Counter Strike History

Counter-Strike is a first person shooter game made by Minh Le and Jess Cliffe. It stemmed from a Half-Life mod, which later on as its popularity arose, received its own stand-alone release. The game puts players in opposing factions: as either terrorists and counter-terrorists, where the primary objective is either destroying the other team or fulfilling mission requirements. In its time, it has created other original releases, as well as influenced other countries with its presence both positive and negative.

History

The first iteration of Counter-Strike (CS) was CS Beta 1.0 in June 1999. There were successive releases of beta versions until the end of 1999, where CS Beta had gone up to the 5.0 version. While it rapidly rose in popularity, the company Valve acquired the Counter-Strike design team to turn Half-Life, a fan based mod at the time, into an official mod. By November 2000, the official retail version of Counter-Strike 1.0 was released.

Types

Other iterations of CS are Counter-Strike: Condition Zero, Counter-Strike: Source, and Counter-Strike for the Xbox. In Condition Zero, released in 2004, creators made a single-player version which contained a number of changes in the graphics, sounds, character models, map geography, and the inclusion of bots. For CS: Source, developers revamped the game by using the Source engine for creation. With this game comes improvements with graphics and physics, updated animations, models, maps, sounds and game play. The Xbox version released in 2003 was playable over the Xbox Live network with multiplayer functionality for a subscription fee. However, this CS version only received a moderate graphical upgrade and was below expectations of the Xbox community.

Facts

When CS 1.0 was released in November 2000, existing Half-Life owners at the time could download the Counter-Strike mod free of charge. Later on, the Counter-Strike game came together with Half-Life, and eventually included other expansions in what was known as the Platinum Pack.

Effects

In September 2007, China's police force in Tianjin brought more than 300 officers for a 3 day competition. According to an article on the People's Daily website (see reference 2) an officer and organizer Zhang Bin said, "The competition is organized to sharpen anti-terrorist skills of Tianjin's police force, as we find the nature of the game very similar to that of our daily practice." Another officer commented that it helped to hone awareness of terrorism due to its similarities to real-life situations. This event was used as a supplement for their training exercises to use weapons, manipulating advantages of differing terrains, and exercise mental aptitude.

Controversy

Brazil banned the sales of Counter-Strike on October 2007 but was not fully enforced until January 2008. According to a quote in the MSN article regarding this issue (see reference 3) by Judge Carlos Alberto Simoes, the game was "...an attack against the democratic state and the law and against public security." The prohibition of sales was put in place because it was claimed that it encouraged violence and that extensive playing was hazardous to the players' health.