Counter-Strike (video game)

For other uses, see Counterstrike.

Counter-Strike
Developer(s)	Valve Software
Publisher(s)	Vivendi Universal (PC) Microsoft Game Studios (Xbox)
Series	Counter-Strike
Engine	GoldSrc
Platform(s)	Microsoft Windows, Xbox
Release	June 19 1999 (Original Half-Life Mod) November 8 2000 (PC) March 25 2004 (Xbox)
Genre(s)	First-person shooter
Mode(s)	Multiplayer

Counter-Strike, commonly abbreviated to CS, is a tactical first-person shooter video game which originated from a Half-Life mod of the same developers, Minh "Gooseman" Le and Jess "Cliffe" Cliffe, featuring real-world weapons and shootouts. The game has been expanded into a series since its original release, which currently includes Counter-Strike: Condition Zero, Counter-Strike: Source and Counter Strike on Xbox.

Counter-Strike puts a team of counter-terrorists against a team of terrorists in rounds of competition won by completing an objective or eliminating the opposing force. The latest incarnation of the game, Counter-Strike: Source, is based on the Source engine developed for Half-Life 2. Signs of Counter-Strike's wide influence can be found in mods for games such as Quake III Arena, Unreal Tournament, and other standalone shooters such as Global Operations, America's Army, Call of Duty,True Combat Elite and many more.

As of May 2006, Counter-Strike is still the most widely played online first-person shooter in the world. In 2002 there were over 30,000 populated Counter-Strike servers on the Internet (second place was Unreal Tournament with about 9,800). In 2004, GameSpy statistics showed over 85,000 players simultaneously playing Counter-Strike at any point in time, and in 2006, Steam regularly shows over 200,000 players for Counter-Strike (this includes Counter-Strike: Source, Counter-Strike: Condition Zero and Counter-Strike). According to statistics gathered by Valve's content-delivery platform, Steam, these players collectively contribute to over 6.177 billion minutes of playing time each month, as in February 5, 2007 solidifying its position as the most popular online first-person shooter in history. Counter-Strike was originally played online through the WON gaming service, which was shut down in 2004, forcing players to switch to Steam (to which a section of players responded by creating their own WON network, dubbed WON2).

Gameplay

Counter-Strike is a team-based, first-person shooter in which players join either the terrorist or counter-terrorist team, and combat the opposing team while fulfilling predetermined objectives. Server settings may automatically balance teams when one team has more players than the other. Each round starts with the two teams spawning simultaneously, as one of eight different default character models (four to choose from for each the counter-terrorist and terrorist teams. Counter-Strike: Condition Zero added two extra models, bringing the total to ten). Each player generally starts with $800 (although the starting ammount can be edited by a server administrator), two magazines of ammunition, a knife, and a pistol: a Heckler & Koch USP .45 Tactical for counter-terrorists, and a GLOCK 18c for terrorists. Players are generally given a few seconds before the round begins (known as "freeze time") to buy equipment, during which they cannot attack, be attacked, or walk/move. Players may buy equipment whenever they are in a "buy zone" for their team (some "buy zones" can be for both teams--neutral buy zones) provided the round has not been in session for longer than a specified time (90 seconds is default). Once the round has ended, surviving players retain their equipment for use in the next round, but those who have died begin the next round with the default starting equipment mentioned earlier, and can buy more equipment.

File:Counterstrike-comparison.jpg

Picture of a Terrorist using a Desert Eagle on the map de_dust in the original Counter-Strike (left) and Counter-Strike: Source (right).

Standard monetary bonuses in the game are given when winning a round, losing a round, killing an enemy, instructing a hostage to follow, rescuing a hostage or planting a bomb.

The scoreboard shows team scores in addition to data for each player: name, score(kills), deaths, and ping (in milliseconds) on the map. The scoreboard also shows whether each player is dead, carrying the bomb (in bomb defusal maps), or is the VIP (in assassination maps), although to obtain this information about players on the opposing team, a player must be dead during the round because this information can be important. Killed players become "ghosts" for the duration of the round; they cannot change their names until they spawn(come alive) again, text chat cannot be sent to or received from live players; and, while voice chat can still be received from live players, it cannot be sent to them (except when cvar sv_alltalk is set to 1, in which case voice chat can be freely exchanged between all players on the server at any time). Ghosts are generally able to watch the rest of the round from multiple selectable views, although some servers disable some of these views to prevent dead players from relaying information about living players to their teammates through alternative media (most notably voice in the case of Internet cafes and Voice over IP programs such as TeamSpeak or Ventrilo). This technique, known as "ghosting," is considered cheating in many tactical shooters.

Realism

Counter-Strike is meant to be more realistic than futuristic first-person shooters such as Quake III Arena and Unreal Tournament, but is also built to keep the action flowing faster than more realistic tactical shooters such as the Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon series. For example, relatively few shots will kill a player, and shots to different parts of the body inflict varying amounts of damage, but damage has no permanent bearing on ability to run or jump, allowing a player with just a few hit points remaining to keep fighting just as well as any other player. Movement and running speed, however, are restricted while taking damage from gunfire.

Maps

The map in Counter-Strike determines the gameplay and type of a match. Each map is of a single game type. There are three official types of maps in Counter-Strike: Hostage rescue maps, identified by "cs" before the name (eg. cs_militia), where the counter-terrorist team's objective is to free several non-player characters that are present near the terrorist base; Bomb defusal maps, identified by "de," (eg. de_dust), where the terrorist team must try to plant explosives at specific sites in the map and protect it for a set amount of time while the counter-terrorists attempt to defuse it; and Assassination maps, with an "as," (eg. as_oilrig), in which one member of the counter-terrorist team becomes a VIP, and must be protected from assassination until he reaches an escape zone (this type is absent from Counter-Strike: Source). In earlier beta versions of the game another official type, called Terrorist Escape, also existed.

Players also have the ability to create their own maps using the Valve Hammer Editor.

Weapons

One of the features of the original incarnations of Counter-Strike was that it did not feature fictional weapons like most games, instead using only existing firearms used the world over by real terrorist groups, counter-terrorist squads, armed forces, and law enforcement officials. The weapons are, however, only semi-realistic: many of them are incorrect in small details such as the caliber of ammunition or in their naming. Others do not fire quite as their real-life counterparts do, and many of them are inaccurately 'mirrored', wherein the spent cases are ejected from the wrong side of the weapon. This is attributed to the fact that one of the designers was left-handed, and modeled the weapons being held in the left hand. They were then mirrored to the right side, resulting in these inaccuracies.

When retail versions of the game were first released, most of the weapons were given fictional names, often with fictional manufacturers, most likely due to copyright issues. These names are visible at the start of the round when buying the weapons. The console, however, refers to each weapon in a different way to the buy menu, often using the weapon's real name or designation (eg. The console refers to the "Bullpup" as "AUG," the weapon on which the "Bullpup" is based).

Player models

Counter-Terrorist models:

• SEAL Team 6 - First appeared in initial CS beta - "ST-6 (to be later known as DEVGRU) was founded in 1980 under the command of Lieutenant-Commander Richard Marcinko. ST-6 was placed on permanent alert to respond to terrorist attacks against American targets worldwide."

• GSG 9 - Added in CS beta 6 - "GSG 9 was formed out of the tragic events that led to the death of several Israeli athletes during the 1972 Olympic games in Munich, Germany."

• SAS - Added in CS beta 5 - "World-renowned British SAS was founded in the Second World War by a man named David Stirling. Their role in WW2 involved intelligence gathering behind enemy lines and executing sabotage strikes and assassinations against key targets."

• GIGN - Added in CS beta 3 - "France's elite counter-terrorist group, the GIGN, was designed to be a fast response force that could decisively react to any large-scale terrorist incident. Consisting of no more than 100 men, the GIGN has earned its reputation through a history of successful ops."

Terrorist models:

• Phoenix Connexion - First appeared in initial CS beta - "Having established a reputation for killing anyone who gets in their way, the Phoenix Connexion is one of the most feared terrorist groups in eastern Europe. Formed shortly after the breakup of the USSR."

• Elite Crew (L337 Krew prior to CS 1.6) - Added in CS beta 3 - "Middle Eastern fundamentalist group bent on world domination and various other evil deeds."

• Arctic Avengers - Added in CS beta 6 - "Swedish terrorist faction founded in 1977. Infamous for their bombing of the Canadian embassy in 1990."

• Guerilla Warfare - Added in CS beta 6.5 - "A terrorist faction founded in the Middle East, this group has a reputation for ruthlessness. Their disgust for American lifestyle was demonstrated in their 1982 bombing of a school bus full of Rock and Roll musicians."

Other models:

• Hostage - used in maps prefixed 'cs_' (eg: cs_italy).

• VIP'- Used in maps prefixed 'as_' (eg: as_oilrig).

Culture

Counter-Strike is famous for the culture surrounding it, which includes everything from professional gamers and leagues, to excessive cheating and disruptive behavior. Certain professional teams (such as SK Gaming, Team 3D, Team zEx and Team NoA) have come to earn a living out of it. Cheating groups, such as myg0t, JAPS, Rage-Xtreme, and 187ci, have been known to create a disturbance in the game by spamming the microphone, radio commands, or even killing the whole team in one round. This is also known as raging or griefing.

Legacy

Counter-Strike remains extremely popular to this day. There are currently professional online leagues supporting Counter-Strike, such as the Cyberathlete Amateur League (CAL), and CyberEvolution, a pay-to-play league. Various LAN tournaments are held throughout the United States and Europe, with the largest being the Cyberathlete Professional League (CPL), the Electronic Sports World Cup (ESWC), the World e-Sports Games (WEG), and the World Cyber Games (WCG). Championship matches in these events are televised with commentary and analysis.

Half-Life and other contemporary games took full advantage of the advent of hardware graphics acceleration in the late 1990s, replacing earlier software-rendered games such as Quake. Likewise, gamers were expected to abandon the DirectX 5.0 Half-Life and its mods in favor of games utilizing the hardware T&L capabilities of DirectX 7.0 graphics cards such as the NVIDIA GeForce and ATI Radeon. However, the universal shift to the DirectX 7.0 level and beyond has not happened, and the continued popularity of Counter-Strike has given older video cards such as the 3dfx Voodoo3, ATI Rage 128, and NVIDIA RIVA TNT2 continued usefulness.

However, as the criticisms of Condition Zero showed, many players feel that the GoldSrc engine has reached its limits in its capacity to evolve and to stay updated. Even Counter-Strike: Source has been criticized for not progressing the gameplay enough and failing to take full advantage of the Source engine[1]

There have been a multitude of games claimed by their developers, reviewers and fans to be "Counter-Strike killers," but none have seriously been able to dent its overall popularity. Server statistics in 2002 showed that Counter-Strike servers outnumbered their Battlefield, Unreal Tournament 2003 or Quake III first-person shooter counterparts at least 3 to 1.[2]

Mods and scripts

Though Counter-Strike is itself a mod, it has developed its own community of script writers and modders. Some mods add bots, while others remove features of the games which some players found annoying, while yet others create different modes of play. Some of the most popular mods give server administrators more flexible and efficient control over his or her server. "Admin plugins", as they are mostly referred as, have become very popular. See Metamod, AMX Mod and AMX Mod X for more information. There are some mods which affect gameplay heavily, such as Gun Game, where players start with a basic pistol and must score kills to receive better weapons, and Zombie Mod, where one team consists of Zombies and must "spread the infection" by killing the other team (using only the knife). Then most common of mods however is mods that enable new weapon skins for a more custom expirence.

Cheating

The game Counter-Strike has been a prime target for exploitation by cheaters since its release. In-game, cheating is often referred to as 'hacking' (though this is technically incorrect - it is the programmers, not the users, of the cheats that might be regarded as hackers).

Typical cheats are:

• Wallhacks, which allow the player to see through walls. These work by altering the display driver to display objects that are normally obscured.
• Speedhacks, which give the player increased speed. These work by sending false synchronisation data to servers.
• Aimbots, which help the player aim at enemies. These work by moving the player's view to anticipate an enemy's position.
• ESP, which shows textual information about the enemy, such as, health, name, and distance
• Barrel hack, which shows a line that depicts where the enemy is looking
• Anti-flash and anti-smoke, which remove the flashbang and smoke grenade effect.

Valve has implemented an anti-cheat system called Valve Anti-Cheat (VAC). Players cheating on a VAC enabled server risk having their account permanently banned from all VAC secured servers.

With the first version of VAC, a ban took force almost instantly after being detected, and the cheater had to wait 2 years to have the account unbanned. Since VAC's second version, cheaters are not banned automatically. Rather, they are banned according to a delayed banning system, and bans are never lifted. Many cheats are still not detected by VAC, and often the only effective anti-cheat device is a human admin watching an online game.

In popular culture

The ever-growing popularity of Counter-Strike has resulted into being referenced or being parodied in popular culture.

• The animations of several cartoon sites such as StickDeath.com and Razoric.com used sounds extensively, in addition to its CS parodies and references.

• The online Adobe Flash animation on pwned.nl parodies Counter-Strike, referencing the group myg0t.

See also

• First-person shooter
• Cheating in online games
• Half-Life
• Steam
• WON2
• List of Half-Life mods
• Counter-Strike: Condition Zero
• Counter-Strike: Source
• Counter-Strike Neo

External links

• Steam
• Valve
• Counter-Strike.com
• Steamless CS Project - Founder of WON2

Competitive Counter-Strike

• Enemydown - ED
• Electronic Sports World Cup - ESWC
• World Cyber Games - WCG
• The Cyberathlete Professional League - CPL
• The Cyberathlete Amateur League - CAL
• Cyber Evolution - CEVO
• India Cup - ICGC
• Tournament.com

Counter-Strike News and Strategy Websites

• CS-Nation - CS-Nation
• GotFrag - GotFrag
• Strategy.Counter-Strike.com
• Amped ESports - Amped ESports
• Counter Strike Strategy Site
• Counter Strike AllInOne - all versions on one site