The team at Refrag is in a constant state of motion, working tirelessly to innovate and execute strategies to help you improve at Counter-Strike. It’s an impressive atmosphere; an array of moving parts, ideation, and creation as complex and amazing as watching a meticulously-planned site exec from prime Astralis. So, I thought I’d interrupt it.
This is the second in our series of interviews with key members of the Refrag family, and today I managed to steal some time with the Co-Founder and CEO, Casey Foster.
Hi Casey! So, to start, what is your role within Refrag, and how did your Refrag journey start?
I’m the CEO of Refrag, but Stefan and I pretty much run the company together. He runs tech and I run product and some of marketing. My journey in building training tools for CS players goes back to 2008, when I made the first couple of training mods on game servers in the NetcodeGuides days that Stefan later joined. But the actual start of Refrag was around 2018, when we made tools for the tier-one pro teams and eventually expanded on the product, making tools for the non-pro players.
That’s great! What does your day-to-day look like?
Well, I have a 1-year-old son, so it starts early getting him up and off to daycare. After that, I catch up on what the tech team did while I was asleep, as they’re mostly in Europe, so I see if there’s anything that needs testing before moving to production. Next, I’ll usually evaluate the performance of whatever I was working on the couple of days before. I will generally cruise through the Refrag discord to see what feedback users have and digest it into our plans. There are also 10,000 other things that have to happen as a small startup as well, but these are pretty common daily occurrences.
Sounds like a lot of work! On your LinkedIn, you state that part of your work is having to ‘constantly review market needs to help direct product innovations’. What are some ways in which you’re able to tap into the market zeitgeist to help Refrag innovate?
Good question! In general, I’m a CS player, so I know what players need and want. The needs never change as the game is the same, but how they want it is constantly changing. So I spend a decent amount of time just joining random discord servers asking CS players CS questions: what they spend their time doing, how they like to improve, whether it’s successful, do they think it could be better, etc. So, over the years, we have adapted Refrag to the current market conditions (generally how players interact with tools) to help players better digest the tools and get the most out of their time spent in CS, along with enjoying it.
That’s a cool perspective. Okay, focusing on the Refrag team for a moment: in my interview with Stefan, he said he thinks Refrag has ‘the best team out there’. What are some of the core values/skills that make the Refrag team great?
It’s funny, during interviews where we’re hiring someone at Refrag, I will often say “This is probably the first job in your life where playing Counter-Strike is important”. This isn’t the only thing, but it’s really important, as it helps us develop the product for CS players as everyone here is a CS player. Alongside that, everyone on the Refrag team believes in our product and what we do, and we give everyone the full autonomy to do what they do, the best they can. This has resulted in the best training tool and platform Counter-Strike has ever seen, and I stand by that and our team.
Awesome! Okay, what’s a milestone you’d like to see Refrag achieve in the future?
I’m excited to see us expand into new titles. Currently, we support only Counter-Strike and maybe a little side project, hopefully releasing in the early part of this year. We are constantly evaluating if other game titles ever get to a point where something like Refrag can be developed. The only other game titles that would work already have things built, like Mobalytics for League of Legends and Dotabuff for Dota. It’s been interesting to follow the development of Deadlock, although I’m not sure if it will stick enough to warrant something like Refrag. But we’ll see!
Last time, I asked Stefan the following: ‘Without knowing who it will be, what’s a question you want to ask the next interviewee?’ He asked: ‘If you had all the money and people you’d need, what one thing would you add to Refrag that doesn’t yet exist?’
If I had all the money and people, I would clone Stefan and Jimi (our mod developer), so we can develop a super-powered AI that can actually identify player mistakes and automatically output a mod that allows the players to get reps in improving the things they are poor at.
That’s a great answer! Okay, here are a few more random questions for you. Outside of CS, what are your favorite hobbies?
I’m an avid fisherman, I play golf, and I race cars. I have been alternating two of these three hobbies since I was about 18, with golf starting when I was about 25. I, of course, play video games a little and like to spend time with my wife, kid, and dog!
What’s your all-time favorite movie?
Remember The Titans.
Other than CS, what’s your favorite game?
I pretty much only play Apex Legends and League of Legends outside of Counter-Strike. I’m decent at Apex Legends (Masters peak). I’m absolute dog water at League of Legends, and I love it.
Who is the CS GOAT?
I’m going to answer this question a little differently: the future goat will be EliGE on his next or next-next team (Editorial Note: this interview was held before the EliGE to FaZe announcement, so Casey could be onto something…).
Interesting…okay, it’s time to shamelessly copy Desert Island Discs. What three songs would you take with you to a desert island?
‘Moment Of Clarity’, by JayZ. ‘All Falls Down’, by Kanye West. ‘Broken Glass’, by Kygo.
Good choices! Okay, time for the final couple of questions. If you had just one singular mode to show off, which mode would you use to convince a new user to join Refrag?
Defender. It forces you to do everything you need to do in CS pretty much perfectly! It’s a bit frustrating, but it’s pretty much the speedrun to get better at CS.
Thank you for your time today! Last question: without knowing who it will be, what’s a question you want to ask the next interviewee?
What would you be doing if you weren’t working on Refrag?
There you have it – the answers to all the important questions (and some less important ones), from Casey. Time to hunt out our next interviewee!
