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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

#51

Post by snapcaster »

nsilvestri wrote: post #41
mrguyorama wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instead they are a transparent system that enables literal children to get addicted to gambling and valve takes a cut of every payout and they are well aware of this. CS is not a billion dollar game. CS is a fairly unprofitable game with a giant tumor of a marketplace attached, a significant point of which is being a faux currency that escapes most currency controls

"Fairly unprofitable [if you ignore all the parts that generate revenue.]" I will admit that gambling $0.16 in skins on pro matches when I was 15 was a lot of fun. Maybe I'm lucky to have gotten away (relatively) unscathed, but I do have a little nostalgia for those days.

most people can try cocaine without getting addicted but that doesn't make it safe or something we should shove in the faces of children

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

#52

Post by GlobalElite »

y-curious wrote: post #35
dominick-cc wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Newer versions of counterstrike have skins/loot boxes

It's not pay-to-win and the skins are de facto NFTs (with resale value). It's a loot crate system done right IMO

It is worse than the typical lootbox scheme because the entire CS ecosystem is now saturated with marketing of third party skin trading sites and casinos. And at the end of the day it is still gambling. Just because you can resell your skins (and let Valve take a cut in the process) does not make it ethical.

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

#53

Post by pityJuke »

> At the end of June, Le was asked to join a handful of professional gamers onstage for a round of Counter-Strike at a game conference in Austin, Texas.

Conference isn't really the right term here: it's more equivalent to a sports tournament (it was the BLAST Austin Major, with a $1.2 million prize pool). Also, round is confusing given the dual usage, he played for an entire showmatch.

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

#54

Post by pityJuke »

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…

> I would love to see a modern shooter with nice graphics and self hostable servers in the same niche as the old CS.

I mean, that is still CS: you want one without gambling (which is reasonable!)

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

#55

Post by GlobalElite »

ViktorRay wrote: post #8
dominick-cc wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Newer versions of counterstrike have skins/loot boxes

Yes but they aren’t wacky or silly

Fun story: when they added skin lootboxes to CSGO they intended to make the dull, serious looking skins rare ones and the flashy wacky ones common. It quickly turned out that the players like flashy skins more and now the wackiness and silliness of a skin is positively correlated with its rarity and price.

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

#56

Post by password4321 »

deadbabe wrote: post #20
Loudergood wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The disappearance of the ability to run your own Dedicated Server is a real tragedy.

What games even let you run your own dedicated servers?

Many PC-only games do, more likely to do so the older they are. The newest I'm familiar with is Valheim.

I'm actually looking for Android (Kindle) game recommendations that are cross platform and allow self-hosted servers.

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

#57

Post by angrydev »

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.

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

#58

Post by angrydev »

redwall_hp wrote: post #17
Loudergood wrote: post #15

Timely, I was just wondering yesterday (as I was launching the BF6 beta) if there was a current FPS with a mod scene like we had for Half Life and BF 1942. I can't seem to find anything.

The conclusion I came to is that this is due to the availability of game engines and game distribution, which have made modding pointless. Why expend countless hours building a game mode for someone else's game, in a world where that has copyright implications, when you can just build your own game? The indie scene blew up, modding is less popular.

A very real impact was that modders got hired for their work. So there are less around from that generation that made literally free games for fun.

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

#59

Post by stillthat »

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…

#priming

Uhm, wow. Most winnable matches often enough end when the drugs wear off for hundreds of reasons.

You are looking at it from the wrong angle. From what I have seen, it's rarely a whole team that fucks up while winning. Also: often enough: they don't seem to be aware of the pattern that just occurred in their brains (are not, as far as I learned from Paul E.). I believe these kids are put on drugs without consent.

I have no proof, of course.

I noticed it first in soccer back in '16, I think. Which surprised me because it was not boxing or wrestling or the UFC, where such things are the standard.

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

#60

Post by roflchoppa »

princevegeta89 wrote: post #13

Recently I stumbled upon an online port of CS 1.6, called play-cs.com. It's just great - exactly the same game and works very smooth in a browser. I played it briefly for a few months and was happy I was able to get into the top rankings overall. Just sharing it here if anyone wants to try it out.

Dude i love play-cs, I feel like there is a slight lag in the browser compared to the native app that I was playing on Windows back in the day... maybe i gotta switch over to Chrome from FF.
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