TEK9 Chat 2 caesiuM - Interview caesiuM 1/2

Sometime two weeks ago, I came to the conclusion that no one really has sat down with one of the better players in the United Kingdom or even Europe before and therefore I decided to come to Sanjay "caesiuM" Gambhir and ask him some questions, coinciding with his big announcement just yesterday.

-Hey Sanjay, so could you tell us a little bit more about yourself? You are not a full blood CoD player as it were, seeing as you were first active in America’s Army. So could you quickly scan over your achievements in that game?

Hi Bob, I started playing CoD around i37 but before that  I played AA for a couple of years, mostly playing for Epsilon and H2k Gaming. My most notable achievements would probably be winning LAN's in Enschede and Antwerp.

-Do you feel that winning that LAN in The Netherlands during your AA times was beneficial to your transition into Call of Duty 4 or did it not mean all that much when learning our game from the start?

Yeah it definitely helped, anybody who plays multiple FPS's knows that things like teamwork, communication etc are similar across games, but you still have to learn the game and all the keen stuff of course.

-How was your start in COD4? We have only first heard of you during your time in team Omega, around the Summer of 2010. What have you done before, who did you play with and how long did you play COD4 before you got to the level of AEF #2?

I only really played random mixes or in short term teams before Omega (most people probably don't even know Omega anyway), I guess I first became a bit more known when I joined the old iQPAD after AeF. I was only playing CoD since i37 which took place in the August before AEF#2, but I took a few months break in that time, I guess I really got into it in December 09/January  2010, which is when I had a bit more of a keen team to play with.

What started it all for caesiuM...

-Do you feel there is a bias towards COD1/2 players when top teams pick up new players, seeing as some ¾ of the current top teams consist out of former COD series players?

I guess, but it's just who you know and who you can trust. I can speak from past experiences that it isn't good when you pick up a random guy you have never met only for something to get screwed up a few weeks later, it's natural that teams would prefer somebody they know / can trust a bit, so it helps if you have been around ages from CoD1 / CoD2.

-Do you feel that COD4 will still have a future beyond 2011? If not, will you quit or move over to another game?

I have no idea, depends on if the community is content with CoD4, if they are not the game dies, simple as that. As for what I will do, I really have no idea, it depends on a lot of things that can change in life.

-Even though team Omega didn't do amazingly at AEF #2, do you feel it was your big break in the game? It seemed as if you suddenly became part of the higher part of the community after that, or is that just smokes and mirrors?

I wouldn't say it was a big break or that I suddenly became part of the higher community, but I guess I did move up the ladder a bit. Suddenly I was in iQPAD which was an invite team (more thanks to myzz's corruption than merit I suspect).

-You were part of the iQPAD / ambient occlusion / PLAYON / PLAYZONE team that really became one of the strongest teams in Europe near the end of 2010 but could not manage to get a break, organisation-wise. How did you feel about that?

Well the original team (greg, myzz, zajaki, rezet) was really good at times and we had some pretty nice results, but it fell through more because of personal differences. The bad luck with organisations was mostly with the newer line-up (greg/mark, makke, gnarly myzz), where we got screwed around so much it's actually not even worth discussing. But yeah, if we had a proper org and attended OOF like we were supposed to (me and myzz lost 350 euro because we paid the entrance tickets already) I think there is a fair chance we would still be togethor. All in all its annoying partly because of the time wasted but mostly because of the money lost :)

-How did you take the criticism of people accusing you and your team of not wanting to attend events? Was it justified to a certain extent?

I don't know about that, I never really noticed that much criticism? I suppose there probably was a few questions but we only really missed Gamersject and that was because myzz couldn't get time off work (he's an assistant director for movies or something), and everybody already knows about why we didn't go OOF so there's no need to explain that again.