"What I Miss About Counterstrike" - Blog authored by CSS legend JonMumm • Hacker News Board

Re: "What I Miss About Counterstrike" - Blog authored by CSS legend JonMumm

#51

Post by cliftonk » Wed, Nov 30, 2011, 4:28 AM UTC

vl wrote: post #22

cliftonk wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modern day first person shooters provide an immersive, story-driven single player experience, but have gameplay that cannot make for a decent competitive platform.

Surely you are aware that Halo 3 with variants and COD:MW with variants are the most successful online FPSes of all time? Both were also criticized for shallow single player stories, not on par with previous versions.

Those games do not even come close to the competitive levels of CS for team-based FPS and Quake3 for dueling. Not by a long shot.

Re: "What I Miss About Counterstrike" - Blog authored by CSS legend JonMumm

#52

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Nov 30, 2011, 4:50 AM UTC

sray wrote: post #16

rkon wrote: post #11

Cliff notes: being great at something requires spending a lot of time on it. Not exactly groundbreaking insight, and I disagree entirely with the assertion that such dedication makes one "weird". Any sane person would be jealous of someone who's so passionate about their career that they gladly dedicate signifant effort to mastering it. The fact that he chose to spend 10,000+ hours mastering Counter Strike is the "we…

I think you're missing the point. It's not about becoming great at something. It's about being exceptional at one thing. It's about spending every moment of your life either practicing or thinking about that thing, to the detriment of everything and everyone else. It's about being possessed with the desire to be the best. And that is weird, by definition - only a small fraction of people have such dedication to one p…

[deleted]

Re: "What I Miss About Counterstrike" - Blog authored by CSS legend JonMumm

#53

Post by electromagnetic » Wed, Nov 30, 2011, 5:17 AM UTC

jiggy2011 wrote: post #49

kejadlen wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's any more of a poor choice than spending time trying to be awesome at sports or music, or any other hobby. The real question is: does it make you happy? Not everything in life needs to fulfill one of the questions you ask of a hobby - there are lots of things that people devote time and money to that won't make them money, get them laid, etc., and I don't think they're any more a waste of time than…

I'm not against playing games for short term happiness or pleasure. It just seems like a poor long term hobby , especially to focus so much on one game. I don't think CS is the worst offender here though, It's worse when WOW gets patched and people complain about the patch making their character worse because they invested so much time in that character which can be so arbitrarily rendered worthless. I think being go…

I don't find gaming a poor long term hobby, I see people who spend hours upon hours building model planes, only to crash it in a park.

If I never get published, my hobby of writing fiction is just as big a waste, if not more. At least playing CS or WoW gives me the chance of meeting someone to be friends with. With writing I'm generally disconnected and isolated, rather than connected and isolated.

Hobby's are entered into in full knowledge that you're wasting time. I don't see the point in replaying games (I worked as a movie/game reviewer, so I got into a healthy habit of seeing it as disposable entertainment), save for a few special ones like Grim Fandango.

> I think being good at sports or music is much more likely to get you laid and more likely to be a hobby that people will respect and you will be able to carry on throughout your life.

I don't think being good at sports is going to get you laid, I think being in excellent physical condition will get you laid. I think being good at sports means you're likely to have less free time to get laid, especially when you start avoiding drinking alcohol to perform better for saturday and sunday morning games.

Similarly I think being able to play guitar well might get you laid, I don't think spending your Saturdays in someones garage is going to help.

Sorry but you can't claim one hobby is superior to another, when by a hobby is a non-productive activity.

I'm sure many professional athletes have said "wow, why did I take that so seriously" when they're burnt out at 30, or took a bad tackle or fall and can never get back to performance level. I mean fuck, watch a series of Intervention and you'll see like 5 Olympic or Olympic qualifying athletes.

Re: "What I Miss About Counterstrike" - Blog authored by CSS legend JonMumm

#54

Post by Periodic » Wed, Nov 30, 2011, 5:20 AM UTC

mumm wrote: post #42

jiggy2011 wrote: post #36

I spent a fair amount of my youth playing counterstrike and still have fond memories of it. I also learned to program roughly around the same time and found the later far more fulfilling in the long run. I learned skills in programming in those years that I still use today, but whenever I even touch a public counter strike (source) server these days I get hopelessly owned by a new generation. I now see video games as…

I always knew there were more worthwhile pursuits and that's why, in hindsight, I struggle to accept the time I spent playing. But I never felt like it was downtime. I knew I was building skills that I would use again someday. It wasn't about trying to be the best at shooting a gun in a virtual world. It was about outthinking and outmaneuvering my opponent. Analyzing details and figuring out the best strategy. It was…

I believe the single most important thing I've learned from playing competitive online games is how to manage the morale of a group. When you have 30-minute experiments, mostly self-contained, it's amazing how easy it is to see how one denigrating comment can ruin a whole match because it ruins the teams cohesion and teamwork. A few well-placed bits of praise, a little humility, and a little leadership will trump raw skill most of the time.

It's a lesson I'm glad I've learned, and now I can use online games as a way to practice.

Re: "What I Miss About Counterstrike" - Blog authored by CSS legend JonMumm

#55

Post by T-hawk » Wed, Nov 30, 2011, 5:27 AM UTC

trafficlight wrote: post #15

potatolicious wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counter-Strike had a similar effect on me. I'd be coding since long before CS, but most were small, simple hacks. Seeing the success of Counter-Strike, and the mod-mania of that era, got me interested in modding, where I was first exposed to the complexities (and math!) that "real" software entailed. From there I went on to write some standalone, small games, then went deeper down the C++ rabbit hole which helped me…

I remember trying out tons of mods for Half Life and Quake around '99-2000. That's all but disappeared now. Are there still active modscenes for newer games? Minecraft is the only one that really comes to mind.

Different genre and a few years old now, but Civilization 4 is supremely moddable with a very active community. Firaxis released the entire source code to the game rules engine!

Re: "What I Miss About Counterstrike" - Blog authored by CSS legend JonMumm

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Post by kevinalexbrown » Wed, Nov 30, 2011, 5:40 AM UTC

sev wrote: post #44

jaggederest wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what makes the old-school polymaths like Goethe and Von Neumann so amazing to me - they not only did it in a single field, but many, all relatively simultaneously.

Many, which are very closely related. Computer science and mathematics are essentially one and the same, or maybe a subset of another (as an example)

Goethe did more than math or CS.

Re: "What I Miss About Counterstrike" - Blog authored by CSS legend JonMumm

#57

Post by kevinalexbrown » Wed, Nov 30, 2011, 5:52 AM UTC

gwern wrote: post #40

If I may, David Foster Wallace (as so often) said it better: > “But it’s better for us not to know the kinds of sacrifices the professional-grade athlete has made to get so very good at one particular thing…the actual facts of the sacrifices repel us when we see them: basketball geniuses who cannot read, sprinters who dope themselves, defensive tackles who shoot up with bovine hormones until they collapse or explode.…

I think the DFW was a little melodramatic here. I don't think the commitment to true excellence necessarily detracts from other possible commitments in the long run. E.g. DFW was a writer of singular ability, and he was, at various points in his life, dedicated to tennis, philosophy, and mathematics.

More to the point, the time spent being great at CS doesn't seem to have limited this guy's future ability to do things like work at a startup. While I'm sure it was an unbalanced life during the period of dedication, suggesting that it's the dedication itself which reduces athletes to "shockingly vapid and primitive comments" goes a little far.

Re: "What I Miss About Counterstrike" - Blog authored by CSS legend JonMumm

#58

Post by deepkut » Wed, Nov 30, 2011, 5:52 AM UTC

Few news articles (even on HN) 'move' me, but this one did. To all those whom were among the best at a popular game, you understand.

Some interesting comments: like whether playing CS, or any other game, is "worth it." I agree with kejadlen, "does it make you happy?" Though heroin, at some point in time, makes addicts "happy." One thing is for certain though, the feeling of mastery gets harder and harder to find later in life, at least with regards to professions or wealth.

Re: "What I Miss About Counterstrike" - Blog authored by CSS legend JonMumm

#59

Post by kejadlen » Wed, Nov 30, 2011, 6:15 AM UTC

jiggy2011 wrote: post #47

kejadlen wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's probably some correlation/causation in there - I imagine that you would tend to become "addicted" to things that you're naturally good at.

I think the case is that when you start playing a video game you don't start with the intention of playing it for 10000 hours, you just keep playing an realize you have invested so much time that you may as well keep playing and become the best.

Most people who trot out that "10,000 hours" figure don't remember the second part - it's 10,000 hours of _meaningful practice_. Being the best at something, including video games, isn't something that you just stumble into.

Would you say that about someone who enjoys sports as a hobby? You say "may as well keep playing and become the best" as if video games somehow involve less skill or practice to become the best at than other hobbies.

Re: "What I Miss About Counterstrike" - Blog authored by CSS legend JonMumm

#60

Post by kaichanvong » Wed, Nov 30, 2011, 6:31 AM UTC

Having read this, there are so many skills you can pick up from the gaming culture that helps you integrate with working as a programmer.

He probably knows how to do scripting from IRC... maybe he's written a bot or knows how a bot works from IRC. I remember lots of bots that work in different way and what you can learn from watching it run.

At 16 I remember seeing my very first bot and being amazed by it. The problem was that I was on a Windows box and everyone around me was on Linux. Then the problem was which language did I pick. Then the problem was that the most popular language was a bitch to install... then there was the problem I had no idea what the error was and if it was something I had done.

Oh the list goes on.

What I'm trying to say is, not everything is a waste. Knowing when something is valuable enough to spend time of is a skill in its self.

+1 procrastination proclaimer