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Counter-Strike: A billion-dollar game built in a dorm room

nytimes.com

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Re: Counter-Strike: A billion-dollar game built in a dorm room

#321

Post by viridian »

Spooky23 wrote: post #167
epolanski wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I legit miss early 2000s gaming. 1) People interacted, they truly did. Dramas, friendship, everything. Where? Quakenet, Forums. Every clan had their channel, some easily reached 1000+ people. 2) People genuinely played together in teams: CS, Day of Defeat, you name it. You had your clan and spammed #5on5 on quakenet. 3) Those clans actually met in lan! At Smau Italian Lan Party 2002 there were more than 60 Counter St…

That was an innocent and wonderful time for many of us, but there was a dark side to it, especially as this haven for nerds went mainstream. I have a good friend who was basically groomed/seduced in ann online game and raped by a 35 year old man when she was 13. It just sucks on so many levels that we can’t have nice things because many among us are beasts.

This is actually significantly worse now. The video game Roblox alone is awash in tens of thousands of cases of attempted grooming or child endangerment, according to their own metrics, and that's just what they have detected.

Re: Counter-Strike: A billion-dollar game built in a dorm room

#322

Post by vehemenz »

zingababba wrote: post #98
TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #47

Something that wasn't mentioned in the article is that Counter-Strike spawned the creation of the most iconic FPS map ever: de_dust2. If an FPS supports custom maps, it's inevitable that de_dust2 will get ported to it. There's actually a mini-documentary about the creation of de_dust2 [0] which I think will be of interest to FPS fans. I wonder if de_dust2 is the most played FPS map or if it has been dethroned by some…

I still don't get how dust2 became more popular than the original dust.

Mostly balance issues, I think. Balance matters in pubs.

If dust had the underpass-stairs option from the beginning, and maybe moved the T spawns forward by 1 second, it probably would be just as popular today.

Re: Counter-Strike: A billion-dollar game built in a dorm room

#323

Post by busfahrer »

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #211

I have a (knowingly irrational) dislike for Counter Strike because it fragmented what was previously an essentially single 'Quake / Quake 2" community, making the free-for-all adrenaline frag fests that I most enjoyed less populated, specifically at LANs. I got my fun from balls out running and firing rockets and rails in the chaos of free for all, and CS offered what was essentially the 'we're all campers' version,…

Agreed. The only thing more technically challenging than Q3 was its aptly named Challenge ProMode (CPM) mod which added thing like full air control to make gameplay even faster. Watching demos of the best CPM players I had the feeling that they were playing the game faster than I was able to follow it.

Re: Counter-Strike: A billion-dollar game built in a dorm room

#324

Post by nemomarx »

vaylian wrote: post #275
1-6 wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the late 1990s, living in South Korea during the fallout of the IMF financial crisis, my friends and I discovered PC bangs. These gaming havens offered titles like Rainbow Six, MechWarrior 2, and the legendary StarCraft. As a teenager, those moments were unforgettable—sitting in a buzzing PC bang, immersed in epic battles, sparked a lifelong passion for computer networks that I still pursue today. In the 2000s, I…

What are "PC bangs"? Are they like internet cafes, but meant for gaming?

broadly yeah. the computers have games pre installed and sometimes with subscriptions or free game time included in the price of your time there etc

Re: Counter-Strike: A billion-dollar game built in a dorm room

#325

Post by Aeolun »

endymion-light wrote: post #294
arkh wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My intuition is it still exists. This "old internet" sentiment is due to the fact it was mostly academics in their world and geeks in theirs on internet at the time. Then it made it easier for everyone to use so everyone used it. But I bet there are still the same proportion of geeks in the population. Which are still socializing on niche area of internet. We don't see it because we're old farts and have jobs and hab…

Honestly, this is partially why I actually love a lot of what's on Hackernews. This site still seems to have a big proportion of old school geeks within it's population, and it feels like one of the only places left for good discussion that i've found on tech.

It’s kinda funny right? You’d expect the number of comments to rise with the number of users, but aside from a few highly controversial topics we still have posts on the front page that barely get to triple digits comments, if even.

Re: Counter-Strike: A billion-dollar game built in a dorm room

#326

Post by viridian »

o11c wrote: post #236
0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the like/share/upvote stuff makes the internet much less authentic. Imagine going to a party where everyone offers a thumbs up/thumbs down whenever you finish a sentence. Do you anticipate making any close friends at this party?

Ironically, I've replied to several people using physical thumbs up/down recently. This can be caused by several variations on voice not being viable at the moment: * sore throat * eating * having another conversation * context demands silence (often requires the question to be nonverbal somehow, but not e.g. if the context is "sleeping baby right next to me") * noisy room (often asymmetric) * target is deaf

I use nonverbals frequently as well, but I think what 0xDEAFBEAD is getting at is more like if everyone were to walk around with a touch display hanging from a lanyard where you could like or dislike every comment. The simulacrum would cheapen the real experience by its very presence.

Re: Counter-Strike: A billion-dollar game built in a dorm room

#327

Post by busfahrer »

ViktorRay wrote: post #67
TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #47

Something that wasn't mentioned in the article is that Counter-Strike spawned the creation of the most iconic FPS map ever: de_dust2. If an FPS supports custom maps, it's inevitable that de_dust2 will get ported to it. There's actually a mini-documentary about the creation of de_dust2 [0] which I think will be of interest to FPS fans. I wonder if de_dust2 is the most played FPS map or if it has been dethroned by some…

Thanks for sharing this! Very interesting! I believe de_dust2 is likely still the most played FPS map. Not sure which other map could have dethroned it. It can’t be Fortnite since Fortnite changes the map every few months and nowadays makes a new one every year or so. I guess Blood Gulch from the time when Halo was super popular was a very popular map as well. Then you also have 2fort from the Team Fortress games. Bu…

I have fond memories of 2fort. Desperately wanting to play TF1 on a 14.4K modem from Germany - no European servers meant playing with 500ms ping, which made aiming completely impossible, so I took the pacifist route each time by picking the scout class and then trying to steal the flag unnoticed by coming in through the sewers. It worked sometimes when the server was only half full.

Re: Counter-Strike: A billion-dollar game built in a dorm room

#328

Post by Galaco »

rimunroe wrote: post #72

I will forever mourn the general demise of server browsers. Too many games require you to use matchmaking systems, which means it's very hard to build up a small community in-game anymore. You either have to rely on forming small parties with people you've stumbled upon one by one, or you have to seek out people from some much larger area like Reddit or Discord. It takes a lot of the serendipity out of the experience…

I wouldn't be playing video games anymore if there were no more games with dedicated servers. Not from a moral standpoint, or from a competitive standpoint, but purely from the community perspective.

My youth was spent on Counterstrike: Source playing zombie mod, and then for years mapping for Zombie Escape, as a way to give back to those communities that gave me so much. I was never a mic user, and didn't use in game chat a huge amount either, but over time those regulars would still greet me and say hello. I rarely play now, but even after 17 years, when I show up once a year or so I'm always welcomed back in by all those who recognize me and admins switch to some fun maps (or some less fun ones that I made...), and we have a short catchup on life. Certainly many of these communities are on life-support, and most are long dead, but in all those people who play in these communities are the remnants of the communities who had just a little contribution in shaping the person I am today. I'll never forget when one community held a birthday event for me; for 8 hours we played every map I'd ever made, and won them all, with a full 64/64 server for the majority.

And I would never have experienced this if I hadn't happened to open Counterstrike: Source for the very first time, and my server browser's first entry just happened to be an early zombie mod server.

Shoutout to some of the old ZM/ZE communities: Syndicate Gamers, Plaguefest, i3D, icannt, ZES, Unloze & many more. ZE drove my interest to mapping, which drove my interest in Sourcemod, which drove my interest in programming, which led me to my career, which led me to my wife. Thank you.

Re: Counter-Strike: A billion-dollar game built in a dorm room

#329

Post by sersi »

fho wrote: post #229
doublerabbit wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LAN parties were welcoming on so many levels. Never played DnD? Come join. One time I recall was an isle of misogynist folk who haven't showered in days playing WoW. The smell... no comment and in one case I recall at one LAN where a delivery woman was scared to walk down the isles to deliver so she asked me nicely if I could. No problem, pizza is here boys. But within reason, they kept to themselves and were there t…

> I just got back from a goth music weekend this weekend > the mean age would be 40-something At least in Germany the "black" scene has a serious "recruitment" problem. It's basically the same set of people for decades now with very little additions to the pool. It strange to me that I am amongst the youngest attendeds at concerts and "disco" events at 40.

I remember going to a goth concert in Germany back when I was 19 (20 yearsish ago) amd yeah not welcoming described them well. So I do think it's very much a problem of that specific segment of the community

Re: Counter-Strike: A billion-dollar game built in a dorm room

#330

Post by doom2 »

999900000999 wrote: post #270
rimunroe wrote: post #72

I will forever mourn the general demise of server browsers. Too many games require you to use matchmaking systems, which means it's very hard to build up a small community in-game anymore. You either have to rely on forming small parties with people you've stumbled upon one by one, or you have to seek out people from some much larger area like Reddit or Discord. It takes a lot of the serendipity out of the experience…

There's a difference between being toxic within a community. The community can self correct, it can ban people. And if you don't like a community, you can leave at any time. Compared to being toxic anonymously. Unless you get banned by an algorithm, your free to just suck. However, I was in one CS clan where a girl gave out her real number to a random guy. Within minutes she was getting spam calls and other not great…

> The community can self correct, it can ban people.

The problem is that somewhere along the way, we decided that banning toxic users was some kind of infringement on "free speech". It's wild to me that people think sites like Twitter are a better place with previously banned but now reinstated toxic users.

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