Counter-Strike | The FPS Phenomenon

Counter-Strike is one of those games you almost don't even have to introduce to your parents. Just like Mario, Grand Theft Auto, or World of Warcraft it made far beyond nerd culture and the majority of people know of it.

Counter-Strike is a game that has kept a loyal community for more than 20 years. And it doesn't show any signs of stopping. While thousands of other games come and go – Counter-Strike is here to stay and even grow. Thus, it is no surprise that Riot decided to expand dramatically as it has the game spread into the realm of tactical shooters. So, let us take a look at what exactly makes Counter-Strike so attractive. But to do that – we have to go to the very beginning.

The Pioneers

The nineties. For me, the time when I was a little kid. But for shooters, this was the time truly the time of shooter games. Whether you consider the grand-daddy Doom, its successor Quake, the revolutionary Half-Life, or Unreal and its brother Unreal Tournament. True giants of the shooter genre. There were a few common threads to most shooters of that time – a sci-fi theme, rocket-jumping, a frantic action in multiplayer. And most of all – jump into the deathmatch and kill everything you see. Or die and get revived a second later and repeat. We still love this kind of instant fun but in the year 1998 demand for something different was starting to appear. Something more tactical. Something more realistic.

Ming “Gooseman” Le was a student back at a university back then and as a good student, he actually cared about his studies and future so in his free time he didn't play games. Instead, he was gathering experience and coding games. Right away, his first game – a modification of Navy Seals for Quake was a glimpse of the future with its flashbangs and the need to care about your ammo. Nonetheless, we had to wait until Action Quake 2 to things to really get moving. This to this modification Le met Jesse Cliff and together they started to think about the next step in the evolution of shooters. The problem was that the creators wanted to achieve such a level of realistic gameplay, such realistic looks that would mean too much work added to modding the gothic-themed Quake. Luckily, Half-Life existed at that time and it proved to be the ideal canvas.

The Community At Heart

Six months of preparing the models and after release the Half-Life SDK another month of coding. That is how long it took before we got the see Counter-Strike on the 19th of June of 1999. But only in its “Beta One” version. Le obviously wasn't the only person working by that point. Even before the release a community already existed – handled by Cliff. He managed – thanks to his contacts – to acquire map creators and later became the administrator for the website that functioned as a map aggregate and – and most importantly – as a tool for feedback from the community which formed how Counter-Strike will be developed.

Le hoped that their project will find a small fanbase which will allow the mod to grow. But the reality was slightly different. Ever since the fifth beta version Counter strike became a true phenomenon and since the year 2000 it managed to even surpass “big” games coming from Valve. Jesse Cliff remembers at a funny situation when after the release of the sixth beta a teenager from Florida hosted the installation files on his server in Florida that he managed to knock down the whole internet provider for two days as there were just too many downloads. Likely, this was at least partially the reason why Valve decided to take the promising creators under their wings.

The Bomb Has Been Planted

Five on Five. One team of “good” counter-terrorists and one team of “evil” terrorists. Two simple ideas that are trying to achieve completely opposing goals but truly just need a well-aimed headshot. Both of them are stepping on the running train named “de_hell”. No respawns until the next round and that means even a few minutes of waiting and no playing. How could something so “hardcore” succeed? Well, initially it was the newness of the thing – the accessible realism and when other games joined a bit later with their take on realism Counter-Strike still took the cake with its pure skill-based gameplay. No upgrades. No grinding. Once the match starts you have all that you need and let us see what you can do with it.

But a major role – expect from the design – was also played by the developers caring about the game. Even after the devs were hired by Valve nothing fundamental changed and changes done to the game were done mostly because the community wanted them. This eventually led to a “true” release of the version 1.0 and after some time (more precisely until 2003) the final version 1.6 that became the first game on the (back then) new platform Steam. Well, I am actually lying a bit here – 1.6 wasn't the final version. But ask any true old-school Counter-Striker and he will oath it to you that 1.6 was the best and you cannot improve the game from there. Except for graphics as there was the game we will not speak about with a name including a number that isn't positive or negative. But the true successor had to wait until 2004.

New Idea Machine

If you are a shooter fan you likely know of the year 2004. It would be weird if you didn't. Autumn of that year the magnificent Half-Life 2 was crowned king of shooter games – proudly presenting a graphics revolution with its Source engine. But the true first bird to spread the news was Counter-Strike. The remaster of the version 1.6 with a self-explanatory title: Counter-Strike: Source. The gameplay – opposed to the visual side of things – remained pretty much the same. That was part of the reason why many players were unsure whether they want to buy the expensive “new” Counter-Strike. Nonetheless, Counter-Strike was not a sprint runner – it aimed to win the marathon. While it wasn't and it will never ever be the original Counter-Strike – time was Source's biggest friend. It took time for the original to age like wine into the fine product we know and love. And it was the same for Source. The game brought in new fans and in the end, it even managed to get the hearts of the old-timers because – frankly said – it just was better and was supported with updates.

And while community-made maps were a signature thing even in the original Counter-Strike as Source appeared the numbers of player-made mods skyrocketed. Surf maps are a thing of cults. But it was all because of the Source engine. It allowed for the easy making of weapon skins – which proved to be the right thing to have in the future.

Global Failure...

Nowadays, Valve would likely not do such a thing but 9 years ago the company was quite different. To such a degree that it used an external studio – Hidden Path Entertainment – to create a port of Counter-Strike: Source for consoles. This bold move was announced on the 12th August of 2011 – exactly 4,444 days after the first beta of Counter-Strike was released and every presentation was done exclusively on the Xbox 360. Total insanity. But it only got multiplied when Valve realized the potential lying in the game called Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and announced it for the PC as well. Including cross-play with consoles. Thank the heavens – that never came to be but CS: GO did get released a year later. And it crashed and it burned. Not that it was that bad of a game. The upgraded Source engine gave new life to old maps and gameplay-wise it was not such a dramatic shock as you might remember.

But it did – again- miss the time to age well. There were way too few maps, way too few weapons, way too few of everything. Yet, this was supposed to be the game that brings out the old-school 1.6 lovers, the CS: Source lovers and leaves them waiting in matchmaking lobbies as community servers were just a “thing of the past”. But that is not how to approach a loving community and Valve was to find them out very quickly. CS: GO had fewer players online the “old” Source and many decided to completely give up on it. But this – this brings us to the skins.

...& Global Success

In Valve, where anyone can work on whatever they want – nobody really wanted to touch CS: GO and many rather moved their workbenches to Team Fortress 2. But there were a few exceptions. Few smart boys had a light bulb light above their heads and found the recipe the make CS: GO a success. They looked at what made the old Counter-Strikes so successful. Community and its creations. It was right there in front of everybody – hiding in plain sight. So, why not take the culture of skins and combine it with extremely profitable microtransactions. Gamers make skins and the best ones get to be sold for real money in-game. Eureka!

Suddenly, more people wanted to play and create content for CS: GO and Valve had a reason to make content for the game as well. Even to sponsor tournaments watched by millions of viewers. The aging of CS: GO was a long process but sometime around 2015 CS: GO reached tops of the stats of Steam where it stays until today. And while there are some serious contenders for the spot of the most popular shooter game ever – Counter-Strike will always have a special place in the hearts of gamers. So, don't stand there – go and plant the bomb!