Live data from Hacker News

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

eseanews.com

61–70 of 105 posts

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

#61
There is a place called Kota in India. It is a hub of coaching institutes trying to assist highschool students get admission into top engineering and medical colleges(IIT,AIIMS) of India.

>5000 hours of counterstrike is pretty common game-time that students living there spend and you would easily find >25000 kids of age 15-16 such types. Millions of students go there each year. Competition is so tough that hardly top 2% get admissions into IITs.

As a result, >90% do not study.

You see them playing they are experts! Most of them don't even know how to log into a server. The cybercafe would set up the LAN for them. All they do is play, all the time. As per rule the shops are supposed to close after 11 pm. But these shops have eating/smoking and toilet arrangements inside. They pull down the shutter, as if the shop is closed from 11 to 6. Students stay 'voluntarily trapped' inside for a LAN party at a discounted rate of 1-2$ for the whole night. Once the course is over, the gig is too. they go back to their hometowns, never playing again.

I work in Delhi and I see clans participating and even winning international competitions like WCG. But even the gameplay of the best, is only at par average as per Kota standards.

All this time spent for happiness, curing boredom. Rajasthan would be the biggest consumer of CS, DoTA, Tekken, AoE if pirated stuff is counted for.

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

#62

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 know about you, but I don't choose my hobbies based on how likely they are to get me laid. And if people don't respect my hobbies, that's their problem, not mine. It's also a good indication of what kind of person they are.

Although as an aside, you do forget one significant downside to playing sports - injuries. This is especially the case if you play at all competitively. Also, are sports really a valid "long-term hobby"? You can probably only play most sports for so long... (barring golf/tennis/etc).

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

#63

Oh Janine, you so funny.

Not trying to be funny. I posted this because this is the best thing I've read of Jon's - and I felt there was something universally resonant about the sweet pain of aspiring to greatness. What I didn't expect were the multiple comments from those who play or used to play CS and draw lessons that apply to programming and teamwork. If CS produces colleagues like Jon, then more please.

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

#64

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…

> which can be radically changed or even destroyed at any time

This was the nail in the gaming coffin for me. Imagining all those hours spent to be completely worthless once the servers are shut down- and then imagining that all that time had been spent playing guitar and writing code. I still like to play games occasionally for fun, but not with the drive to be the best.

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

#65
Gaming taught me a lot and made my life better. I was depressed and with few positive catalysts. Warcraft 3 made me play with other people, meet people who I am friends with today and also taught me to be excellent.

I got to compete, set up a clan which trained other people, and held tournaments, and taught me how to take responsibility for my team. Like someone else mentioned, I learnt how to maintain morale, how to take on the jobs no one liked and to excel at them. Having people have faith in your strategy, making people follow your plan, knowing how important it is to even have one, no matter how bad, I learnt that from gaming.

But above all, like the OP, i learnt what it means to be the best at something. I look back at that time and am glad I did it. It helped me start building myself back up and taught me the basics of team work which I use everyday.

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

#66

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.

Bethesda games tend to be very moddable.

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

#67
I started competitive play at 15, eventually peaking at 18 with 2 CPL showings. I probably played vs. juan at a couple LANs.

The amount of focus, time, and sheer mental fortitude required showed me what it took to truly master something. When I could drop 35 kills in a half in a tournament, or kill 10 people in a round in a pub, I understood my level of commitment had led to that success.

I spent the past few years at a telecom/networking company doing sales as an engineer. Multi-million dollar deals, complex designs and high-stress situations. Learning to communicate only what was relevant and necessary, eliminating all extraneous information, was essential to success. My co-workers looked to me to quickly prioritize targets, shift strategy, and keep morale high as we focused on the end goal of closing.

Counter-strike taught me that. No other "group project" or random nonsense in college prepared me to work with the most highly regarded and ardent professionals in the world. My team would put egos aside, drop all sense of the individual, and focus on beating an enemy that was composed of the very same caliber.

It taught me the value of "ideal scenarios" or "how it's supposed to work". The immaculate plans leading up to a meeting, that required innumerable changes during practical execution. Without the ability to communicate as fluidly as possible between individuals any slight shift in the plan would create utter confusion and chaos, quickly exploited by a foe just begging for you to make a mistake.

I'd like to grab a beer with JonMumm. There's just something about the high-level Counter-Strike people that has reassured me that there are others out there can place so much of themselves into something that it doesn't become second nature, it becomes you.

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

#68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 entere…

I know a girl who broke up with her bf just because he was training hockey too much. 5-6 times training per week and 1 match = No time for gf.

And when not training they are talking about hockey, watching hockey-games on tv or playing nhl on xbox.

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

#69
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.…

To be fair, sports players may be forced into that by needing to put in the often-mentioned 10 000 hours before they get too old to compete.

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

#70

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 proble…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAx7Npsrin4&t=4m30s

same for designers as well lol

Post reply on HN