How the game "Counter-strike" was created: 11 interesting facts about the game (11 photos)

In the early 2000s, computer clubs were literally bursting with an influx of gamers. And the reason for all this was the online shooter "Counter-Strike".





1. The history of the game "Counter-Strike" began... no, not even with the game "Half-Life", as many might think. Here we should say thanks to the game "Quake", namely two fans of this game.

In the second half of the 90s, Simon Fraser University student Min Lee was very interested in 3D modeling, and even created his own modifications for the game Quake 2, in which the concept of counter (team battle of special forces with terrorists) was already visible.



Min Lee

The mods created by Lee interested the public relations administrator of the Action Quake 2 website Jess Cliff. As a result, in 1998, Cliff decided to meet with a promising modder to think about a new promising project. But the engine "Quake 2" was not taken as a basis. According to Lee and Cliff, this should be a network mod for the game "Half-Life". Yes, Half-Life had its own network mode, but firstly, the guys transferred the events to our reality, and secondly, the game should have a team mode.





Jess Cliff

Jess Cliff, seeing the potential of this project, began to attract like-minded people to create it, after which work on a new network mod for the game "Half-Life" began to boil. And the most interesting thing is that before the release of the game, Lee and Cliff never met, but only communicated on the Internet.

As a result, in 1999, the first modification (or rather beta version) was released under the name "Counter-Strike". However, at that time, the game only had 4 maps, namely cs_siege, cs_mansion, cs_wpndepot and cs_prison, each of which provided only the hostage release mode (or the destruction of opponents).



And I'm not even mentioning the fact that the game had only two characters and 9 types of weapons. The same AK-47 did not exist at that time. Silencers for the USP and M4A1 did not exist at that time either. All this appeared only in the second beta version. And bomb defusing maps were added to the game only starting with the fourth beta version.

2. When the guys were coming up with a name for their future project, they had several different options, including "Strike Force", "Counter terrorism", "Frag heads", "Terrorist wars", "Terror force" and "Counter Force". But in the end, preference was given to the name "Counter-strike", that is, "Counter-Strike". This idea came to Min Lee thanks to the Canadian TV series of the same name, of which he was a fan.



3. The new mod gradually began to gain popularity among gamers. But the most interesting thing is that the "Counter-Strike" mod was noticed by Gabe Newell himself, the head of the "Valve" company.

As Min Lee himself said, he and Jess Cliff were simply overjoyed when they were contacted by the "Valve" company, offering them cooperation.



When Lee and Cliff arrived at the meeting, they talked to them a little in an informal setting, after which they were offered to sell the rights to their mod, as well as become full-time employees of the "Valve" company and work on the project. Naturally, the guys did not hesitate for a second, because such a chance comes once in a lifetime.

4. The work was in full swing. The guys were actively working on creating new maps, new types of weapons, balance, etc. And as a result, in 2000, "Counter-Strike" came out from under the wing of "Valve" as an independent game.

But the first version is the first, not the last. Subsequently, the developers worked on patches and updates to make the game much more attractive to gamers. Moreover, the company "Valve" tried to take into account all the wishes of gamers. And as a result, in 2003, the last version of the game was released, namely "Counter Strike 1.6", after which it was decided to stop there. And as you probably remember, it was in version 1.6 that the very annoying shield appeared for the counters.



5. One of the most popular maps is De_Dust (and later De_Dust_2). But the most amazing thing is that this map was created by a schoolboy Dave Johnston. Lee and Cliff noticed the teenager when he created his first map "Retirement Home", after which they invited him to participate in creating new maps for the game.

The de_dust map itself became so popular that it was even put on the cover of the game. Dave's classmates were incredibly jealous of their friend, because he was involved in the cult game "Counter Strike".



6. By the way, all the voice commands that we hear in the game were not voiced by a professional actor, but by one of the creators of the game - Jess Cliffe. We can hear his voice in all the games that came out before "CS GO".

7. The game logo depicts a counter-terrorist with a Scar-L weapon, but the most interesting thing is that this weapon was not in the game at all. Yes, they wanted to implement it in the early stages of development, but eventually abandoned the idea. But they kept the logo.



8. According to the original idea (in beta versions), bombs could be planted anywhere, but over time, the developers decided that this would be too difficult, so they decided to give out a couple of special places for planting a bomb on each map.

9. In 2004, a new version of the game was released under the name "Counter-Strike: Coondition zero". However, of the innovations, it only provided a single-player company with bots.



10. In 2005, a separate version of the game was released called "Counter-strike Neo", which was aimed at the Japanese market. In terms of mechanics, the game did not undergo any changes, but the graphics were completely different.



11. In the very first version of the game, the weapon was always located exclusively on the left side. The fact is that Min Li himself was left-handed and it was much more convenient for him to work in this mode. The ability to change sides was only built into the sixth beta.