ULTIMATE GUIDE COUNTER STRIKE
WHETHER IT’S THE TENS OF THOUSANDS STILL PLAYING COUNTER-STRIKE 1.6 DAILY OR THE MILLIONS PLAYING ALONG WITH EACH NEW MODERNISATION, THE ETERNAL BATTLE BETWEEN TERRORISTS AND COUNTER-TERRORISTS HAS BECOME A PERMANENT PART OF SHOOTER HISTORY. RETRO GAMER EXPLORES HOW THIS ICONIC FPS BECAME AN INDUSTRY MAINSTAY
Arguably more than any other genre, the first-person shooter has perhaps seen more evolution and change throughout the history of the industry than any other. Some of that is down to technological improvements, some is a result of innovative game design, while some is even the fickle cause of ever-changing trends. But what’s particularly interesting for those that have paid attention is how the humble FPS hasn’t gradually changed via subtle improvements and steady progression, but in periodic leaps and bounds as one major release drops and suddenly changes everything. Counter-strike is one such game, which put the nail in the coffin for the classic arena-style deathmatches of Quake and its ilk, championing a new way of playing online shooters.
Even on an aesthetic level, Counter-strike was a pioneer in pushing the industry away from shooting aliens, robots or demons and closer towards more realistic modern settings. Heck, even Half-life, which skewed closer towards realistic gun mechanics and whose engine Counter-strike was built upon, still chose to pit players against an invading force of aliens. That’s not to say that it was the first to shun the typical sci-fi schlock, it was after all inspired in varying degrees by Rainbow Six, Police Quest: SWAT and Virtua Cop. But it’s clear that gamers were ready for a bit more realism in their gunplay, as seen with the popularity of the likes of Goldeneye 007 and Medal Of Honor.
While Counter-strike’s arsenal may have been disguised by fictional names, it still featured models, animations and accurate controls for the likes of the Beretta, the
AK-47, MP5, Desert Eagle and many other familiar names that most of us wouldn’t have a deep-seeded knowledge of if it wasn’t for videogames addling our minds. It was unheard of at the time (aside from Rainbow Six, which released one year prior), but Counter-strike was played by so many that the previously held upper management concern about the public’s concerns of ‘realistic violence’ in videogames was cast in doubt, and from there a slew of modern day FPS games began to trickle out.
And of course this was a multiplayer-only title, at least in its early days, which might not have counted for much if not for the fact that here, too, Counter-strike was throwing out
the rulebook. Quake was still the flavour of the day when it came to online FPS gaming of the time, and this sort of twitch-shooting deathmatch was pumped into any new FPS that could handle it. Here Counter-strike’s goal of replicating real-world special forces operations followed through into the way each game was played. The big twist was the Round-based system, which meant no respawning until after the current round has been won. At a time when the standard multiplayer life from respawn to gibs and to respawn again was roughly 30 seconds, the thought of having to wait to have your go again was completely alien. But naturally this just made things all the more competitive – and tense – since one wrong move meant you’re sitting this one out as you watch your team suffer without you. Adding to this was the fact that your gear is actually purchased at the start of each round, meaning you’ll scale up in power as the match rolls on and therefore smart use of your available funds was as critical to your performance in the game as your skills. This extra layer of strategic depth has since evolved into a pretty robust economy as players need to figure out whether they really need that extra flashbang or if they’d rather save their current funds to unlock their favourite gun in the next round.
Despite these core concepts, steady evolution has always been pretty much the modus operandi for
Counter-strike. It was by no means released as a flawless and perfect multiplayer FPS, what with it being developed as a Half-life mod by two college students. But even from its initial beta through to release and later patches, Counter-strike was constantly changing and reforming based not only on the players’ feedback, but the contributions of the community. Back when it was still in beta there was no Bomb Defusal mode, for example, and instead the primary mode was to find and rescue hostages. The gun was on the left instead of the right, there was yet to be a knife added and maps even had terminals through which you could directly watch a camera for a live feed of the battle as it happened. The betas were a chance for experimentation, too, such as co-creator Minh Le’s inclusion of vehicles, Half-life’s mounted machine guns, and even a Commander Mode that randomly selected a player on each side as the commander with special radio commands.
The changes came quickly, with Minh and fellow creator Jess Cliffe responding to all the feedback they were getting. Even in its early days it was clear that Counter-strike was set for global fame and as the community grew, so too did the number of volunteers wanting to help out with the mod’s creation, changing the situation from Minh and Jess having to practically beg people to playtest it to having an overabundance of content and additions to choose from.
Practically all of the game’s maps were created by its dedicated players, and so many were submitted on a regular basis that they
even had to go through a process of selecting out the ones ‘worthy’ to be included. Yep, even Dust was a community-created addition.
Even when it was just in beta, Valve was already tuned into the fact that Counter-strike was garnering a pretty sizeable community of players with the numbers growing exponentially on a week-by-week basis. Those two college students quickly found themselves with jobs at Valve, and Counter-strike was incorporated officially into the studio. Naturally this helped with visibility, but even before its release CS (as it’s affectionately known) was being played globally in the hundreds of thousands. Valve put as much behind it as it could, but that grassroots, community-led development was always its heart. Things stabilised at the release of version 1.6, which remained the ‘ultimate’ version of CS for several years. It’s been said before by Valve that the regular tweaks and updates of Counter-strike was one of the critical reasons for the development of Steam, since it would enable a way for all players to stay up-to-date with as little impact and downtime as possible. With all this attention and competitive play, it’s not surprising that Counter-strike has become one of the most important games for esports in the industry. Prior to its release there were tournaments for Quake and Starcraft that had built a sizeable (if albeit exceptional) esports fanbase in South Korea, but nothing had the global competition that CS had built. Even to this day it remains one of the mainstream FPS games in the esports scene, and it says a lot that the core gameplay systems haven’t really changed since its very first release.
This has been an intentional decision by Valve over the years, which has made changes but often tiny and rarely controversial (the community don’t let those ones last very long). The tried and true cliché fits here: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Counter-strike has been stalwart in its gameplay ever since its early days as a mod; it might’ve been enhanced through community feedback, but that core concept has proven strong enough to stand the test of time. It encourages teamwork, requires high levels of skill and is thrilling to watch in a competitive environment. It might have received various visual upgrades over the years, but this remains as true now as it did when it first debuted.