Hello ioRek. You are one of the best French snipers on Counter-Strike 1.6. You played for various great teams (intensity, bizounours,...) and especially for emuLate! This team dominated the French 1.6 scene during more than two years without changing players, and won the 2007 WCG world champion title.

Hello. I switched to CS:GO mostly because I needed to play competitively. It could have been on 1.6 if the game was still popular, but it is CS:GO and that is not a bad thing. The community was struggling and I needed change, which is why I tried to play ShootMania with drizzer and haRts!

Once I realized I was enjoying playing CS:GO, I tried to motivate harts to come back. It was not easy, but now we are back!

You played with haRts when you began playing with MvC (Merous Virtuoses du Clavier) in 2004, then with emuLate in 2006, bizounours in 2009, Millenium in 2010 and other teams until CS:GO and Clan-Mystik in 2013. Would you agree on saying you are the two inseparables of Counter-Strike? You played with other lead in game during you career, what makes haRts the best ?

I rarely played with other leaders: sometimes in mixes with Ozstrik3r or for the French team with leaders such as geno or rigo. I would say haRts main qualities are his calm and his patience, which are the 2 most important qualities for the game. It feels kind of strange that he is the last to lose his temper when we fail to apply a strategy he announced. As I played many other games with him (shootmania, fifa, LOL, DOTA, quake), I know that if he really wants it, he always gets really good and not that far from the French top level. It is easier to trust him on CS knowing that. I imagine that this is why I am still playing with him, even though I often wanted to try playing with an other good leader to see how it's like :p

HaRts next to ioRek during Epsilan 11.

emuLate lasted 2 years before mSx chose to left (and then came back). During these years, you progressed both on an individual and collective level. Do you think about emuLate and what you achieved with them when you play for Clan-Mystik ? Do you try to, consciously or unconsciously reproduce the same thing with your current line-up ?

I occasionally like to take emL as an example to support some ideas, or to get the others (excepted haRts) to understand a strategy, but it does not go further than that. The success of emL relied on us playing without thinking too much about it. We rarely strated on servers, our goal was to play as much as possible and to reproduce the strategies we did unintentionally and that worked. It allowed us to have strategies based upon our skills and the preferences of the players instead of straightforward strategies copied on other teams. This is why we were playing really slowly and in classical positions, because our force relied on observation and adaptation instead of very precise grenades!

CS:GO is a new game and it would be a mistake to play it 1.6 style. Everything about 1.6 is not to throw away, and I think we can impose a part of the "emL style". The emL style consists in letting the players doing what they like (with haRts to put a damper on the too enthusiast players).

As I said it at the beginning of the interview, you have been one of the best 1.6 snipers. And to those who don't agree with that, your prize list is more than impressive. But since Clan-Mystik got official, no more AWP, only rifle. Wasn't the divorce too hard? Do you miss playing with the AWP? What do you think of the new generation with fxy0, KQLY and KennyS?

The AWP... it is quite complicated. At the beginning of CS:GO I was really awful, even in deathmatch I felt like the skins were moving too fast. I was shooting in between the legs or under the arms, and I could not fastscope. And then I saw KennyS playing with an AWP as if it was a rifle, so I gave up. I told to myself I didn't knew the game enough and that being a sniper is harder than being a rifle. So this is not a divorce but a break to try something else. It allowed me to become better with the M4. I was not that good on CT side on 1.6 when playing rifle, and it sometimes was a problem.
Then we started playing with KQLY who is more regular and impressive than me, so I logically left him this role.
The AWP is also less decisive than in 1.6: markeloff tends to play less with it, even though he is still strong as a sniper. The best team of the world (NiP) is far from having the best sniper of the world. SmithZz is as strong with the sniper than with rifles. Guardian has no team...
The new generation of snipers such as fxy0, KQLY and kennyS is more aggressive than the old one (sometimes too aggressive?). They are as comfortable at close range than at long range. The day I will be as comfortable as them, I will take the AWP.
I think I am good enough in deathmatch to get there soon. Maybe as a secondary sniper in CT on maps such as dust2.

apEX told us that "ioRek is the calmest player in the world and has an unbelievable cold blood, a perfect team-mate all in all." How would you describe apEX ingame ?

apEX is the least calm player and he is warm-blooded ... a nearly perfect team-mate all in all :p
If there were only ioRek-like players, nobody would speak after 5 rounds. If there were only apEX-like players, hmmm, there would be no teams, or the rounds would last 20 seconds maximum!
We are complementary and we often play together either as terrorist or CTs. I bring him a bit of patience and he brings the rest.

Two opposite generation.

Clan-Mystik during a match.

I’ve heard that you are working on a project based on CS :GO and the community market. Can you tell us more ?

I finished my studies (web development masters degree) since a while and I left my job a few months ago, so I have time to play and develop tools for players. I am working on a LoL project : http://www.thunderbot.gg . Also, I will finish soon the first version of a web application. It is called GoTRADERS and the purpose is to help players to easily find trade partners for weapon skins. It’s really easy to use and the strength of the project is in the algorithm to find the ‘right’ partner :
- You specify the skins you want (among a list of steam market)
- You specify the skins you offer (among your inventory if it is public)
And we find traders that interest you. Then you can add people on steam to trade your skins. A chat between two traders will arrive in the 2nd version .

If you want to know more go to http://gotraders.launchrock.com. We will send you an email as soon as the beta is ready !

It is now time for the traditional technical and bonus questions.
Technical question: We often heard about a difference of communication between Source and 1.6 players. Now that you play with players originating from both games, could you explain these differences? And more generally, explain your vision of the communication for the teams who want to improve this aspect of their game?

There is a difference in matter of in-game communication between the two communities. Source players generally have a better communication. They speak faster and with more enthusiasm. But after all, I have rarely played in high level communication teams in 1.6. One tip I have is to give an information to your teammates like if they could instantly revenge you. Sometimes I am alone in a corner of the map, I die, but I cannot say exactly if he’s moving or not. And even if nobody could kill him instantly, I they that the guy is backing up, so my teammates can continue to play staying focused. I also noticed that source players ask other people to stay silent in order to hear the footsteps in certain situations. It bothers me a little because it assumes that your teammate will give a useless information that could possibly obstruct a player for 1sec . I think it is for everyone to manage its ts/cs volume.

Bonus question  : According to another interview (http://www.team-aaa.com/news-23937-0-3-l_avis_d_anciens_joueurs_francais.html) to the question "will VeryGames manage to dominate the scene like they used to do on CSS" you answered "no, but they will remain among the two or three best teams of the world". And to the question "will we see you in a competitive team", you more or less clearly said that we will. To check if you were lucky about your prediction or if you are a fortune teller, could you tell me if Clan-Mystik will win a world title and if your former team-mates from emL, R!GO and mSx will come back on CS:GO (editor's note: MaT- is 6th player for CM)

For the first part it will be easy, even without being Nostradamus, Rigo and mSx will not play again on CS:GO. Too much time have passed and I think it is not possible for a comeback. Concerning Clan-Mystik, I don’t think we can be world champions. We can easily create surprises and beat a team like NiP or VG on a map or even on a BO3 but I don’t think we can follow up performances like this to win a tournament. The reason is simple : gaming house, salary, no school, no job…So much parameters which are unfavorable to us. This has been possible with emL but I think it will remain an exception.

Thank you IoRek.

Thanks to you, Clan-Mystik and Zowie !