Jan Duchon of TCM.COD4!

In the first feature of the INSIGHT Series for 2012 the Content Manager of TCM-Gaming,  Märt 'M2R' Valdin sat down with TCM-Gaming Call of Duty 4 player  Jan 'paradox' Duchon.

In the interview Jan talk about the changes that recently took place in the team, aswell as his upcoming projects and the Call of Duty scene.

You recently made a change in the TCM.COD4 line-up with Nick moving to a backup position and Petr coming in. How have the first weeks been while playing with Petr. Has there been a change to the chemistry of the team?

Playing with Petr is ofcourse different than playing with Nick, we had to swap few positions between Lubo/Erik/Petr so it fits perfectly for everyone from them. They are all strong SMG's and they are playing CoD4 for several years, so it wasnt problem at all. Team chemistry works great, both Erik and Declan needs to be used for more Czech talking at our Teamspeak between matches now, but i think they are catching some words already! Ty vole!

What is the biggest difference to the teamplay with Petr, that it was with Nick in 2011?

They are both great players, our teamplay is on same level as before, this change has not affected our game at all.

Talking a bit about the expectations for the new year. What sort of goals have you set for the team?

To be honest, i never set any goals for me or my team. We want to play our best game and we want to focus for best possible results on every event we will attend, but ofcourse being still on TOP is our goal.

What sort of expectations have you set for yourself?

I most likely hope i will be able to continue with playing after launching big gaming project for Czech and European community - New Internet Café in Prague with 40+ high end pc's, own bar and small restaurant and with hotel right above it, which should be ready in march/april. We would like to host EU events for several games such a CoD4, BF3 and so on, because Prague is awesome city and its best place for hosting events like this, its in the middle of Europe!

Some time ago in co-operation with Grunex you announced the first major Call of Duty 4 lan of 2012. How did you come involved with hosting this event and Grunex?

Grunex is the only proper project in Czech republic who's hosting LANs in CoD4, so im helping them with any way i can with their events and promotion. We are going to their events always in a czech mix and still winning most of them, so i hope we can manage to do well against EU teams again, like in September last year

With a massive €5000 EURO prize-pot for 24 teams. How is the attendees list looking at the moment with under three weeks to go until the event.

We've decided few days ago, that we will lockdown lan for 16 teams and confirm the prizepot €3000 + some hardware. Currently theres around 10 teams paid and 6 confirmed teams and most of them got their flights and hotel paid already, so the lan will be full for sure. We wouldn't get 24 team with such a short notice (6weeks), that's why we decided for using 16 teams system with 2 groups of 8, so even upcoming teams can play 7 games for €350, i think its worth of it.

At this stage for the Call of Duty 4 community, how big is it for eventto still be able to attract big name partners such as BenQ, Intel and MSI?

I dont think that partners really care which game they support, the main thing is amount of people who are interested in which community and CoD4 is still strong and deserves attention of big names like BenQ or INTEL. Czech side of INTEL is supporting Call of Duty community in Czech rep. for like 6 years already with their INTEL league, which is really popular here, so their experience with CoD community is really great.

Can you give us a small rundown on the PCs that will be used at the BenQ Grunex European LAN #2?

PCs aren't any high-ends like we will have in my café, but they are still able to get stable 250fps in CoD4 and thats main thing for everyone who is going to attend this event, isnt it? There are i7 cpu's and 9800GTX, which are still pretty good graphic cards. Ofcourse, for example BF3 event wouldnt be possible here.

Moving forward and talking about the Call of Duty scene. It has now been over two months since the release of the latest Call of Duty edition, Modern Warfare 3, but still the community is staying true to the game that has been with them since 2007. In your opinion why haven’t any of the new Call of Duty titles, been able to win over the Call of Duty 4 community?

Games realeased after CoD4 has no inovation at all, so theres no point of going to mod them to be same as CoD4. It would be just waste of time for modders/coders. It took few years to have CoD4 "perfect", so im happy that CoD4 is still here and alive. We need to add custom maps to official maplist, both mp_cluster and mp_marketcenter got potential to be in our official map pool, but its up to community itself, how they gonna accept these maps.

What should Activision look to change in upcoming releases to the make the games more to the liking of the competitive scene?

They should stop realeasing CoD games, because its getting boring, but ofcourse people are blind and they are still buying same game again and again.

We are almost at the end of this interview with just the quick fire questions left.

a. Favourite food? Pizza Hawai

b. Favourite drink? Vodka+Redbull

c. Favourite player? Luboshmir

d. Favourite lan event you have attended? Antwerp E-Sports Festival, BeFirst Moscow

e. Favourite gadget? My car?:D

f. Favourite teammate? Luboshmir

Thank you for your time Jan, do you have any shoutouts you’d like to send out?

Thanks Mart, i would like to thank Jim & Craig for their work and our sponsors Cooler Master, CM Storm, Multiplay and my fans showing their support with massive number of likes at my facebook page.