I have been intrigued by the popularity of the French CoD Esports scene for a while, and I thought that I would speak to one of the foremost names in the community, Jonas 'Oxygen' Ferry!
The French CoD eSports scene is widely accepted as being one
of the best supported communities in the world of eSports. Players and
personalities involved in the French scene are very well respected and followed
by the gaming public in France. One such personality is Jonas Ferry, otherwise
known as Oxygen.
Jonas has played CoD professionally across a lot of
different titles for teams such as, Millenium, mythiX, TCM and LiNK. He is now
involved in gaming, working for Scuf in France, as well as casting events such as EGL, which means he is still heavily
involved with the community. Here Jonas speaks about his time in professional
gaming, and how things have progressed within the scene both in France and
further afield.
1 - What initially
got you into competitive gaming?
I think like a lot of people, I just used to play public
games until eventually someday I met someone who was playing competitive
tournaments on a website. At that time, for me it was Leaguexbox (which was
kind of the French game battles) and on Perfect Dark Zero. I always loved
competing, even in sports and I became a big fan of eSports quickly and spent
more and more time playing it until I became better and moved onto Gears of War
and then Call of Duty where I got a relatively good success!
2 - What is different
now to when competitive gaming started for you?
Everything to be honest! I started about 7 years ago so it's
obviously a lot bigger, but also there's a lot more passion and show around it.
The games have become more intense and more easy to watch which has gathered
more spectators, more fans and a lot more reasons to play for : wanting to be
the best amongst thousands of teams rather than a few, money & fame mainly.
But I think as I saw, and as a lot of players see it, is just a way to prove
yourself you can be the best at something which can drive you into putting
hours, days and even months on a game to find out how good you can be
3 - Why do you think
that eSports is so big in France in particular?
We do have a quite big country that also has a decent amount
of Call of Duty players which eventually wanted to learn more about the game through
forums, YouTube, twitter. And at some point, on these platforms they got to
discover - just like I did when I initially started competing - that there was
a whole world of entertainment and passion on the video game they love to play
that existed and was just waiting for them. For French eSports on Call of Duty,
no one can deny the huge success of Gotaga on YouTube was the starting point,
but he got known because other YouTubers had reached a huge amount of
subscribers with more casual videos. But what Gotaga had was a huge career and
YouTube videos showing how crazy & good a competitive call of duty game can
be.
4 - What advancements
in games/technology have helped CoD eSports advance?
Until last year I would've had a hard time answering that
question, but Black Ops II was really an amazing game when it came to eSports
with so many great features included! In particular, the introduction of
Hardpoint has gotten Call of Duty such an intense game mode that it was
extremely fun to watch, but also that wouldn't have been so good without the
CoD casting that really helped making the game enjoyable to watch as a
spectator and drove all the energy of a game on streams.
5 - How do you see
eSports in general growing over the next few years?
A lot! 2013 was definitely a crazy improvement for Call of
Duty, but also for eSports in general as everyone saw how big LoL is getting.
The PC scene is really driven by LoL and the console by Call of Duty, and both
these titles are not getting any less successful as the years go by, so I'm
hoping 2013's increase is a good indicator of eSports growth for the upcoming
year
6 - Tell us about
your current role with Scuf France, and what other future projects have you got
lined up?
After I ended my competitive career, I got involved with
Scuf Gaming which is a company I've always loved not only for their investment
in eSports, but also for great inventions (paddles, trigger stops, gripped
controllers' amongst others) that revolutionized the way people play FPS and
other games on Console. It was a good opportunity for me to work in eSports but
to also use my knowledge and skills in the Call of Duty scene! I obviously do a
lot of community management and marketing in France, but also in Europe for the
company and I'm extremely humble being able helping to support some of the best
gamers Europe & France has to offer when it comes to eSports. As for the
future, you will probably still see me operate for Scuf Gaming as I wouldn't
want work anywhere else, but also cast some big competitions for the French
community as I had the pleasure to do for ESWC's finals (which was completely
crazy by the way!) or SkyLAN most recently.
We would like to thanks Jonas for sparing the time to do the
interview and wish him the best of luck in all his future activities.
You can follow him on Twitter here - @_oxygenJF
You can follow Scuf France here - @ScufFrance
Keep an eye out for any upcoming Esports Interviews!
Let me know your thoughts people, and feel free to get in touch -
YouTube - http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCS1bxmAaXM7WqtviRGp822g
YouTube - http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCS1bxmAaXM7WqtviRGp822g
Neil
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