Today, Counter Strike: Global Offensive is one of the most popular video games in the world. It takes highest rankings in the Steam gaming service popularity ratings, and probably every young person knows about its existence.
Still, 18 years ago when the first version of this game just appeared nobody could predict such a huge success.
Counter Strike: What is it?
Counter Strike is the multiplayer online first person shooter video game. Its point being the fight between two teams: terrorists and counter-terrorists (Special Forces). Both teams have certain goals for each game round: they can get the point by achieving goals or just eliminating the enemy team.
After winning a certain number of rounds, a team wins a match. The most popular game map scenery is the demolition: terrorists need to plant the bomb in the certain point of the map and let it explode, while counter-terrorists need to avoid their enemies from planting and exploding a charge.
Precursors and Origins of Counter Strike
The idea of a videogame about the fight of terrorists and Special Forces appeared in late 90’s, which means before the 9/11 attack and before the show-up of a world terrorism threat. Its creator was Minh «Gooseman» Le, the Canadian citizen of a Vietnamese origin. He aimed to create not a commercial product touching the actual and urgent social problem, but a modification – a mod – for the other game, putting it into the concept and the topic which were interesting for him.
Before CS appeared, multiplayer shooters were fast-paced games in fantasy settings having completely unreal physics (like FPS games of Unreal Tournament and Quake franchises). Minh Le used to create modifications for those games as well, and they were quite successful: Navy Seals (a mod for Quake I) and Action Quake 2 (a mod for Quake II created together with a popular A-TEAM modding community).
But there came the time of a fresh Valve masterpiece: Half-Life. It was just a perfect game of that time making all other titles look old and primitive. Half-Life became exactly that game for Minh Le’s modification because its engine gave lots of possibilities for a developer’s imagination. It had a comfortable multiplayer, an up-to-date instrument kit (for the year 1999) and decorations more suitable to bring the Minh’s idea to life.
As the developer himself said later, he worked on the mod for 30 to 40 hours per week during his university studies. He hoped at least some people to play his game, to start with a few players and grow a community later.
But the feedback from players after the release was just stunning. Le was impressed and inspired with a lot of positivity and enthusiasm coming from them, so he decided to continue working on the project. All the feedback was gathered from the website administrated by Jess Cliffe, the other CS developer.
Le himself told later that the mod development became common because the community of players put a lot of efforts to create it as well. He also added that developers never made a single map for CS on their own. Levels were sent by fans. Minh and Jess only had to choose what to include into the game for a release. So, the game had been created by Le, Cliffe, and their community.
The first CS beta version appeared on June 19, 1999. The work continued, new weapons and maps appeared on purpose. They fixed a lot of “bugs” and the popularity of the game grew. Counter Strike began to become widely known between years 1999 and 2000 when the fifth beta was released.
The original AK-47 considered as the best rifle in the game
Le’s daring towards the creation of a more realistic shooter brought him dividends: in 2000, Valve got interested in his modification. They contacted Minh and offered him a job. As we all know today, this decision was of the best ones ever made by the company.
Comparing with Quake and Unreal Tournament, Counter Strike had a slower gameplay and relied on teamwork more. The first standalone CS version 1.0 (a separate client with its own launcher) was released on the 8th of November, 2000. Previous builds required a Half-Life client installed to launch them.
Valve Age
Under the management from Valve, Counter Strike becomes a hit game. Simple gameplay mechanics and realism make it attractive for gamers and help in cybersports promotions. The “easy to learn, hard to master” principle has always been a priority for Minh Le, and he notes this as the reason for CS to reach its huge success.
At the very beginning, a lot of game modes were presented: hostage rescue, VIP-player escort, escape, jumping and surfing maps not that connected with shooting, etc. Still, the most popular mode was the demolition: terrorists need to plant the bomb and let it explode while counter-terrorists have to eliminate all terrorists or defuse a bomb. Terrorists can just kill the enemy team, too.
An important feature is that if the whole terrorist team is killed but could plant the bomb successfully before dying, they still can win a round if the charge explodes. The bomb explosion only one second before defuse… you know that feeling, don’t you?
On October 11, 2003 the most popular and “long-lasting” version of the game appears: CS 1.6. This was exactly the greatest game of middle 2000’s for school and college students. And this was exactly the game which started conquering the world with its victorious cybersports campaign.
Cybersports and Counter Strike
Prize pools of tournaments and competitions reached hundreds of thousands of dollars, and Counter Strike joined the hall of titans by becoming an equal with great franchises of Starcraft, Warcraft and Quake 3.
After the 1.6 version, new ones were still released:
- Counter Strike Condition Zero – almost similar to 1.6, but using another engine. Released on March 23, 2004.
- Counter Strike Source – not all gamers liked it and many continued playing the 1.6 version. Released on October 7, 2004
And finally, on the day of August 12, 2011 Valve announced the Counter Strike: Global Offensive game. The same gameplay was packed into top-quality graphics, got a refreshed game engine, trading options and the Steam Workshop service available. One year later, on August 21, 2012, the game was released.
The same AK-47 in Counter Strike Source version
Modern Counter Strike
In this version, CS became the most popular cybersports discipline in the world. Prize pools reaching $1 000 000, huge premier, major and minor tournaments, sponsorship contracts and many other things appear. It becomes cool, prestigious, fashionable and profitable to be a professional CS:GO player.
The future of CS looks unbelievably bright. The number of players grows every year: according to Steam statistics, it was more popular than DotA 2. Overwatch was thought to become a new CS but it does not show results that amazing, and its cybersports components could be much better than they are.
More than $ 3 million were included into CS:GO premier tournament prize pools during only the 1st quarter of 2018. Nearly $ 1 million additionally appeared on major tournaments.
The skill level of players increases with every year as well. Cybersports federations appear. CS appears on television slowly but surely. Despite the fact that FPS games and video games in general changed a lot since 2000, CS remained almost unchanged but still millions of people play it.
And there will be more of them.
It’s a wonderful story. Just think about it: one usual modification changed the whole video game industry.
And its story is doubtful to be over in the nearest future.
