It was kind of like crowd development.' Le said. It was me, my partner Cliffe, and the community. So basically that is how the game was developed. We would choose which ones we liked and include those in the next version we released. They would make levels and submit them to us, and we would review them. 'We didn't actually make any of the levels for Counter-Strike, all of the levels were made by the community. Le described the process as an 'open development' operation, due to the level of involvement the community had. Communication with fans was paramount to the development of the subsequent versions of Counter-Strike, with Le making alterations to the game according to feedback he received. When the mod first launched, the reaction from the community shocked Le, who was taken aback by the amount of popularity it quickly gained.įeedback from the community was facilitated by Jess Cliffe, who ran the website where player discussion was held. 'I was really just hoping we would find a small player base to grow from-nothing too substantial,' he said. Despite the learning curve Half-Life's then-new engine presented, Le was passionate about making the game, working 'about 30 or 40' hours per week on the project while studying at university. At the time, Unreal Tournament and Quake were also available, but lacked the inherent realism he sought to achieve and would have required more work.

Such a theme required a more realistic setting for the game he envisioned, which was the main reason why Le chose to mod Half-Life.

'I thought it was kind of like a mysterious topic that hadn't been covered as well.' Half-Life possessed the realistic setting Le sought. 'There weren't a whole lot of games out there that dealt with that theme,' Le said, although he did cite Rainbow Six as a sole example. Counter-Strike 1.6įor Le, the decision to create a game centered on the conflict between terrorist and counter-terrorist squads spawned from a personal interest in the subject. Both teams have objectives that need to be met in order to win a round and gain a point, which contributes to the larger goal of gaining enough points to secure overall victory. To commemorate the 15 years that have passed since Counter-Strike was first released, I spoke to co-creator Minh 'Gooseman' Le for an insight into the creation of the original mod, and its evolution into a standalone game.Īt its core, Counter-Strike focuses on an ongoing multiplayer battle between two teams the terrorists and the counter-terrorists. The Counter-Strike series may consistently hit the top end on Steam's chart of concurrent users today, but this competitive multiplayer phenomenon began with humble origins.

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