The Rise Of Counter-Strike

b0r1s writes "Business 2.0 is running a story about Minh Le, and his now famous Counter-Strike mod for Half Life. The article explains the origins and motivation for the development of the mod, as well as explains the virtues of making code freely available for those who wish to hack games."

Comments

It's a beautiful thing

[yorgasor]

Wow, it's amazing that halflife was so open to let their fans freely modify their code and give them all the tools to do it. This flies directly in the face of corporate logic, where companies sick their lawyers on their most loyal fans for copyright infringement or DMCA violations for modifying their products. And how did their fans react?

"We've actually sold more of the overall Half-Life family of products each year since we shipped back in 1998, which is very unusual in a market typified by three-month shelf lives"

It really is in corporate best interests to let their fans run with their products, create communities around their products and thereby add value and promote their products for them. I wish they'd understand that the fastest way to kill the very communities that support them is to send lawyers after them.

No CD was key for me...

[(H)elix1]

Not needing the game CD stuck in my box is what sucked me in. I could play half-life, UT, and a few other games, but most would require the CD to be in the box. CS did not. I could jump in, it checked my CD key over the net, and I was off getting pasted by people who were way better than I.

After scratching a couple CD's and having oodles of hard drive space, I just don't like to play games that require the media. Granted, I can wander and get the no-cd 'fix' for the game, but you end up looking for a fresh crack every time the game does a service pack. As someone who actually pays for the bloody game - this pisses me off.

I'd say no media 'copy protection' was key for me...

Old news: Business2.0 is 2.0 years behind

[zeno_lee]

The Economist already had an article on this close to 2 years ago. Surprisingly it was reviewed in the Books and Arts section, assumingly because such a fantastic success comes from artistic genious.

Economist Article: Counter-culture

Think of the children!

[DrugCheese]

I'm not sure if anyone's heard, Oprah Winfrey had an 'expert' on the other day, who tied the recent sniper killings in the D.C. area to Counter Strike. The 'expert' said that Counter Strike had trained this individual to kill and how to handle a gun.

Excuse me, but how does playing a game teach you how to properly handle a gun? I've told my friends that Counter Strike isnt a game, it's a simulator. But a gun simulator it is not. I view it as a very good tactical simulator. But no-where during its gameplay does it teach you how to properly handle a gun, let alone teach you how to shoot someone at great distances.

I guess I just needed to get that off my chest. Oprah Winfrey is ugly too. ;)

Cheating - The Number One Problem

[fire-eyes]

The #1 problem with this mod, cheating, wasn't mentioned anywhere.

This would be a bigger game if that was fixed, personally I have zero intrest in it because I constantly hear those who play bitching about cheating.

Too bad.

Cstrike Beta 1

[jeramybsmith]

There were probably about 50 people playing CS Beta 1 hardcore. Back then it was a much different mod. The teams for one thing were almost identical. So you would sit there and shoot a guy a bunch of times and then it would turn out he was a teammate (unless of coruse friendly fire was on, heheh). Chance also played a greater role. There was no head protection and a stray glock round from a mile away would kill you instantly. The money system was also very different and it was much harder to buy the best guns (and since chance played a larger role you didnt hold onto said gun very long).

My favourite memory was exploiting the map cs_siege. On this map there was a room with hostages that the CTs had to rescue. If the terrorists started losing and couldnt buy good guns, I would take all the hostages into said room. The only way into that room was a door. There was a window to that room that was unbreakable. I would spray a black spray over the window on the outside so the CTs couldnt see inside. Mind you, due to halflife mechanics, the terrors could see out of it fine, thus we had a sort of one way viewport. We would camp out there and just wait until a CT would bumble in (this first CT is usually the "rambo" who had a cable modem back before they were as common and he has a good gun and no time for teamplay). Voila, their LPB is down and we have his gun. Chances are, his gun shoots through walls and we just mow the rest down as they come into the room our window faces.

Later on, the window was made breakable and a vent was added to make another way into that room, but that was some of the funnest gaming I've ever had.