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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

#471

Post by viridian »

sfn42 wrote: post #470
viridian wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As much as I love all the maps you mentioned, and could probably sketch their layouts from memory, I think Rust and Nuketown from the call of duty series are probably better known by a wide margin. Rust has been featured in 3 different games that had a combined sales of over 2 billion dollars, but even that is small peanuts compared to Nuketown. Nuketown has been featured in six different games, with 17 total variant…

By "six different games" do you mean six practically identical re-releases of the same game?

Man if you saw the endless wailing and gnashing of teeth about every single change that happens iteration to iteration you'd be astounded.

The two subfranchises, modern warfare and black ops do generally feel substantially different though. Modern warfare is generally a slog, but black ops can be quite zoomy, especially now that Raven software is working on them.

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

#472

Post by sfn42 »

angrydev wrote: post #57
Insanity wrote: post #10

Ahh, I started playing CS back in 2004. I go back to it every year for a few weeks / months, but the latest iteration (CS2) leaves some things to be desired from the 'community server' perspective. No good surf ("TDM") style games anymore, seems like that game mode has mainly died in favour of the timed surf game-mode. So now I stick to the 'vanilla' game much more, but without a group of friends that plays regularly…

Yeah I dabbled with the “competitive” play in 1.6 back in the day when it was finding matches on irc but most of my fun came from the communities I played with consistently. Maybe you can find these in some form but it’s not what most people are talking about these days if they say they “play counter strike”. I don’t really like the seriousness of ranked play so I never got back into it.

> I don’t really like the seriousness of ranked play

I see a lot of people say this type of thing and it's strange to me beause it doesn't have to be serious. You can do whatever you want within reason, as long as you're not griefing or something.

I have a group of friends who I play Overwatch 2 with occasionally, but they always insist on playing quick play instead of ranked and especially in that game quick play is just worse. Rankings are just a way to match you with people of roughly equal skill, you don't have to chase a higher rank all the time. I actually like losing ranks because it just means I'll have an easier time for a while until I go back to where I start struggling.

Meanwhile I see others get legitimately emotional about dropping a rank and I just don't get it. Relax, it's just a game. We're not playing for money or fame or anything. If you're really at a level where money and fame is on the table you probably don't care about your matchmaking rank anyway.

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

#473

Post by sfn42 »

meehai wrote: post #291

I've played years of KZ and HNS after years of playing competitive CS on local communities (old PGL in romania!). I got over 6k hours in steam CS1.6 + many more on "non-steam". That game shaped me. I even learned the basics of programming while modding a KZ plugin: https://forums.alliedmods.net/showthread.php?t=130417 Nowadays I code for a living, but for sure this is the game that started the spark for me. It was a…

I played thousands of hours of KZ in CSGO. I knew pretty much everyone in the community back then, was involved with House of Climb as a sort of crew member/moderator and set a couple world records and top 5 times etc.

Those were great times, but all the strafing caused some shoulder and arm problems so I eventually gave it up and moved on.

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

#474

Post by sfn42 »

viridian wrote: post #471
sfn42 wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By "six different games" do you mean six practically identical re-releases of the same game?

Man if you saw the endless wailing and gnashing of teeth about every single change that happens iteration to iteration you'd be astounded. The two subfranchises, modern warfare and black ops do generally feel substantially different though. Modern warfare is generally a slog, but black ops can be quite zoomy, especially now that Raven software is working on them.

That's just gaming. It doesn't matter what developers do, some portion of the playerbase will be mad about it. Nerf a thing, someone gets mad, don't nerf it someone else gets mad. I'm sure some people will get mad at both options.

COD can be fun, but to me it gets boring quickly.

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

#476

Post by toobulkeh »

mervz wrote: post #61
GlobalElite wrote: post #46

I grew up with CS1.6 and spent what must be thousands of hours on it before I turned 18. But I can't stand what Valve did to modern versions of CS. The reason? Gambling. So much fucking gambling everywhere. Other games have lootboxes, I hate them, but they are usually "contained" in the sense that you do not see them in every context surrounding the game. But because CS skins can be traded between players, there is n…

Hate it all you want, but it's the sole reason Counter-Strike still exists today. Without skins, Valve would have shut the door on the game (and quite possibly the company entirely). Skins is literally a money printing machine.

#StopKillingGames

Did you miss the entire article? CS itself came from a dorm room. You can have excellent games that spawn from creativity instead of monetization.

I was really into the odd maps (NIPPER) and early Internet community around games (joe2). We hosted servers off of unused CPU cycles from oil exploration boxes.

This still exists all over the web, but the creators that figured out economics moved on.

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

#478

Post by fho »

achenet wrote: post #434
fho wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Huh, here in Lyon, France, the scene (or maybe I should say scène) is quite vibrant and you've got everything from old ponytail greybeards who remember their first Black Sabbath concert to 16 year old edgy teenagers who think smoking rolled cigarettes they bought from a government regulated shop with their parents money counts as "sticking it to the man and overthrowing the capitalist system". You're welcome to drop…

Thanks for the invite :-)

Had been decades since I've been to Paris. But with a life and kid, I guess coming back isn't too high on the priority list ;-)

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