Intro to Interactive Media

Nick Marano

IGME 110.02

Intro to Interactive Media

Week 4 Research Paper

The topic that I have chosen for this research paper is on the popularity and community of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, the latest iteration in the long line of tactical FPS games. The beginning of a game series, that has garnered such a huge following and player-base in recent years, was as a Half-Life mod from a then college student. It all started back in 1999 from a small two person modding team. Counter-Strike was first released on a Half-Life mod website. The original modders were Minh Le and Jess Cliffe. Since that time the game that started as a mod began to gain a following and the modding team began to push out updates to their Half-Life mod. The Valve Corporation eventually recognized the possibilities that the mod could have if it were to be developed by a larger and more experienced team. It was at this time that Valve got a third party developer, Barking Dog Studios, to help with one of the mods bigger updates. Barking Dog Studios helped the original modding team with Counter Strike Beta 5.0. Valve later took a more active role in the development of Counter-Strike by helping the team out with its own development team instead of having a third party developer help. It was about this time that Valve released the function that allowed for games to auto update directly from the Steam application and Counter-Strike 1.6, arguably the best version of the series, was released in 2003 as one of the first few games to benefit from this added functionality.(V.,2012)

Counter-Strike: Source was released in 2004. This new iteration saw the game in the newer Half Life 2 engine instead of the original Half-Life engine.(Sfectu,2014,p.646) Counter Strike: Source was well received on release and quickly gained new members to the FPS game series. CS: Source allowed the game series to grow due to an increase in accessibility in the game. Due to this increase in new players to the player base, it caused veterans from the series to dislike this newer game. Like it does with several of its other games, Valve released many updates to the games core, such as changing the in-game weapons prices from a set amount to a dynamic value that would change based on the weapons purchased in-game worldwide. Several years after Counter-Strike: Source was released Valve had another third party developer work on and release post-release updates to the game. The third party developer that they chose to perform the task of adding new features and functionality to their game was Hidden Path Entertainment. This development company has also worked on some of Valve's other projects.It also received in an update better explosion graphics, replacing the previous 2D animation with a 3D explosion effect when the bomb went off.(Te,2014)

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is the one of the most popular game in the Counter-Strike series that has been released. It was released to the public in 2012 and was developed by Hidden Path Entertainment and Valve Corporation. As with many games when they are first released, it had many issues and problems. Despite its rocky start Counter Strike: Global Offensive managed to bring itself and the series back from the edge and back into the limelight that it was used to. Over the first few years, Valve and Hidden Path Entertainment pushed out several huge updates to the game that included gun skins, competitive skill ranks, workshop support for user made gun skins, and pay-for-access operations. They have also added new weapons into the game to allow for a broader range of choices when it comes to choosing your loadout for each round. As with everything in a competitive game, updates are occasionally made to the how the weapons work, such as movement speed while scoped in, the rate of fire, total magazine size, the spread of bullets, and in at least one instance damage reduction.

Over the last year alone updates were made to some of the main three weapons that are bought for every round when you can buy them. The spray pattern for the AK-47 and M4 (and the silenced variant the M4A1-S) were changed. This change caused the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive community to rise up in outrage. One of the fundamental aspects of the game is learning the spray patterns of the weapons hat you use and then learning spray control for those weapons. With the update, all of the spray patterns were changed enough to cause people to miss many of their targets when firing their weapons. This was quickly reversed two weeks later. Another update to the game added in a new secondary weapon, the R8 revolver. It took the place of the Desert Eagle in the buy menu. Within the first few hours of t being added it had quickly become the best secondary weapon in the game and was even used as a primary weapon due to its high accuracy and high damage. This gun was able to kill an enemy at long range with one shot to the body even if they had body armor. I remember one round as a terrorist, I had five health left and had a bad primary weapon so I pulled out my R8 and was able to kill the remaining four counter terrorists without having to reload. Situations like this became so common that Valve changed the damage and accuracy values of the R8 revolver. Another game changing update was when Valve changed the player speed when they are scoped in with the AWP sniper rifle. This was a fairly big change as some of the best Awpers in the game would quickly peek around a corner and flick over to the enemy while scoped in, limiting the amount of time that they were out in the open. This update made the Awper a more stationary role in the game because the speed is about the same as crouch walking, this, however, was a much-needed change that at first drew a lot of anger from the community but soon people started to realize that it wasn't such a bad change. Even the pro players that it affected the most were some of the strongest supporters for its need.

In Counter-Strike: Global Offensive there are several different in-game roles for when it comes to the pro and semi-pro levels. Theses roles include the Lurker, Awper, In-game Leader, Entry Fragger, and Support. Each of these roles is important to the success of the whole team if one person is slacking it can ruin the whole team composition. The role of the Lurker is to sit in different places when you teammates take a bomb site as a terrorist. When the bomb is spotted or the enemy team starts to rotate to the other bombsite you are there to at least slow them or take out as many as you can. You have to pick different spots and your loadout carefully if you are in this role because if you die you are giving the enemy players your primary weapon. The role of In-game Leader is also very important and can have different aspects depending on which side you are on, such as deciding which site to attack and which path to take to get there as a terrorist and as a counter-terrorist when to rotate to support your teammates. The In-game Leader must also assess the team's economic status and call whether the team can do a full buy, partial buy, or eco round. When they call for a full buy the whole team has enough money to buy armor, helmets, a different secondary, a primary weapon of choice, and utility which are grenades and defuse kits. A partial buy is when the team buys what they can, this is usually called when you have some money and are on a losing streak. A call from the In-game leader to eco, the team buys pistols of their choice and if they have enough armor and some utility. As terrorists on an eco round your main goal is to kill a counter-terrorist or two and plant the bomb, if you can pick up some primary weapons and get a couple more kills then the eco round has been a huge success. As a counter-terrorist on eco, you will buy armor and pistol of choice and either plays close to the bomb sites or rush a single place and try to deal as much damage as possible. In an essence, the main goal of the eco round is to pick up an opponent's weapon. The Awper role is a very specific role that can change depending on your specific play style and on the map that you are playing on. For de_Dust2 on the terrorist side the role of the Awper's job is to try to pick a counter-terrorist as they try to cross over in the very beginning of the game from their spawn to bombsite B. As a counter-terrorist Awper your job is to try to hold the long angles and alleys that makes up the entries to both bomb sites. Awpers usually tend to buy only body armor and a secondary of choice to supplement the one shot one kill sniper rifle. The Entry Fragger role is a very important position on the team and should go to someone with good reflexes and great aim. The Entry Fragger's main goal is to get at least one kill as soon as they enter a bomb site. They tend to get killed as soon as they get the first kill which is why they are usually followed by the Support player and/ or the In-game Leader. The Support player's job is to help the Entry Fragger. They can do this by throwing a flashbang that goes off behind the Entry Fragger so as to not blind them but to blind the enemy players or to push from another angle splitting the enemy player's attention between two places. They can also throw any accompanying grenades on de_Mirage that can block off all of bombsite A from the counter-terrorists. In a public match players will tend to just fall into these roles as the game progresses but in the pro-competitive scene these roles are predetermined and only in certain instances have pro teams rotated roles within the team.(Fedorov,n.d.)

There are a select group of players from around the world that can truly boast being professional Counter-Strike players. Many of these players had their beginnings back in Counter-Strike 1.6 or Counter-Strike: Source. They have put thousands of hours into Counter-Strike as a series, many having first started playing when they were teenagers. They all have their own specialties and play styles. Stat wise ScreaM, a member of G2, has the highest headshot percentage in the whole game.(Yu,2015) Guardian, from Natus Vincere, is, in my opinion, the best pro AWPer in 2015. The best pro-Entry Fragger, in my opinion, is Olofmeister, of Fnatic, who had one of the highest k/d ratios for his primary role. There are many other amazing pro players from across the globe and it is because of them that Counter-Strike as a series has become as popular as t is currently. When there is a major going on, hundreds of thousands of people from around the world tune in to see some of the most amazing feats of skill. If you watch even a single preliminary match you will see some of the best clutches, hilarious strategies, and moments that will make you wonder what the hell just happened. Due to their efforts both during major and minor events and on their own just playing around with fans, they have managed to show that even though they are playing for huge amounts of money that the reason they are playing is their love of the game and its community. Most pro players choose to run their own Twitch channels, where they play with fans, other pro players or try to help teach the community what helped them to get where they are today. I think that if there weren't as many social outlets around today that this game would be unknown to many people around the world.

Recent events in the Counter-Strike community have seen the fan base put up with a lot of rough patches. The huge marketplace for buying and selling gun skins took a hit when Valve was brought to court over allegations of enabling children to gamble(William,2015). To end the case Valve decided that any site CS:GO gambling sites will be closed. This caused the prices of most gun skins to take a drop in price(Lahti,2016). Currently, it has stabilized but many of the prices for certain skins have stuck to a lower price than before. Another change that has caused the fanbase and community much angst is the update that changed the competitive ranks of North American players. Valve looked at data that they had been gathering for and decided that the ranks should be a parabolic curve and that there were too many players that were in the highest rank bracket. To fix this they lowered most of the North American player's ranks back several tiers. A more recent problem that many players have had to deal with is a rise in smurfs, players with a higher skill level that play against lesser skilled people, and cheaters. In an attempt to fix this Valve introduced matchmaking prime which connects your phone number to your account. Matchmaking prime is supposed to place players that have signed up with other matchmaking prime players together. However, this requires that enough people of a similar rank have also signed up for matchmaking prime. If there aren't enough players you will get placed against random people like before. Another issue with matchmaking prime is that you can use a phone number that you don't own and it will still allow you to signup for it. As if this feature not working weren't bad enough Valve has pushed to update the sound files for all of the weapons in the game instead of making another attempt at solving the real issue.

Bibliography

Bowman, M. (2014). How Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is turning into the world's most exciting eSport. Retrieved September 9, 2016, from

Fedorov, A. (n.d.). CS:GO : Players and Roles. Retrieved September 9, 2016, from

Lahti, E. (2016, July 15). What happened to CS:GO skin prices after Valve's gambling ban. Retrieved September 9, 2016, from

Sfetcu, N. (2014). Game Preview. Retrieved September 9, 2016, from

Te, Z. (2014, May 17). Dust to Dust: The History of Counter-Strike. Retrieved September 9, 2016, from

V. (2012, August 26). A History of Counter-Strike. Retrieved September 9, 2016, from

Williams, J., & Bekker, S. (2015). The Problem With Underage Gambling in CSGO on the Rise. Retrieved September 9, 2016, from

Yu, E. (2015, December 23). 2015 Counter-Strike Statistics - Unikrn Community. Retrieved September 9, 2016, from