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When it comes to CS:GO legends, the name shox is very hard to miss. Often hailed as the Greatest of All Time, Richard "shox" Papillon is a professional Counter-Strike: Global Offensive player from France. He recently retired from Nakama Esports, but his career as a player is far from over. The esports athlete has been actively playing Counter-Strike since CS 1.5 and has been a part of its esports scene since 2006.
Throughout his career, shox has played for numerous renowned teams, including G2 Esports, Team Vitality, Team Liquid, and more, leading them to victory on several occasions. He is one of the most accomplished players in the game and is a well-known name in the Counter-Strike community.
Recently, Rishabh Kalita from Sportskeeda Esports got the opportunity to interview shox. During the conversation, the professional esports player shared several intriguing insights into his career, his thoughts on Counter-Strike 2, pieces of advice for the future generation of esports players, and more.
shox talks about his CS:GO career, his most memorable moments, Counter-Strike 2, and more
Q. How did you get started with esports and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive in particular?
shox: Esports? Esports I have been playing all my life. I started the game at nine. I started playing and participating in competitions when I was around thirteen-fourteen. And so, it was only CS.
I started on CS 1.5. So, I just did basically every CS: 1.5, 1.6, Zero, Source, and of course later on, CS:GO. So I have been playing CS:GO from even before the day it came out because I was playing in the beta.
Q. You are one of the most well-accomplished Counter-Strike players in the world. What are some of the memorable moments in your career so far that stand out to you?
shox: The most memorable moments? There have been a lot. But of course, I will have to pick the Major Trophy in 2014 on the DreamHack Winter with LDLC as one of my greatest moments.
Then I would pick the ECS Finals in 2016 when I was in G2 because it was my first international title while being an in-game leader and captain. So this one felt really special to me, and it was a really nice moment.
And I would pick the last one, I think it was in 2021, if I am not wrong, with Vitality, during the Last Dance we did. We knew it was one of the last events with the team with this roster.
Managing to win an event while being in this type of environment was really something special. Because even if we knew it was the end, we gave it our all, you know. We really had good spirits. Thus, it was something special.
Q. You have been playing Counter-Strike since the CS 1.5 days. Since then, you have played almost all CS titles. How do you think Counter-Strike's esports scene has changed over the years?
shox: Mainly, I would say more people are watching it, but it is not only because of CS, I will say. It's because of the world we are all living in. You can see all social media, technology, and the internet, are growing so fast in the last decade.
CS was just a part of this, of course. Also, what helped CS for sure is when Valve introduced the Major in 2013 for the first one. It gave a lot of big prize pools because it was $250,000.
It also had way more visibility. When there is a Major, you just open the game, and then you can see all the matches, and you can see what's happening. I will say this has been, so far, really a huge boost from Counter-Strike overall.
And then Valve is just continuing, I would say, with all the Major and stuff. CS 2, coming out this year, is also going to be really huge for Counter-Strike.
I am mostly talking about CS so far. Valve introduced the Major and made CS something more special and, of course, like, different. This is also where all the sponsorship and all the clubs come in.
Of course, when you have more visibility and more viewership, you have more money. After all, it's a business, but for CS, it's cool.
Q. Speaking of CS games, Counter-Strike 2 is just around the corner. Since you have gotten your hands on CS 2, what are your thoughts on the game?
shox: It feels really nice to play. It's really funny, and as someone who has been playing Counter-Strike for more than twenty years, it feels good to have something different. CS:GO has been around the corner for ten years now, and yes, the game had a lot of updates at first. But the base is still pretty much the same, right?
CS 2 definitely has some new mechanics that you never saw in any Counter-Strike version, which will make the game really exciting. I am really looking forward to it because it is still CS. They didn't change the feeling of it. They didn't change the game itself but simply implemented new mechanics that make it actually like a new version.
Counter-Strike, I have been running, for more than twenty or thirty years. Having a new one after like ten years, it feels really good. I think it's going to change a lot of things because it still remains the same Counter-Strike, but the details are going to be different.
Q. As we know, Valorant is currently considered a competitor to Counter-Strike 2. In your opinion, what does Counter-Strike 2 do better than Valorant?
shox: In my opinion, CS is doing a lot of things better than Valorant [laughs] because CS is just CS. CS is love, CS is life. But overall, I would say the mechanics, in my opinion, are just better.
In CS, it feels better when you shoot and the movement as well. CS has been top-tier and is really loved by its community because of not only the shooting but also the movement.
On the topic of the graphics, it all comes down to taste, but on my part, I like the style of CS more, where it looks a bit more real, right? Valorant, as you can see, is more... I don't know how to say it, like a cartoon game, or maybe cartoon is a bit harsh, you know. You know what I'm saying.
Q. One of the highlights of Counter-Strike 2 is the volumetric smokes. Do you think this was a good decision on the developers' part, considering they are resource hungry?
In your opinion, is it only a gimmick, or can it actually improve the gameplay experience?
shox: I think it's going to improve the gameplay experience for several reasons. The first is, for example, no one dies in CS:GO when you are sitting in a smoke. This is what you call the "Fade" smoke. When the smoke is going to fade, if you are in the smoke, you are going to be able to see before your enemies that are not in the smoke, which makes a lot of plays kind of fun to watch.
But honestly, you can be pissed as a player because sometimes you get killed as you don't see the enemy as he is in the smoke. With the new mechanics, this is something that is not going to happen because when you are going to see a smoke, you are just going to maybe like nade in it, and you can directly see if it's clean or not.
On the tactical part, you can see today that there are not a lot of new things now in CS:GO because the maps didn't really change. There is not enough rotation of the map pool.
There's also not really like new mechanics talking about the utilities, the grenades. So I mean, everything that can be done on CS kind of has been done with all the teams, all the players, all the community, working like really hard.
This is something we don't have. So this is going to also implement new tactics, and new ways of playing. They also didn't add, at the moment, the skybox on the maps, which makes it possible to throw some utilities in some parts of the map.
So a lot of really new things are going to improve the gameplay for sure because they are going to encourage creativity.
Q. When it comes to tactical shooters, CS:GO was the go-to game back in the day. But since Valorant dropped, a huge chunk of the player base shifted to Valorant. What do you think CS:GO was lacking back then and does CS 2 address those issues?
shox: The main problem I would say of CS:GO, but it's also been some years... the game itself honestly is almost pitch-perfect. Everyone that has played CS can say that CS is a good game, and it feels good to play.
But Valve itself didn't release enough updates. In my opinion, that [more updates] makes the community really close to the game. They also had a lot of problems concerning cheaters. Both of these combined to make people leave.
Also, the ranked in the game is not great because you are going to play on some servers that are not the best, what we call 64 ticks. If you want to play on better servers, the 128, you have to go through FACEIT, which is a website.
You have to launch an application and anti-cheat, which makes the game better, but not everyone is going to launch and install it to play some CS game. I am talking about the casual player base.
Valorant didn't have all this in ranked, and you just have to go through the menu. Also interesting for players are the stats. You can see your rank, how far ahead or behind you are, and a lot of things that CS doesn't have for casual players. I find it really interesting.
Also, CS is, I would say, an elite game in a sense because it is pretty hard to master. Also, the games can be long because you are playing on a max round of thirty, first going to sixteen, while Valorant is first going to thirteen.
So overall, I would say Valorant is easier to play or is easier to begin when you are a casual player, which in my opinion, is why a lot of players came into it. A lot of people try to get into CS, but honestly, the game is hard.
When you are not used to playing FPS games or stuff like that, and you just go on a server, you just die, and die, and die, and then you just stop playing. In Valorant, you will still be able to get kills somehow, and you can have some fun because it's not only an FPS.
You can also kill people with your abilities, you can use ultimates and stuff like that. In CS, if you don't know how to shoot, you are going to have a hard time.
Q. Back in the day, there were a lot of accusations of using cheats in the professional CS:GO scene. Fortunately, you have managed to avoid any such controversy so far.
What are your thoughts on the accusations of using cheats in the professional CS:GO scene? Do you think of some these professional players were actually cheating?
shox: Honestly, this is something we will never know, right? But for now, apparently, we had some cheaters, it looks like, and Valve banned them. Was it only them? Are there more? Are there still some players cheating today?
This is something you can't have the answer to. But for sure, what I can say and what I can see when going to tournaments is all the protocols for protection from all the cheaters are being higher and higher.
You can't do everything you want. You can't take your own USB key, you have to give your config you are going to play before coming to the event. They are going to check everything. They clean all the SSDs every time you are going to play on a computer.
There is always a referee behind you who is checking what you are doing. You have to give up your phone before you go play so that you don't have your phone with you.
There is a lot of security. Is it enough? I don't know. If you want to cheat tomorrow on a professional level, you are going to have a hard time, honestly [laughs].
Q. As someone who is considered one of the CS: GO Legends, what do you think sets you apart from other professional players in the game?
shox: That's a good question. It's very hard to talk about myself. Honestly, I don't even know myself, but I would say probably the patience. Because if I am still here today, it's mainly because I still love CS, and I am still willing to be the best to compete, to win games.
I think having patience and also having this competitor-like soul, you know, in me, is what's helped me through my whole career. Because if you don't have that, it's going to be hard, and sometimes you are going to stop.
Don't think like it's always easy, definitely not. It's hard, tomorrow it's easy, and after, it's going to be hard again, and maybe it's going to be easy again, and then it's going to be hard again. It is always like this.
And what you need to do is always need to readvance yourself. You need to adapt about so what is going on. You need to improve yourself because there is always something to improve.
It can be on the game, it can be on the personal parts, it can be on the mental part, on the physical part, and as soon as you are not willing to put effort in, then I think you are just done.
So I would say, maybe, this is one of the reasons. Whatever the difficulties I have been facing in the last ten-fifteen years, I always made sure to give my best to go through it, to try to be better, and to make me like a better human being and a better player.
Q. Lastly, what advice do you have for those who aspire to become professional esports players?
shox: I would say if it's your dream, chase your dream. It's really important. But also keep in mind that if you want to go through it, follow your instinct, follow your heart, and also put in the effort you need for it. Everyone in the world has dreams, and everyone in the world has different dreams.
But what is the difference between someone who is going to raise his dreams and someone who is not going to do it is the will, the effort, and the sacrifices you are going to put in. If it is really your dream as we are speaking, go all in. Give it everything, every little percentage of your life you can. Just give it to it if you want to have a proper chance.
