just sweet payback, some of the players in the reason team had been flaming us for months, so it was awesome to take them down to earth again. I hate the haters, I flame the flamers.

Is it the best match youve ever played in?
Probably yes, adrenaline was pumping after coming back from 4-12 to 12-12, then winning in the overtime.

Do you think the effort you had to put in versus Reason eventually led to you losing the OOF final versus Dignitas?
Yes, we completely destroyed them in the winnerbracket with like 12-2 on strike, so we were so confident that we'd win so we hit town after the reason game as they played their lowerbracket matches for a couple of hours, grabbing something to eat and some beers. I believe our reason to losing was that we were mentally exhausted after the reason game, we had no energy or adrenaline whatsoever, we tried our best but it wasn’t enough. Lesson learned though, no more relaxing in pauses, heavy meals etc. We took that with us to the other lans.

Its been said that while your playstyle trumps TCMs, Dignitas's beats yours, do you think this is true, or was the OOF final just a slip up?
Never heard that before, wherever it comes from it's stupid as it's based on one match.

After OOF the team attended TeX in Denmark, what are your thoughts about the event?
We came to the event with our mind set to winning, we had learned allot as a team from OOF, it's the biggest and most prestigious and well run event in CoD4, the whole setup is awesome, hope other tournaments gets inspired by it.

Early on in the tournament there was a chance you'd be sent packing early. A shock loss to Polish side CEFO put your team in risk of being eliminated. What happened on crash? Was it just tournament jitters or did they have some great tactics?
Another lesson learnt, never underestimate any team, i should of have called a timeout early in the game as everyone was playing bad and was really unfocused, they had a shitloads of setnades that completely destroyed our defense and they were on fire, we never really got the adrenaline going. Instantly after the game we slipped out the backdoor to avoid being mentally destroyed by all the other teams outside. Neil and i grabbed everyone to head to the hotel for discussing what went wrong, everyone was really low and we didn't speak a word on our way there. When something like that happens you really need someone to pull you up from the downward spiral, luckily we had Neil to coach us trough it and we came back to the event really energetic and cheered up. He had a huge part in our success this summer, he should get allot of credit for our performances.

Aside from the group stage shock, the only blemish on your TeX record was the loss of Backlot in overtime during the Grand final versus TCM. Do you think you should have taken the final in one map?
TCM played great on backlot, it could of gone either way but they won the map in the end and they deserved it.

The Backlot game was also rife with controversy, with you and your team eventually deciding to /kill to return the score to 3-0 TCM, how it was before the game server crashed, despite the admins wanting to start again at 0-0. The act of sportsmanship has been applauded by the community, but why did your team do it when you could so easily have start again and not dropped the three rounds?
Don't think they would of gotten 3 rounds at the beginning in the first place without stevys computer crashing in those situations we were in, if that would of happened to them i'd say restart of match. Discussions followed for like 20 minutes and we just wanted to start so to keep them happy and not get shit talked afterwards we decided to /kill until 3-0.

It was also during Backlot that you did the infamous KyoChi stalk, following Germaine around the map for over 30 seconds before killing him and his partner and then defusing the bomb. Why were you so audacious and risky when you could have killed Germaine from the start?
Smart play, I wanted to know where his teammate was so instead of killing him and ending up with the other guy planting the bomb leading to being under time pressure and a risky situation i decided to stalk him around the map so he could take me to the bombspot they decided to use.


As you picked Strike for your map at TeX, TCM screamed with joy, as they had been dominant on that map for the past few months, would you say over confidence led to them losing the map in such devastating fashion or had you just found a flaw in their defence?
Their problem is that they can't adapt quickly to how their opponent plays, they have their tactics that they use and hold on to them no matter what, same positions, same nades, so it gets really easy to read what they're doing and we took advantage of that.

At the i37 grand final, you lost versus TCM again in overtime but this time on District in double overtime, most sides would crumble after losing such a tiring map, what makes this teams lineup so special that you just came back and utterly destroyed TCM on strike?
Confidence, they played a great district, especially phantasy and i even went over to him in the break to let him know.

After losing the first map, you went outside for a brief team talk but you didn’t seem worried by TCM at all, you just joked about with each other, were you really that confident you would win on strike?
We didn't really think about losing the map, we just thought it was really fun and close. We were dead ready for the following map, we were on fire and nothing was going to stop us there.


Over the last two to three lans, antistratting has become a well publicized method used by teams in preparation for games. What do you think of TCM having two sheets full of fnatic tactics before the final, do you think it helped them at all?
Last resort i guess, it's hard for anyone to anti-strat a team like fnatic, as we don’t use tactics at all really, we all just have certain waypoints where we go and we let teamplay and communications take it from there. It's all about adapting. Didn't seem to work anyway as we won 13-3 or something.

A lot of people call you a 'nade team' and say you've only got to the top as you spend 24 hours, 7 days a week on servers learning new tac nades. What’s your view on that?
Hah, we're probably the worst team when it comes to nades, doubters can check our demos and see that we actually get very little nadekills. Nades has always been a problem for fnatic throughout the year, no one bothers to practice them, we'd rather just play and rely on teamwork, because what are you going to do when nades fails?

What are you expecting MW2 to bring? Will you be moving over to the new game?
Yes we will, first of is Dreamhack and 50 000:- SEK in Jönköping,Sweden, so we'll be preparing for that, as of now we're a MW2 team, we're going to I38 to compete in the CoD4 tournament next week however, to warm up out LAN nerves for MW2. We'll see how it goes as we haven’t been able to practice that much since the summerlans.

Will you have the same lineup?
Yes.

When/if a promod gets released, what kind of changes to the stock game would you like?
Remove all visual effects for a clean and well run game to start with.

In the recently leaked list of guns, although it might not be 100% confirmed, the AK74U is missing, how do you expect this to affect the gameplay?
There's still a specops class as far as i know, mp5 will do just as well.

What about the new flag runner mode, do you think it will be played competitively?
I'd love to play CTF, we'll see what the scene chooses.

And with CoD4 drawing to a close, do you think its fair that there is a certain symmetry to how the game has been? fnaticMSI came out flying and were one of the top teams early on in the game and fnaticMSI, now with new blood who've grown over the two years, are again on top.
It's all as it should be now, fnatic on top!

Thank you for the interview KyoChi, any last words or shoutouts?
I'd like to thank everyone who's made this happen, management, old and current teammates. Special thanks to MSi for the computers, Steelseries for the gear and Bigfoot networks for the awesome networking cards.
Aaaand Darth Vader/TorZelan.