I will forever mourn the general demise of server browsers. Too many games require you to use matchmaking systems, which means it's very hard to build up a small community in-game anymore. You either have to rely on forming small parties with people you've stumbled upon one by one, or you have to seek out people from some much larger area like Reddit or Discord. It takes a lot of the serendipity out of the experience. Without a small community it becomes much harder to ensure you're not playing with people who make the game less fun by whatever metric you care about.
I used to be an admin on a group of about 18 or so connected Counter-Strike 1.6 servers called T3Houston*. We ran modified versions of various Warcraft 3 mods which added persistent XP/leveling, as well as integration with an external item store and player database the owner maintained. Most of those servers were filled to the brim during peak US gaming times, and our forum was quite active.
There aren't many games these days where you could do something like that. I discovered the community because one day I was just looking for a server with open slots for me to join. I was fairly skeptical of whatever a Warcraft mod would be like, but ended up enjoying it so I added it to my favorites. Eventually I got to know the regulars and joined the forum. Notably, the place felt far less toxic than the average server I'd join back then. I can completely believe this is just me looking at the past through rose tinted glasses, but it feels like the general toxicity has gotten worse at the same time as we've lost a lot of tools to manage it.
* If anyone else here remembers the name T3Houston: hi! I'm Stealth Penguin
I've lurked on HN for years, but I had to create an account just to respond to your post. I operated these servers – perhaps my handle is still familiar. I remember you for sure! I'm touched that you and so many others still have fond memories of that time.
It was such a gratifying experience to build out that server network and the accompanying integrations that attracted so many and built such a great community. I miss the days in college when I had time to work on stuff like that just for the love of it. I hope you are doing well!
Wow! Of course I remember you! I've actually tried to hunt you down in the past to say hi and thank you for all the good times. I thought I found you on Steam recently. If you see a friend request from a Stealth Penguin (https://steamcommunity.com/id/stealthpengu1n), that's me.
I'm doing great these days and hope you are too! That was such a fun time. If you want to get in touch, my gmail address is rimunroe. I'd love to catch up!
1) People interacted, they truly did. Dramas, friendship, everything. Where? Quakenet, Forums. Every clan had their channel, some easily reached 1000+ people.
2) People genuinely played together in teams: CS, Day of Defeat, you name it. You had your clan and spammed #5on5 on quakenet.
3) Those clans actually met in lan! At Smau Italian Lan Party 2002 there were more than 60 Counter Strike teams from *Italy alone*. And it was a bring your own computer event[1].
I know it's part nostalgia but I legit think it is borderline impossible to have anywhere near the same level of interactions with people today. Reddit is just not a good substitute for legacy threaded forums. Discussions die fast, they don't even have the material time to develop meaningfully.
In the late 1990s, living in South Korea during the fallout of the IMF financial crisis, my friends and I discovered PC bangs. These gaming havens offered titles like Rainbow Six, MechWarrior 2, and the legendary StarCraft. As a teenager, those moments were unforgettable—sitting in a buzzing PC bang, immersed in epic battles, sparked a lifelong passion for computer networks that I still pursue today.
In the 2000s, I helped establish CyberCafe, a PC bang in Oakland, California, where a diverse crowd came together to play StarCraft and Counter-Strike. It was a vibrant community hub, filled with shared excitement.
I wish PC bangs would make a comeback. Despite our powerful home setups and fast internet, gaming solo in your room can’t match the electric atmosphere of playing alongside others in a match, surrounded by camaraderie and competition.
The thing with sites like reddit, HN and the like is that they don't promote "identity" like IRC, forums and others. Like, I'm replying to you, we are being "social" , but mostly we will interact in this thread and call it a day. There's no push to form community or some longer term interaction.
In the late 90s early 2000s I was very into a game called Tactics Arena Online, and we had several great communities.
All the like/share/upvote stuff makes the internet much less authentic. Imagine going to a party where everyone offers a thumbs up/thumbs down whenever you finish a sentence. Do you anticipate making any close friends at this party?
LAN parties were welcoming on so many levels. Never played DnD? Come join. One time I recall was an isle of misogynist folk who haven't showered in days playing WoW.
The smell... no comment and in one case I recall at one LAN where a delivery woman was scared to walk down the isles to deliver so she asked me nicely if I could. No problem, pizza is here boys.
But within reason, they kept to themselves and were there to game. You kind of respected that and they respected you as you were there too to do the same.
Outside of all that they were highly intellectual and I recall talking for hours about other highly intellectual topics: psychics, space mathematics, game characters. I didn't approve of their extremist views and you could tell something went wrong somewhere with their psyche but there was a mutual respect. Unfortunately I was too young (20's) to grasp the true vibe.
I just got back from a goth music weekend this weekend and felt completely cold shouldered. No one was really welcoming and it was very alpha gatekeepery.
Granted the audience were clique, everyone seemed to knew each other and the mean age would be 40-something but the attitude from some left me astonished compared to attitudes of some of the worse LAN gamers.
If I can hang out with folk who are of such and yet unable to hang with those who are not, I couldn't figure what I was doing wrong. It left me sour for my first major goth event, a sub-culture I've enjoyed since 17; 36 now kind of makes me want to hand in the towel.
Maybe I was craving wanting the LAN I once I enjoyed in my teens, but it was worse than that. It felt horrible being there by myself unable to connect with others. I left a day early. Yet all there for the same reason, music.
I do believe gaming has a power to bring others together but online games now just feel half arsed and are more released for money rather than fun.
Two different sects, yet the one you'd expect to be the worse turned to be more warm. It's weird to think that, but shrug. I really don't know what to think and has left me really perplexed.
That was an innocent and wonderful time for many of us, but there was a dark side to it, especially as this haven for nerds went mainstream. I have a good friend who was basically groomed/seduced in ann online game and raped by a 35 year old man when she was 13.
It just sucks on so many levels that we can’t have nice things because many among us are beasts.
This sounds a lot like one of my favorite games, TagPro, aside from the difference in scale. It has a very tight-knit community, brought together especially by its several community-run competitive leagues. There was even an IRL meetup recently. Sadly it doesn't have anywhere near the marketing budget to become as big as CS.
Counter-strike was my introduction to how the Internet and TCP/IP worked. I built my first PC to play it. I learned linux to run servers for it. It inspired me and my friends to learn C to try and make our own mod. I made a website for my clan, self hosted it, and registered a domain for it.
The community was incredible, partly because of the server browser, as you point out. There was also a massive IRC community around it that was way more cohesive than what exists today. So CS was also my on ramp to IRC and the technology communities there.
I don't play a lot of games any more. Every now and then I'll try something. I have the GPU anyway and everything works great on Linux now. I found out there are third party server browsers for CS2 with modded servers. It is so tiny compared to the old days, but they exist. I played around on a couple around a year ago and had a good time. If you are feeling nostalgic, you should check it out.
Counter-Strike was my introduction to actual programming! I learned to write AMX mods to help make administering our servers (banning cheaters and whatnot) mid-match possible without having to interrupt playing to open the console.
> I found out there are third party server browsers for CS2 with modded servers. It is so tiny compared to the old days, but they exist. I played around on a couple around a year ago and had a good time. If you are feeling nostalgic, you should check it out.
I wouldn't be playing video games anymore if there were no more games with dedicated servers. Not from a moral standpoint, or from a competitive standpoint, but purely from the community perspective.
My youth was spent on Counterstrike: Source playing zombie mod, and then for years mapping for Zombie Escape, as a way to give back to those communities that gave me so much. I was never a mic user, and didn't use in game chat a huge amount either, but over time those regulars would still greet me and say hello. I rarely play now, but even after 17 years, when I show up once a year or so I'm always welcomed back in by all those who recognize me and admins switch to some fun maps (or some less fun ones that I made...), and we have a short catchup on life. Certainly many of these communities are on life-support, and most are long dead, but in all those people who play in these communities are the remnants of the communities who had just a little contribution in shaping the person I am today. I'll never forget when one community held a birthday event for me; for 8 hours we played every map I'd ever made, and won them all, with a full 64/64 server for the majority.
And I would never have experienced this if I hadn't happened to open Counterstrike: Source for the very first time, and my server browser's first entry just happened to be an early zombie mod server.
Shoutout to some of the old ZM/ZE communities: Syndicate Gamers, Plaguefest, i3D, icannt, ZES, Unloze & many more. ZE drove my interest to mapping, which drove my interest in Sourcemod, which drove my interest in programming, which led me to my career, which led me to my wife. Thank you.
In general I see this as an issue of gaming becoming more professionally run and maturing over time.
Server Browsers make sense in a world in which members of the community are self-hosting their own infrastructure for others to play on. While a great way to build community, it can be a problem when it comes to player retention and competitive mechanics.
Player retention can often suffer over the long-term as such communities establish boundaries and rules, eventually orienting around a small clique of individuals, increasing the friction for integrating new members into the community.
Additionally, the competitive mechanics, which often draw a large amount of players, can suffer as player-run infrastructure can vary wildly in its connection, uptime, speed, etc. and bring a risk of unsanctioned modifications, cheats, and hacks, all negatively affecting the player experience.
Overall, its a tradeoff, the community building aspects of player run servers can truly build colorful and vibrant communities, but this can be at the expense of overall player retention, trading a large and accessible playerbase for a small dedicated community.
Most game companies choose the route of building and running dedicated server infrastructure.
Which of course, internally run servers tend to be built with a set image that gets cloned each time more are needed, making each one indistinguishable and fungible. The only problem becomes assigning the players accross servers depending on which ones have available capacity, which is where matchmaking comes in.
> In general I see this as an issue of gaming becoming more professionally run and maturing over time.
I don't think anyone is confused about why this happened. It's obvious why a game company which is trying to make money in an extremely competitive field would prefer it. Having a good reason doesn't mean that there isn't reason to mourn the loss of what came before. Some things have improved! We should celebrate that gaming is more accessible now. It's been a long time since I've been kicked from a competitive shooter mid-match because a server crashed.
> Overall, its a tradeoff, the community building aspects of player run servers can truly build colorful and vibrant communities, but this can be at the expense of overall player retention, trading a large and accessible playerbase for a small dedicated community.
I don't run a business. I'd rather have a game with small communities of players which peters out over a few years than a game with millions of players for a decade+. Toward the end of a game's life player run servers allow the game to last potentially forever. The problem of games alienating newcomers is still a problem with matchmaking systems. Your community's average skill goes up over time once the rate of new players joining slows down.
> Additionally, the competitive mechanics, which often draw a large amount of players, can suffer as player-run infrastructure can vary wildly in its connection, uptime, speed, etc. and bring a risk of unsanctioned modifications, cheats, and hacks, all negatively affecting the player experience.
Games have handled this before with "official" servers or ones run by tournament hosts. I actually had fewer trouble with hacks on heavily moderated small servers because so many people knew each other and would catch onto cheaters quickly. Services like VAC help block repeat cheaters from joining in the future. I like having access to mods and to sometimes join a server and find something completely unexpected. I don't care much about competitive play, though I do like a fair number of e-sports-y games. I never had trouble finding vanilla CS servers back in the day.
>"Server Browsers make sense in a world in which members of the community are self-hosting their own infrastructure for others to play on. While a great way to build community, it can be a problem when it comes to player retention and competitive mechanics."
This just isn't true. The average TF2 player had 3K hours long before any official matchmaking was introduced, and UGC (TF2) and FACEIT (CSGO) were their own renditions of community-hosted competitive servers - and were done with great success.
I don't really buy it. First of all you can easily have both. Second, even if you think community servers are an issue, the concepts of server rooms with the server being on the standard company platform is totally feasible.
As for server uptime, if anything I think communities manage to provide excellent service and servers. Because the people running the infrastructure actually play with that infrastructure and know if something is wrong pretty quickly.
As for player retention, I played Dota in the Warcraft 3 days and it was the most played game on the planet while having horrible matchmaking on a terrible server system. And players continue playing.
And communities and particular matchup and games increase retention. I used to always play particular types of matches and rule-sets on servers I knew had a configuration and mod-set that I liked. One of the reason this doesn't exist anymore is part of the reason playing is less fun.
And again, you can have ranked match making primary servers as well if you feel like it.
> Most game companies choose the route of building and running dedicated server infrastructure.
You can still have hosted rooms on dedicated infrastructure, or have both.
> Player retention can often suffer over the long-term as such communities establish boundaries and rules, eventually orienting around a small clique of individuals, increasing the friction for integrating new members into the community.
This sentence applied to community moderated servers and server browsers in general is just FUD. These communites are often the exact opposite and take on the roll of getting new players up to speed and properly integrated into the existing community, they absolutely increase player retention.
Also, I find it really ironic that you can come to this conclusion and then talk about pandering to the "competitive" crowd in the same response. Pandering to the try hards has done more damage to the fun/community aspects of gaming than hackers ever could.
There's a difference between being toxic within a community. The community can self correct, it can ban people.
And if you don't like a community, you can leave at any time.
Compared to being toxic anonymously. Unless you get banned by an algorithm, your free to just suck.
However, I was in one CS clan where a girl gave out her real number to a random guy. Within minutes she was getting spam calls and other not great stuff.
I miss my CS clan though. There was some tension and arguments, but that's inherent to any structure with people.
Funny enough one of my mates couldn't believe I wasn't white over voice chat. It was like being in this magic world where race didn't matter.
Good times.
Edit: If someone wants to start an open source realistic-ish multiplayer FPS I'm so down.
Invite only community servers. If you suck and cheat we will figure it out and ban you. None of this kernel level anti cheat junk.
> The community can self correct, it can ban people.
The problem is that somewhere along the way, we decided that banning toxic users was some kind of infringement on "free speech". It's wild to me that people think sites like Twitter are a better place with previously banned but now reinstated toxic users.
i played CS competitively and the cheating was horrendous. if i had to put a number to it, i would guess that 50% were cheating in some form simply because it wasn't very difficult. I would ultimately be relying on checking the number of digits in your Steam ID to tell whether this account was fresh (higher probability that you bought a new one and were cheating). I think the anon matchmaking is the horrible part, not the anti cheat software.
I have close friends from a TF2 community server that's been dead for over a decade now, but I can't think of anyone I've met via random matchmaking since.
Game servers are the perfect digital third space, it starts off with random players but as you log in each night, you see more and more familiar faces pop up and before you know it you're all regulars popping in to chat while playing a few rounds, learning more about your new friends and praying to god that you've got the godlike Finnish sniper player on your team.
By comparison, modern matchmaking-lead multiplayer feels gentrified and - for lack of a better term - soulless. You're blindly shuffled between random players each game, and there's no way to properly build a connection with players or a community out of it. There's a vacuous and temporary nature to it all that just feels cold.
Edit: also the fact that things like skins & sprays - player controlled ways of expressing themselves - have been neatly packaged by gamedevs and sold back to players at a premium. It feels completely antithetical to the player-led nature of what such games used to be.
Undoubtedly I’ve seen / played with you at one point or another. I spent many years in these kinds of servers, because with active mods they weren’t toxic. You kept the cheaters at bay, and they were reliable places to jump in, frag and chat for hours. I used a handful of different names over the years, but usually bounced between variations of “Trigger,” “Asylum,” and “Shifty”. I miss the days you could bop into a server, meet a handful of people, end up on a CAL team with them, and find friends for the next few decades. Best case today, everyone in online games now might as well be a ghost. They’re just strangers in passing if they talk at all. And worst case - they’re overly toxic, loud, and abusing the mic. The only communities I belong to now are the ones I build myself and with friends I’ve made in real life - and we jump between games together now.
I'm afraid that time we long for is gone now as we've all gotten older, busier, and moved on to other things. So long, and thanks for all the fish.
The other grossly understated downside of lacking server browsers is how the player nowadays relies on the system to match him with the "best match" they can get. This opens the door to all sorts of skinner box manipulations, such as the game shoving you into teams where the probability of you winning is low, only to put you into a match where the probability of winning is high.
The ability to introduce randomization of reward around a layer of "skill issue" and plausible deniability for the matchmaker. Elo/bronze hell exists because even the worst players can just swing up and down their rank, whereas if you didn't had any other choice but play with whoever is in your local server (or LAN part, but I digress) then the only solution for you is to observe and adjust.
I'm from Greece and, we used to have lots of LAN arenas before fast internet connections became accessible. I'd get my face pushed by skilled people, and while I'd feel bad about it, the fact that I was playing with my friends and enjoyed myself made it all tolerable. Eventually I gave up feeling bad having negative k/d ratios, and could finally spectate and learn from others. The result was me becoming good enough to join my local CS clan. We never became best in the country, but I have really fond memories both from chilling as friends and highlights from matches.
Similar story, running modded COD4 dedicated servers largely got me into programming.
It's depressing the modern COD lobbies - chucked in with skill matched randoms on a small range of gamemodes, comms kept to a minimum so no one gets offended.
Then don't get me started how 50% of playtime is spent loading / in lobbies so eye balls on store can be maximised - I'll pass.
> I will forever mourn the general demise of server browsers.
I miss GameSpy, the original application, not the service it morphed into later. It was so easy to find a server to play on, playing the levels/mods you wanted to play.
Before that, I spent a lot of time (and money from my dad's credit card) on DWANGO. For those not familiar with DWANGO, you dialed in to their servers and then it acted like you were on a LAN. You could play games like Doom, Doom 2, Duke Nukem 3D, etc against other people. There was a main chat room to talk about what games you wanted to play.
It was also a much nicer place to play, partly because you had to pay _per minute_ in each game. The price wasn't anything crazy, if I recall, but it definitely kept people focused on the game.
Also met some good people and ended up working on a gaming site with one (MeccaWorld.com, on the off chance someone remembers that - I ran the Quake section) and started a company with them a decade or so later.
> I miss GameSpy, the original application, not the service it morphed into later
You drove me down nostalgia lane, looked in email and have my GameSpy receipt with unlock code. We paid $21.55 after tax in March of 1998 - my memory is really fuzzy but besides CS I think Quake III Arena was also popular at the time.
I have so many memories as a kid have so much fun on these servers. You guys had the rogue with almost complete invisibility. I played dust2 WC3 mod so much, hiding in weird corners with a knife waiting for someone to walk around the corner hoping it wasn’t whatever class had 300hp.
I owe much of my career in tech to counter strike. I learned to manage servers hosting clan websites, security and programming making the sites and “borrowing” designs from Clan Templates or whatever the company was that had the awesome animated flash headers. I remember learning about IDORs and SQL injection, before I even knew what it was called.
I learned 3d modeling with MilkShape for custom skins and models. Made dozens of surf maps and a few KZ. The AMX Mod community was so helpful learning to program. I think it was Small to write mods.
Thanks for the trip down memory lane. That was a pivotal moment in my life. I learned how to control a computer and found my passion.
Like all AAA media in the age of supposedly social media, games became hostile to self-organizing communities that sustain themselves, because they want a push model for consumption where the producers decide what you see, when, and whom with. It commodifies media into generic content, emphasizes short lived novelty, naturally structures around subscription (and increasingly fragmented and numerous ones), and as a bonus keeps all of your activity observable so you also do the labor of saleable data creation for them.
Nearly all my worthwhile experiences in multiplayer games were related to permanent server communities (CS clan servers, 2fort2furious, SWG emulator servers, ridiculous minecraft servers that were effectively collaborative volumetric databases for external design tools).
Even though I played CS at the highest level for the time, CAL-i, I always thought the maps were too small for 5v5 and that competitive would have benefitted from 7v7 or 8v8. That was how pubs were, and the dynamics were better. I think 5v5 won out due to practicality.
I was involved with the Quake/HL modding community in the late 90s and I fully agree! I hate matchmaking, but I get it too... but nothing compares to finding that dedicated server and joining regularly until you notice other regulars, and then you have friends... Shout out to #PVK and #Mastersword, great mods that had awesome dedicated server based communities.
Im also chiming in to say i remember these servers.
Frankly, i never liked the mod very much and only advanced a few levels. But i distinctly remember trying to kill enemies with some sort of lighting bolt move.
I also miss this. I used to be an admin of a popular Spanish community for Garry's Mod, TTT specifically. The whole community existed because we had our own server(s), and then added a BBS forum. It's impossible to do that anymore, afaik.
This inspired me to check on Cube2: Sauerbraten. Still alive? Yep, barely. I guess some online games never die. In the case of Cube2, the game isn't really competitive (servers have no lobby, players can join and leave games anytime, even switch teams in the middle of the game sometimes when it's not the server itself that moves you to the other team on respawn in order to balance the game a bit) and it is one less toxic component of online gaming. People were having a break and talk about various topics in the chat while watching the ongoing game.
Absolutely. I talk all the time about how I miss server browsers. Perhaps similar to the self hosting movement, we will see a similar movement in gaming to reclaim multiplayer games. The fact that a game can "die" and become unsupported now if it fails to find an audience at launch is crazy - just let people run their own servers if they want!
We also don't need content roadmaps for these games if you give the community modding and map tools.
OMG. I also just created an account on this site after being in read-only mode forever just to say 'Hi'.
We played together basically daily for quite some time in the early 2000s. I remember you and CamCam.
My handle here is the same as it was in CS. I spent countless hours in college in this server leveling up every class to the max and trying to break the game with the 'spider man rope'. Great times!
The rope mod was always one of my favorites. I think I asked rACEmic to add it. I have distinct memories of putting up votes in the server to see if people wanted me to enable it, especially in de_rats or de_jeepathon2k
Does not ranked matchmaking make for more competitive matches, a bit like if you play ranked in lichess it matches with someone of your own level, and you have a real chance of improving your own level over a period of time.
There is seems to be lot of negativity against ranked ladders in the gaming community, but isn't that what would be best system to play with people of your own skill level.
> Does not ranked matchmaking make for more competitive matches, a bit like if you play ranked in lichess it matches with someone of your own level, and you have a real chance of improving your own level over a period of time.
I don't like playing a game where I need to worry about ranking systems. It adds a layer which I'm just not interested in. It's fine if I die more often than other people. Some of my fondest memories are of watching someone much more skilled than me absolutely steamroll my team. If you're playing with people you know, a vastly more skilled player becomes a fun challenge for you to try and overcome together.
Even disregarding the other comment, not necessarily.
For anything but 1-vs-1, individual skill gets smeared into the non-enemy (ally for team games, or everyone for a free-for-all) average.
Remember that cooperation isn't an individual skill (unless the meta is complete, I guess); it relies on knowing your specific partners.
And besides ... it's perfectly normal for a task-oriented group to have people at a variety of skill levels. If anything, homogeneity is what's strange. This does change what interesting interactions happen, but by no means prevents them.
The move is intentional, it's extremely hard to sell someone microtransactions if they find themselves a member of a tight knit community they enjoy playing a game with. If they are isolated and believe the only mechanism for advancement is microtransactions, they are much more likely to spend money.
If anyone else played on the T3Houston servers, there's a (mostly dead) Steam group which would be a solid place to reconnect in https://steamcommunity.com/groups/t3houston
> I will forever mourn the general demise of server browsers. Too many games require you to use matchmaking systems, which means it's very hard to build up a small community in-game anymore.
It's been many moons since I was into gaming, but back in the RtCW [1][2] days there was a bunch of regulars that played on a server run my (IIRC) Charter. There were many servers in the browse list, and I'm sure many had a community of regulars just like we did.
These things still exists in CS (though not as popular in US but that's a reflection of CS losing popularity there)
People right now are having the same community experiences in custom server, or with official Valve, or third party like FaceIt... From crazy custom mods to try hard competitive games.
From time to time I stumble on some community servers when looking for a better DM warm-up server. Players and admin talking to each other like they were regulars, admin flying around in a batman skin killing a camper with lightning bolt, all the usual admin/community tools and more... also all the laughing, banter, playing songs and crap on the mic...
Would you have tried to join in? Let's just face it we've abandoned and stopped seeking it as we got older.
Oh yeah I used to play on T3Houston all the time, back in ~2003 (as Undead). There weren't that many W3 mod servers that had a consistent player population. I lived in PNW though so the latency was always around ~80ms.
Thought I'd throw this out there, but server browsers are still around in CS2. There are a large number of servers populated around the clock with everything from surf maps, bhop, to even old custom maps from 1.6.
Also, there were multiple tournament websites out there: ESL and another one I don't remember the name anymore, that hosted tournaments all time.
I remember lan tournaments in Italy with more than 60+ Counter Strike teams like Smau 2002, and you had to bring your own computer nonetheless.
It was really a golden age for gaming I swear.
People that didn't live that think that gaming is better now are severely mistaken.
Playing online videogames today is a solo experience, 20+ years ago it was the very opposite, even if you played alone you met people on the same hosted servers you liked, on forums, on IRC, in lan.
Wow, I played on your servers as a 9-10 year old. I lived in Houston and joined your server simply because they said Houston and I assumed my ping could make it there. I became obsessed with the WC3 mod. Handle was probably Coomie at the time.
I still remember invisible humans, elves with evasion, orcs with massive nade damage, undead with life steal… good times. I didn’t know how to spell “ultimate” so it took me forever to actually be able to bind an ult to keyboard.
I have fond memories of playing on those modded community servers once in a while, it was a nice variety in the world of rats and regular gameplay.
While there is still some amount of it around in the Counter-Strike 2 era, there's a strong disincentive for joining random community servers when there have been client vulnerabilities that allow arbitrary code execution.
Haha I remember almost crying when I was 12 because I couldn’t get a single kill in ET. Crazy that no one makes a modern ET clone, such a unique gameplay, it would be an instant hit, just add some buzzwords „mission based tactical shooter with classes and progression“
I reinstalled it recently but I got baited so hard at all the servers filled with bots. For a second there I thought, "this game is totally NOT DEAD". Sadly, I couldnt find any non bot filled server with a decent ping.
Absolutely.
The unique flavor the admins of your server added were something completely special.
As an aside. I always appreciated the street justice the admins would sometime enact. Running through the level with invincibility and godlike mods just gibbing everyone left and right.
Lousiana Anti-Scripting Group - LAG was my family away from home while living in this distant country. The rules were extremely strict to allow for their kids to also play on the server which was run by a few, including a Nam vet, Phantom. Fun times.
100% - local servers is what led to having lan events in your city, less toxic players and its just funner running into the same players. those were the good old days
I loved that time too, as well as the time before it when we used to run text-based MMOs until Origin, Everquest, and Blizzard stole the technology and put a 3D UI on it :-)
I absolutely hated server browsers. Spending ages waiting for slots to free up on decent servers. Trying a new server only to find it had 100 shitty mods installed. Servers where the admins randomly kicked or banned people, or blatantly cheated
I did as well! @rimunroe I don't remember my handle, but you took me down a nice little path on memory lane.
The Warcraft mod was a little goofy, but as a younger kid who couldn't appreciate the hardcore competitive scene I liked the variety and silliness it brought.
I spent way too much time finding custom skins online to keep things interesting. Good times.
Anything from a simple to filterable list of servers with names and player counts. Most importantly: it gives the player consistent and complete control of their experience vs an auto-match-making algorithm that randomly throws you into lobbies.
Something that wasn't mentioned in the article is that Counter-Strike spawned the creation of the most iconic FPS map ever: de_dust2. If an FPS supports custom maps, it's inevitable that de_dust2 will get ported to it.
There's actually a mini-documentary about the creation of de_dust2 [0] which I think will be of interest to FPS fans.
I wonder if de_dust2 is the most played FPS map or if it has been dethroned by something like Fortnite or some other shooter map.
I believe de_dust2 is likely still the most played FPS map. Not sure which other map could have dethroned it. It can’t be Fortnite since Fortnite changes the map every few months and nowadays makes a new one every year or so.
I guess Blood Gulch from the time when Halo was super popular was a very popular map as well.
Then you also have 2fort from the Team Fortress games.
But yes I would say de_dust2 is very likely still the most played FPS map and it will likely stay that way.
As much as I love all the maps you mentioned, and could probably sketch their layouts from memory, I think Rust and Nuketown from the call of duty series are probably better known by a wide margin. Rust has been featured in 3 different games that had a combined sales of over 2 billion dollars, but even that is small peanuts compared to Nuketown.
Nuketown has been featured in six different games, with 17 total variants of the map existing, and 8 different game modes that are Nuketown maps 24/7.
I feel like halo was never really big outside the US, I would guess unreal tournament, quake, DoD, CoD, battlefield, all were quite popular in the whole west
I have fond memories of 2fort. Desperately wanting to play TF1 on a 14.4K modem from Germany - no European servers meant playing with 500ms ping, which made aiming completely impossible, so I took the pacifist route each time by picking the scout class and then trying to steal the flag unnoticed by coming in through the sewers. It worked sometimes when the server was only half full.
There have been days where 40M people played Fortnite on a single day. I'm kinda out of the gaming world a bit, but I did not believe when my nephew mentioned it, but it checked out. Given the age range of people who still actively play it, I'm not sure if they've even heard of de_dust2.
The most fun one I've used is that it is my home environment in VR. In 3D it is a weird feeling to walk around and see how all the old sight lines are. I still duck a bit walking past mid doors :)
Yes. I miss how wildly creative shooters used to be. In just UT[2K4] you had the translocator, the shock rifle (with a hidden third firing mode), and movement like wall jumping.
I also liked de_dust more because a well executed T rush to site A was as fun as it got on random servers before voice chat. Was awesome when it all came together and everybody worked together.
I really don't like how modern games are played on just a handful of fixed maps where players go through the same memorized motions thousands of times. The way we used to play Quake back in the day was that we had hundreds of maps and played one after the other maybe for few rounds at most. We were coming back only to very few bizarre and fun ones. Game involved finding yourself out in your new environment. It engaged spatial intelligence.
Give me any team vs team games that are played on procedurally generated maps.
Mostly balance issues, I think. Balance matters in pubs.
If dust had the underpass-stairs option from the beginning, and maybe moved the T spawns forward by 1 second, it probably would be just as popular today.
I grew up with CS1.6 and spent what must be thousands of hours on it before I turned 18. But I can't stand what Valve did to modern versions of CS. The reason? Gambling. So much fucking gambling everywhere. Other games have lootboxes, I hate them, but they are usually "contained" in the sense that you do not see them in every context surrounding the game. But because CS skins can be traded between players, there is now an entire third party ecosystem for skin trading and worse, skin gambling. Lootboxes inside lootboxes. And now it feels like every CS YouTuber, streamer and even teams at lower tiers is sponsored by a skin casino. I remember dropping into a stream of a professional player only to watch him throw $500 (God knows where the money comes from) away playing what is basically a CS skin roulette. WTF.
And there is also the typical sports gambling shit. HLTV the main news source of the pro CS scene is full of gambling ads. Higher tier tournaments often give a segment to gambling people talking about odds between matches. And as you would expect in a scene with rampant gambling there is match fixing. The serious media and the authorities will not look into it because esports is not serious stuff, but people know it’s there. Whenever you see a tier 2 team throw a most winnable match in the weirdest fashion you can see a stream of Twitch chat messages calling it rigged. People know but nothing will be done against it. Check out Richard Lewis if you want more information on that.
I would love to see a modern shooter with nice graphics and self hostable servers in the same niche as the old CS. But all we got is Valorant and its kernel spyware (oops I mean anticheat). Guess I should just keep player CS1.6 until I die shrug
Hate it all you want, but it's the sole reason Counter-Strike still exists today. Without skins, Valve would have shut the door on the game (and quite possibly the company entirely).
Every other live service manages with non-gambling skins. They have their own problems (usually around FOMO), but nowhere near the literal gambling that is CS.
> Valve would have shut the door on the game
In terms of not having any developers on it, sure, not impossible.
> (and quite possibly the company entirely)
Ahahahaha come on man, even without CS, Valve is one of the most profitable companies of all time.
Valve has already pretty much "shut the door" on its games relatively to how much money they have and how much dev effort they could put into it if they actually tried harder, because they're mostly just maintaining their gambling facades (cs/dota2/tf2) and abandoning everything else (l4d2/other stagnant games and ip).
Did you miss the entire article? CS itself came from a dorm room. You can have excellent games that spawn from creativity instead of monetization.
I was really into the odd maps (NIPPER) and early Internet community around games (joe2). We hosted servers off of unused CPU cycles from oil exploration boxes.
This still exists all over the web, but the creators that figured out economics moved on.
Why does the gambling side affect you? Just don't care what your gun or your body armor looks like, and you can play the game normally. As far as I understand it, at least the way it was the last time I played like 7 years ago, the loot boxes didn't give you special powers in the game, they were just skins
Uhm, wow. Most winnable matches often enough end when the drugs wear off for hundreds of reasons.
You are looking at it from the wrong angle. From what I have seen, it's rarely a whole team that fucks up while winning. Also: often enough: they don't seem to be aware of the pattern that just occurred in their brains (are not, as far as I learned from Paul E.). I believe these kids are put on drugs without consent.
I have no proof, of course.
I noticed it first in soccer back in '16, I think. Which surprised me because it was not boxing or wrestling or the UFC, where such things are the standard.
As someone with 10,000+ hours in CSGO/CS2, I think your argument is weak clearly is coming from someone who is a boomer.
CS is one of, if not, the least egregious "loot cases" systems in the gaming industry. Every case you open, gives you a reward, which can be sold. Each case you open has fixed odds and is not manipulated by the gaming companies to psychologically torment you. You get no benefit from using skins or stickers on your gun. It is purely cosmetic. Compared to other games which rely on pay2win mechanics, CSGO/CS2's systems are great.
I think skins are one of the best parts of CS. It blows my mind you can have skins worth thousands of dollars, trade them between friends like collectables, sell them for real life money and make your inventory look cool.
I agree the third party skin gambling sites aren't good, although the whole base concept, within Steam and a handful of trusted selling sites are perfectly fine.
Your gripe with the eSports side of this is also stupid. Have you watched / seen any sport on the planet? Gambling is apart of sports and sports culture, its one of the main revenue streams. Gambling helps grassroot sports and helps get kids into sports.
The whole "often give a segment to gambling people talking about odds" is rubbish. At most ESL, Blast, PGL events, the most that is even talked about odds is a brief mention of the odds, no breakdowns, no match betting options, etc. It's very, very tame. I likely have hours watching CS than I do playing too.
CS eSports is in a weird place because the funding comes from two main places in 2025, Saudi sportswashing and gambling. There used to be tons of VC, although that dried up when eSports didn't take off exactly how everyone expected it to.
CS was one of the more safe investments are the game has been around for effectively two decades and has always had a competitive scene, dating back to early 2000s. CS is one of the most enjoyable and easy to watch eSports so its pretty enticing for viewers (and advertisers) although the marketablility of CS is hard due to bombs, guns and terrorists.
eSports needs a pay per view option otherwise the funding is always going to come from sketchy places, but the average eSports fan does not care enough to pay because they are too cheap to pay for stuff, or too young to have the funding to do so. Unlike traditional sport.
You are seemingly fine with killing gambling, so might as well kill all tier 2 and 3 scenes, including local scenes. They are mostly funded by gambling and even so, people throw matches because they get like 1k a month for being a tier 2 pro. People need to live and throwing gets more than their wage.
Your final point is Twitch chat messages saying stupid shit about match-fixing, I am not sure why this is even relevant. Studying twitch chat is like studying The Onion, not sure why you would.
Richard Lewis has talked extensively about everything I've said above.
Saying its among the least egregious examples just isn't true. Doppler knives can sell for over $10,000. We know the sorts of psychological outcomes that occur from putting a vanishingly unlikely $10,000 jackpot on a slot machine.
People will willingly blow their paychecks, week after week, hoping to strike that 0.00275% chance for big money. This is bad for society, just like slot machines.
Heads up to those who played CS:GO years ago and like money. I was a pretty active player from 2012 to 2014.
Back then I got dozens of crates that I didn't open, now worth as high as 31$CAD each. I looked it up last week and it's worth over a thousand dollars in Steam. I cashed in on almost half of it and now I have some cash to buy games for my family and friends.
Likewise for Dota 2 players. Some of those old / early cosmetics have shot up in price. A friend of mine I used to play with had a $500 item. Getting rid of them may fund your game purchases for a bit.
There are plenty of sites out there that can give you a value of your inventory. Just make sure your privacy settings for your inventory are set to "public": https://steamcommunity.com/my/edit/settings (though I'd recommend changing it back to private after you use one of the tools, since scammers will try and target you if you have public high value items).
> Some of those old / early cosmetics have shot up in price
"Back in my day" you brought your own skins, maps, and mods to your clan's Quake 2 server and they'd be automatically copied-into other players' q2base profile directories when they connected: free and fast. Making skins in a cracked copy of Photoshop 5.5 or PaintShopPro (don't forget to save to PCX!) was trivial and because nothing really mattered no-one could possibly get angry at anything.
...but now you're telling me that if I want to add custom skins to CounterStrike I have to pay other people hugely inflated sums for the privilege of something that was still free and open to all only yesteryear? And we're surprised at how toxic the "gamer" community has become over the past 15 years since tradable lootboxes, cosmetics, and microtransactions became the norm?
However, if I reflect on how much time I spent in the game in order to receive that much money it's laughable as it was easily 2 thousand hours of game play.
I have two tips:
Sell hardware and then you can get real cash. For example, use the Steam Wallet balance to buy Steam Deck Docks which you ship directly from Steam to your customer on eBay.
Personally, I used my Steam Wallet money to purchase several of the most popular skins on a third-party site and resold them there. I probably took about a 15% hit but who can complain for $400 in profit?
> However, if I reflect on how much time I spent in the game in order to receive that much money it's laughable as it was easily 2 thousand hours of game play.
but, you weren't playing the game as a job to make money, you were playing to have fun (hopefully?) so arguably the extra surprise money is a bonus.
for me, playing a game in order to make real world money would turn it into an awful grind and sap all the joy out of it
Coming from UT/CS and a bunch of other games where skins were simple mods I hate that skins cost so much real world money and so I refuse to spend a cent in protest.
Game with cool mechanics and a universe to play it in, that is worth $$$. Making your shirt green is not worth $... it is worth a colour-wheel implementation.
I started with CS: Source and quickly got into 1.6 because of the more expansive funmaps and modding scene. It was like the Wild West (or literally as was the case with de_westwood) - Nipper's penchant for glitchy drivable vehicles, ridiculously huge maps with teleports galore and weird music, fy_iceworld, gun game... it was so wonderfully weird. The fact that the core of the game stayed the same for so many years without DLC meant that people got good at it on their own merit without worrying about dropping money on upgrades or grinding long hours to get drops or whatever.
Maybe I'm old but I feel as though there's still a place for shooters of this nature. Every time I hear about new seasons dropping for some ultra-popular game I lose interest; I've no desire to keep up with the evolution of a game coordinated by a billion-dollar company to extract money from my wallet after I already paid for it.
But yes, I was never really a 1.6 player but I felt the same way about Garry's Mod maps. Joining a random server and seeing the maps and assets download and never really knowing what you were going to spawn into... it was wonderfully weird in a way that reminds me of the individuality of the Old Internet™. It might be nostalgia talking but there's some crispness and snappiness to the Source engine that games these days don't quite have.
Modding and mapping were what made CS great in my opinion. Since CS:GO, Valve has been quietly killing that scene by making it harder and harder for people to find these game modes.
But to be honest, I think it's an artifact of our (or at least my) generation. I've played CS for thousands of hours, same with l4d and cod2/4, and I don't _need_ a battle pass, seasons, constant updates etc. Though when chatting with my ~14 year younger cousin about this some months ago, he said it'd be "boring to play a game that doesn't get updates". So.. different times :)
Quietly? They monopolized the modding community. There is a universe where gamers could sell their weapon skins, but now only Valve sells their own skins. They killed modders.
I don't think it's just "different times" as you put it. Those kids have had their brains ruined by companies' profit-maximization schemes. It makes me really angry (at these companies) and sad (for the kids) that they have been the victims of such a thing. Every generation before them could just enjoy things without needing endless novelty and updates, but they have apparently been robbed of that.
There was also the whole branch of Surfing, which exploited a glitch in the physics engine that caused standing sloped surfaces to generate forward velocity. Flying around massive expansive maps gliding on slopes while blasting people with shotguns was so much fun (or sniping them mid air with an awp).
There was also a whole sub-genre of skill surf, with mechanically challenging courses to complete.
Oh and then kz maps too, which was just for climbing up huge structures.
When CS:Go came out, one of the younger guys on my team got into it, and invited me to come play some rounds at a LAN cafe. A lot of the skills were rusty, but the muscle memory was still there from playing the original starting from beta 0.7. He was stunned, not realizing that I had many more years of practice playing what was essentially the same game.
I don't really play games anymore. The last one I got into was Tribes: Ascend, and when that died, I never started another one. I enjoyed the community aspect of it, and I was never one for RPG elements in games that weren't RPG games, which seemed to become an increasingly emphasized strategy for driving engagement and retention.
I don't recognize the industry anymore, and while I used to feel sad about that, I've since come to realize that, for me at least, the experiences I had playing those games were as much a product of the time and place as they were about the game. I can't go back and see stormwind for the first time again, but I'm sure kids these days are experiencing their own version of that, even if it's not quite the wild west that it used to be. The gambling aspects can piss right off, though.
I have a (knowingly irrational) dislike for Counter Strike because it fragmented what was previously an essentially single 'Quake / Quake 2" community, making the free-for-all adrenaline frag fests that I most enjoyed less populated, specifically at LANs.
I got my fun from balls out running and firing rockets and rails in the chaos of free for all, and CS offered what was essentially the 'we're all campers' version, which wasn't fun at all (for me, at the time).
I didn't want to simulate anything, I want(ed) chaos, instant respawn, lightning reflexes, constant motion. Maybe I do have ADHD.
CS has stood the test of time though, so respect for that.
You sound like me. I disliked CS because of how slow and campy it was compared to Quake and we always had this banter in my friend group about Quake vs CS vs Unreal Tournament and which game requires more skill. I ended up playing for one of the best clans in Sweden and competed for a few years until Q3 eventually died.
I did try playing CS more serious for some time but I just couldn't stand it and I never had the patience. Got to respect that.
I still get a buzz watching the old Q2 / Q3 frag videos.
I was never that good, but have scored a handful of ridiculous flick rails over the time. I think Rocket Arena 3 was peak for me. I'm nearly 20 years out of practice now though. Feels like I'm getting closer to picking up some light hardcore PC gaming again though ;)
My niece is looking forward to having a crack at Portal 2 in the near future (yes, it's old, but it came up somehow or other recently, and she knows it from memes), so I'm aiming to enjoy that together. Gotta refresh myself through Portal 1 first.
For us the combination of WoW and WC3, then later LoL, are what ruined the thriving LAN centre scene across Ireland. There were 12 or so actual GAMETHEWORLD centres, then other wee franchised ones. WoW especially just didn't lend itself to LAN gaming, absolutely sucked the life out of the centres.
The issue that was noted at larger LANs I used to go to was that matches of DotA could lock in around 12 people for around 45m per game which would make getting participants for other games more difficult. There would be constantly running CS/UT servers where people would drop into to kill time, but trying to get a large game running or something like battlefield required advance planning
Agreed. The only thing more technically challenging than Q3 was its aptly named Challenge ProMode (CPM) mod which added thing like full air control to make gameplay even faster. Watching demos of the best CPM players I had the feeling that they were playing the game faster than I was able to follow it.
i used to think that too coming from quake i was like wtf if i die i have to just wait? lol. but i've grown to love all the tactical skill required in CS. tbf back in the day you could bunny hope like a quake player before they neutered all that
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I used to be an admin on a group of about 18 or so connected Counter-Strike 1.6 servers called T3Houston*. We ran modified versions of various Warcraft 3 mods which added persistent XP/leveling, as well as integration with an external item store and player database the owner maintained. Most of those servers were filled to the brim during peak US gaming times, and our forum was quite active.
There aren't many games these days where you could do something like that. I discovered the community because one day I was just looking for a server with open slots for me to join. I was fairly skeptical of whatever a Warcraft mod would be like, but ended up enjoying it so I added it to my favorites. Eventually I got to know the regulars and joined the forum. Notably, the place felt far less toxic than the average server I'd join back then. I can completely believe this is just me looking at the past through rose tinted glasses, but it feels like the general toxicity has gotten worse at the same time as we've lost a lot of tools to manage it.
* If anyone else here remembers the name T3Houston: hi! I'm Stealth Penguin
It was such a gratifying experience to build out that server network and the accompanying integrations that attracted so many and built such a great community. I miss the days in college when I had time to work on stuff like that just for the love of it. I hope you are doing well!
I'm doing great these days and hope you are too! That was such a fun time. If you want to get in touch, my gmail address is rimunroe. I'd love to catch up!
(I was MethodMan)
1) People interacted, they truly did. Dramas, friendship, everything. Where? Quakenet, Forums. Every clan had their channel, some easily reached 1000+ people.
2) People genuinely played together in teams: CS, Day of Defeat, you name it. You had your clan and spammed #5on5 on quakenet.
3) Those clans actually met in lan! At Smau Italian Lan Party 2002 there were more than 60 Counter Strike teams from *Italy alone*. And it was a bring your own computer event[1].
I know it's part nostalgia but I legit think it is borderline impossible to have anywhere near the same level of interactions with people today. Reddit is just not a good substitute for legacy threaded forums. Discussions die fast, they don't even have the material time to develop meaningfully.
[1] https://www.aspidetr.com/images/immagini/blu/varie/smau02_03...
In the 2000s, I helped establish CyberCafe, a PC bang in Oakland, California, where a diverse crowd came together to play StarCraft and Counter-Strike. It was a vibrant community hub, filled with shared excitement.
I wish PC bangs would make a comeback. Despite our powerful home setups and fast internet, gaming solo in your room can’t match the electric atmosphere of playing alongside others in a match, surrounded by camaraderie and competition.
In the late 90s early 2000s I was very into a game called Tactics Arena Online, and we had several great communities.
The smell... no comment and in one case I recall at one LAN where a delivery woman was scared to walk down the isles to deliver so she asked me nicely if I could. No problem, pizza is here boys.
But within reason, they kept to themselves and were there to game. You kind of respected that and they respected you as you were there too to do the same.
Outside of all that they were highly intellectual and I recall talking for hours about other highly intellectual topics: psychics, space mathematics, game characters. I didn't approve of their extremist views and you could tell something went wrong somewhere with their psyche but there was a mutual respect. Unfortunately I was too young (20's) to grasp the true vibe.
I just got back from a goth music weekend this weekend and felt completely cold shouldered. No one was really welcoming and it was very alpha gatekeepery.
Granted the audience were clique, everyone seemed to knew each other and the mean age would be 40-something but the attitude from some left me astonished compared to attitudes of some of the worse LAN gamers.
If I can hang out with folk who are of such and yet unable to hang with those who are not, I couldn't figure what I was doing wrong. It left me sour for my first major goth event, a sub-culture I've enjoyed since 17; 36 now kind of makes me want to hand in the towel.
Maybe I was craving wanting the LAN I once I enjoyed in my teens, but it was worse than that. It felt horrible being there by myself unable to connect with others. I left a day early. Yet all there for the same reason, music.
I do believe gaming has a power to bring others together but online games now just feel half arsed and are more released for money rather than fun.
Two different sects, yet the one you'd expect to be the worse turned to be more warm. It's weird to think that, but shrug. I really don't know what to think and has left me really perplexed.
It just sucks on so many levels that we can’t have nice things because many among us are beasts.
Counter-strike was my introduction to how the Internet and TCP/IP worked. I built my first PC to play it. I learned linux to run servers for it. It inspired me and my friends to learn C to try and make our own mod. I made a website for my clan, self hosted it, and registered a domain for it.
The community was incredible, partly because of the server browser, as you point out. There was also a massive IRC community around it that was way more cohesive than what exists today. So CS was also my on ramp to IRC and the technology communities there.
I don't play a lot of games any more. Every now and then I'll try something. I have the GPU anyway and everything works great on Linux now. I found out there are third party server browsers for CS2 with modded servers. It is so tiny compared to the old days, but they exist. I played around on a couple around a year ago and had a good time. If you are feeling nostalgic, you should check it out.
> I found out there are third party server browsers for CS2 with modded servers. It is so tiny compared to the old days, but they exist. I played around on a couple around a year ago and had a good time. If you are feeling nostalgic, you should check it out.
Thanks for the tip!
My youth was spent on Counterstrike: Source playing zombie mod, and then for years mapping for Zombie Escape, as a way to give back to those communities that gave me so much. I was never a mic user, and didn't use in game chat a huge amount either, but over time those regulars would still greet me and say hello. I rarely play now, but even after 17 years, when I show up once a year or so I'm always welcomed back in by all those who recognize me and admins switch to some fun maps (or some less fun ones that I made...), and we have a short catchup on life. Certainly many of these communities are on life-support, and most are long dead, but in all those people who play in these communities are the remnants of the communities who had just a little contribution in shaping the person I am today. I'll never forget when one community held a birthday event for me; for 8 hours we played every map I'd ever made, and won them all, with a full 64/64 server for the majority.
And I would never have experienced this if I hadn't happened to open Counterstrike: Source for the very first time, and my server browser's first entry just happened to be an early zombie mod server.
Shoutout to some of the old ZM/ZE communities: Syndicate Gamers, Plaguefest, i3D, icannt, ZES, Unloze & many more. ZE drove my interest to mapping, which drove my interest in Sourcemod, which drove my interest in programming, which led me to my career, which led me to my wife. Thank you.
Server Browsers make sense in a world in which members of the community are self-hosting their own infrastructure for others to play on. While a great way to build community, it can be a problem when it comes to player retention and competitive mechanics.
Player retention can often suffer over the long-term as such communities establish boundaries and rules, eventually orienting around a small clique of individuals, increasing the friction for integrating new members into the community.
Additionally, the competitive mechanics, which often draw a large amount of players, can suffer as player-run infrastructure can vary wildly in its connection, uptime, speed, etc. and bring a risk of unsanctioned modifications, cheats, and hacks, all negatively affecting the player experience.
Overall, its a tradeoff, the community building aspects of player run servers can truly build colorful and vibrant communities, but this can be at the expense of overall player retention, trading a large and accessible playerbase for a small dedicated community.
Most game companies choose the route of building and running dedicated server infrastructure. Which of course, internally run servers tend to be built with a set image that gets cloned each time more are needed, making each one indistinguishable and fungible. The only problem becomes assigning the players accross servers depending on which ones have available capacity, which is where matchmaking comes in.
I don't think anyone is confused about why this happened. It's obvious why a game company which is trying to make money in an extremely competitive field would prefer it. Having a good reason doesn't mean that there isn't reason to mourn the loss of what came before. Some things have improved! We should celebrate that gaming is more accessible now. It's been a long time since I've been kicked from a competitive shooter mid-match because a server crashed.
> Overall, its a tradeoff, the community building aspects of player run servers can truly build colorful and vibrant communities, but this can be at the expense of overall player retention, trading a large and accessible playerbase for a small dedicated community.
I don't run a business. I'd rather have a game with small communities of players which peters out over a few years than a game with millions of players for a decade+. Toward the end of a game's life player run servers allow the game to last potentially forever. The problem of games alienating newcomers is still a problem with matchmaking systems. Your community's average skill goes up over time once the rate of new players joining slows down.
> Additionally, the competitive mechanics, which often draw a large amount of players, can suffer as player-run infrastructure can vary wildly in its connection, uptime, speed, etc. and bring a risk of unsanctioned modifications, cheats, and hacks, all negatively affecting the player experience.
Games have handled this before with "official" servers or ones run by tournament hosts. I actually had fewer trouble with hacks on heavily moderated small servers because so many people knew each other and would catch onto cheaters quickly. Services like VAC help block repeat cheaters from joining in the future. I like having access to mods and to sometimes join a server and find something completely unexpected. I don't care much about competitive play, though I do like a fair number of e-sports-y games. I never had trouble finding vanilla CS servers back in the day.
This just isn't true. The average TF2 player had 3K hours long before any official matchmaking was introduced, and UGC (TF2) and FACEIT (CSGO) were their own renditions of community-hosted competitive servers - and were done with great success.
As for server uptime, if anything I think communities manage to provide excellent service and servers. Because the people running the infrastructure actually play with that infrastructure and know if something is wrong pretty quickly.
As for player retention, I played Dota in the Warcraft 3 days and it was the most played game on the planet while having horrible matchmaking on a terrible server system. And players continue playing.
And communities and particular matchup and games increase retention. I used to always play particular types of matches and rule-sets on servers I knew had a configuration and mod-set that I liked. One of the reason this doesn't exist anymore is part of the reason playing is less fun.
And again, you can have ranked match making primary servers as well if you feel like it.
> Most game companies choose the route of building and running dedicated server infrastructure.
You can still have hosted rooms on dedicated infrastructure, or have both.
Also, I find it really ironic that you can come to this conclusion and then talk about pandering to the "competitive" crowd in the same response. Pandering to the try hards has done more damage to the fun/community aspects of gaming than hackers ever could.
I think that's the thing that everyone here is ultimately mourning.
And if you don't like a community, you can leave at any time.
Compared to being toxic anonymously. Unless you get banned by an algorithm, your free to just suck.
However, I was in one CS clan where a girl gave out her real number to a random guy. Within minutes she was getting spam calls and other not great stuff.
I miss my CS clan though. There was some tension and arguments, but that's inherent to any structure with people.
Funny enough one of my mates couldn't believe I wasn't white over voice chat. It was like being in this magic world where race didn't matter.
Good times.
Edit: If someone wants to start an open source realistic-ish multiplayer FPS I'm so down.
Invite only community servers. If you suck and cheat we will figure it out and ban you. None of this kernel level anti cheat junk.
The problem is that somewhere along the way, we decided that banning toxic users was some kind of infringement on "free speech". It's wild to me that people think sites like Twitter are a better place with previously banned but now reinstated toxic users.
I made so many friends by joining a lobby and just playing a game for a few nights in a row or whatever
Now I don't know how to really connect with people online anymore or build any kind of community
Discord servers don't seem like the right way, they are too busy and chaotic for me
I miss making friends online and gaming with them
Game servers are the perfect digital third space, it starts off with random players but as you log in each night, you see more and more familiar faces pop up and before you know it you're all regulars popping in to chat while playing a few rounds, learning more about your new friends and praying to god that you've got the godlike Finnish sniper player on your team.
By comparison, modern matchmaking-lead multiplayer feels gentrified and - for lack of a better term - soulless. You're blindly shuffled between random players each game, and there's no way to properly build a connection with players or a community out of it. There's a vacuous and temporary nature to it all that just feels cold.
Edit: also the fact that things like skins & sprays - player controlled ways of expressing themselves - have been neatly packaged by gamedevs and sold back to players at a premium. It feels completely antithetical to the player-led nature of what such games used to be.
I'm afraid that time we long for is gone now as we've all gotten older, busier, and moved on to other things. So long, and thanks for all the fish.
The ability to introduce randomization of reward around a layer of "skill issue" and plausible deniability for the matchmaker. Elo/bronze hell exists because even the worst players can just swing up and down their rank, whereas if you didn't had any other choice but play with whoever is in your local server (or LAN part, but I digress) then the only solution for you is to observe and adjust.
I'm from Greece and, we used to have lots of LAN arenas before fast internet connections became accessible. I'd get my face pushed by skilled people, and while I'd feel bad about it, the fact that I was playing with my friends and enjoyed myself made it all tolerable. Eventually I gave up feeling bad having negative k/d ratios, and could finally spectate and learn from others. The result was me becoming good enough to join my local CS clan. We never became best in the country, but I have really fond memories both from chilling as friends and highlights from matches.
It's depressing the modern COD lobbies - chucked in with skill matched randoms on a small range of gamemodes, comms kept to a minimum so no one gets offended.
Then don't get me started how 50% of playtime is spent loading / in lobbies so eye balls on store can be maximised - I'll pass.
I miss GameSpy, the original application, not the service it morphed into later. It was so easy to find a server to play on, playing the levels/mods you wanted to play.
Before that, I spent a lot of time (and money from my dad's credit card) on DWANGO. For those not familiar with DWANGO, you dialed in to their servers and then it acted like you were on a LAN. You could play games like Doom, Doom 2, Duke Nukem 3D, etc against other people. There was a main chat room to talk about what games you wanted to play.
It was also a much nicer place to play, partly because you had to pay _per minute_ in each game. The price wasn't anything crazy, if I recall, but it definitely kept people focused on the game.
Also met some good people and ended up working on a gaming site with one (MeccaWorld.com, on the off chance someone remembers that - I ran the Quake section) and started a company with them a decade or so later.
You drove me down nostalgia lane, looked in email and have my GameSpy receipt with unlock code. We paid $21.55 after tax in March of 1998 - my memory is really fuzzy but besides CS I think Quake III Arena was also popular at the time.
I owe much of my career in tech to counter strike. I learned to manage servers hosting clan websites, security and programming making the sites and “borrowing” designs from Clan Templates or whatever the company was that had the awesome animated flash headers. I remember learning about IDORs and SQL injection, before I even knew what it was called.
I learned 3d modeling with MilkShape for custom skins and models. Made dozens of surf maps and a few KZ. The AMX Mod community was so helpful learning to program. I think it was Small to write mods.
Thanks for the trip down memory lane. That was a pivotal moment in my life. I learned how to control a computer and found my passion.
Nearly all my worthwhile experiences in multiplayer games were related to permanent server communities (CS clan servers, 2fort2furious, SWG emulator servers, ridiculous minecraft servers that were effectively collaborative volumetric databases for external design tools).
I was really involved in how serious cs was being played in 2002 or 2003, but valve did not seize the opportunity. 5v5 is the best format.
Even today, the matchmaking is horrendous and toxic teammates ruin the fun.
When you solo queue, individual performance is ignored, so you must carry your whole team if you want to gain rank.
The game is great but generates too much frustration for me.
Relevant myg0t: https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/171762 (2004, NSFW)
This Flash was my introduction to Refused though so that's cool
Frankly, i never liked the mod very much and only advanced a few levels. But i distinctly remember trying to kill enemies with some sort of lighting bolt move.
We also don't need content roadmaps for these games if you give the community modding and map tools.
Whenever/wherever a crowd of a certain size assembles consistently, you’ll soon have a giant corporation frothing at the mouth to monetize it
Why let these people organize communities for themselves? How on earth would we capture metrics and sell them shit?
This is why everything is awesome until corporations show up - social media is the perfect example
I don’t mean to come across as some anti corporate lunatic, it’s just the reality of the situation
We played together basically daily for quite some time in the early 2000s. I remember you and CamCam.
My handle here is the same as it was in CS. I spent countless hours in college in this server leveling up every class to the max and trying to break the game with the 'spider man rope'. Great times!
The rope mod was always one of my favorites. I think I asked rACEmic to add it. I have distinct memories of putting up votes in the server to see if people wanted me to enable it, especially in de_rats or de_jeepathon2k
There is seems to be lot of negativity against ranked ladders in the gaming community, but isn't that what would be best system to play with people of your own skill level.
I don't like playing a game where I need to worry about ranking systems. It adds a layer which I'm just not interested in. It's fine if I die more often than other people. Some of my fondest memories are of watching someone much more skilled than me absolutely steamroll my team. If you're playing with people you know, a vastly more skilled player becomes a fun challenge for you to try and overcome together.
For anything but 1-vs-1, individual skill gets smeared into the non-enemy (ally for team games, or everyone for a free-for-all) average.
Remember that cooperation isn't an individual skill (unless the meta is complete, I guess); it relies on knowing your specific partners.
And besides ... it's perfectly normal for a task-oriented group to have people at a variety of skill levels. If anything, homogeneity is what's strange. This does change what interesting interactions happen, but by no means prevents them.
It's been many moons since I was into gaming, but back in the RtCW [1][2] days there was a bunch of regulars that played on a server run my (IIRC) Charter. There were many servers in the browse list, and I'm sure many had a community of regulars just like we did.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_to_Castle_Wolfenstein
[2] A Linux client was actually released, which is what I mostly used. (Actually running it on FreeBSD's Linuxator.)
People right now are having the same community experiences in custom server, or with official Valve, or third party like FaceIt... From crazy custom mods to try hard competitive games.
From time to time I stumble on some community servers when looking for a better DM warm-up server. Players and admin talking to each other like they were regulars, admin flying around in a batman skin killing a camper with lightning bolt, all the usual admin/community tools and more... also all the laughing, banter, playing songs and crap on the mic...
Would you have tried to join in? Let's just face it we've abandoned and stopped seeking it as we got older.
It's still very much alive.
Also, there were multiple tournament websites out there: ESL and another one I don't remember the name anymore, that hosted tournaments all time.
I remember lan tournaments in Italy with more than 60+ Counter Strike teams like Smau 2002, and you had to bring your own computer nonetheless.
It was really a golden age for gaming I swear.
People that didn't live that think that gaming is better now are severely mistaken.
Playing online videogames today is a solo experience, 20+ years ago it was the very opposite, even if you played alone you met people on the same hosted servers you liked, on forums, on IRC, in lan.
Today it's really sad.
I can't explain how excited I was for the Reforged version of the game and how disappointed I was when it flopped.
My favorite part of games is learning the mechanics and coming up with strategies. Which paired well with an endless supply of new game modes to try.
I have been unable to find any modern game that is both active and has a series of custom maps. If anyone knows of any, please let me know.
Brood war is still active in Korea
I still remember invisible humans, elves with evasion, orcs with massive nade damage, undead with life steal… good times. I didn’t know how to spell “ultimate” so it took me forever to actually be able to bind an ult to keyboard.
While there is still some amount of it around in the Counter-Strike 2 era, there's a strong disincentive for joining random community servers when there have been client vulnerabilities that allow arbitrary code execution.
As an aside. I always appreciated the street justice the admins would sometime enact. Running through the level with invincibility and godlike mods just gibbing everyone left and right.
At least the matchmaking option is so much better at making real competitive matches with players though now too. I like that both options exist.
I can't remember my handle...I've had so many over the years.
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I absolutely hated server browsers. Spending ages waiting for slots to free up on decent servers. Trying a new server only to find it had 100 shitty mods installed. Servers where the admins randomly kicked or banned people, or blatantly cheated
Even just joining mid game was annoying
Give me matchmaking any day
The Warcraft mod was a little goofy, but as a younger kid who couldn't appreciate the hardcore competitive scene I liked the variety and silliness it brought.
I spent way too much time finding custom skins online to keep things interesting. Good times.
There's actually a mini-documentary about the creation of de_dust2 [0] which I think will be of interest to FPS fans.
I wonder if de_dust2 is the most played FPS map or if it has been dethroned by something like Fortnite or some other shooter map.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWWhxfGq_yk
I believe de_dust2 is likely still the most played FPS map. Not sure which other map could have dethroned it. It can’t be Fortnite since Fortnite changes the map every few months and nowadays makes a new one every year or so.
I guess Blood Gulch from the time when Halo was super popular was a very popular map as well.
Then you also have 2fort from the Team Fortress games.
But yes I would say de_dust2 is very likely still the most played FPS map and it will likely stay that way.
Nuketown has been featured in six different games, with 17 total variants of the map existing, and 8 different game modes that are Nuketown maps 24/7.
We probably had more fun on death32c though.
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https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=21021...
I also have a soft spot for Aztec because of the rain. I would join empty servers just to hang out on Aztec for the aesthetic.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yeh5vFG1GK0
Give me any team vs team games that are played on procedurally generated maps.
If dust had the underpass-stairs option from the beginning, and maybe moved the T spawns forward by 1 second, it probably would be just as popular today.
I'm pretty certain that there are modern FPS's that have gotten inspiration from that legendary map.
I gotta imagine that sucks to play in most of them. Maybe it occasionally 'works' in another game?
And there is also the typical sports gambling shit. HLTV the main news source of the pro CS scene is full of gambling ads. Higher tier tournaments often give a segment to gambling people talking about odds between matches. And as you would expect in a scene with rampant gambling there is match fixing. The serious media and the authorities will not look into it because esports is not serious stuff, but people know it’s there. Whenever you see a tier 2 team throw a most winnable match in the weirdest fashion you can see a stream of Twitch chat messages calling it rigged. People know but nothing will be done against it. Check out Richard Lewis if you want more information on that.
https://richardlewis.substack.com/p/prologue-no-one-really-c...
I would love to see a modern shooter with nice graphics and self hostable servers in the same niche as the old CS. But all we got is Valorant and its kernel spyware (oops I mean anticheat). Guess I should just keep player CS1.6 until I die shrug
Skins is literally a money printing machine.
Skins are also a money machine but it's just false to claim without it Valve would close its doors.
Every other live service manages with non-gambling skins. They have their own problems (usually around FOMO), but nowhere near the literal gambling that is CS.
> Valve would have shut the door on the game
In terms of not having any developers on it, sure, not impossible.
> (and quite possibly the company entirely)
Ahahahaha come on man, even without CS, Valve is one of the most profitable companies of all time.
Did you miss the entire article? CS itself came from a dorm room. You can have excellent games that spawn from creativity instead of monetization.
I was really into the odd maps (NIPPER) and early Internet community around games (joe2). We hosted servers off of unused CPU cycles from oil exploration boxes.
This still exists all over the web, but the creators that figured out economics moved on.
I mean, that is still CS: you want one without gambling (which is reasonable!)
Uhm, wow. Most winnable matches often enough end when the drugs wear off for hundreds of reasons.
You are looking at it from the wrong angle. From what I have seen, it's rarely a whole team that fucks up while winning. Also: often enough: they don't seem to be aware of the pattern that just occurred in their brains (are not, as far as I learned from Paul E.). I believe these kids are put on drugs without consent.
I have no proof, of course.
I noticed it first in soccer back in '16, I think. Which surprised me because it was not boxing or wrestling or the UFC, where such things are the standard.
CS is one of, if not, the least egregious "loot cases" systems in the gaming industry. Every case you open, gives you a reward, which can be sold. Each case you open has fixed odds and is not manipulated by the gaming companies to psychologically torment you. You get no benefit from using skins or stickers on your gun. It is purely cosmetic. Compared to other games which rely on pay2win mechanics, CSGO/CS2's systems are great.
I think skins are one of the best parts of CS. It blows my mind you can have skins worth thousands of dollars, trade them between friends like collectables, sell them for real life money and make your inventory look cool.
I agree the third party skin gambling sites aren't good, although the whole base concept, within Steam and a handful of trusted selling sites are perfectly fine.
Your gripe with the eSports side of this is also stupid. Have you watched / seen any sport on the planet? Gambling is apart of sports and sports culture, its one of the main revenue streams. Gambling helps grassroot sports and helps get kids into sports.
The whole "often give a segment to gambling people talking about odds" is rubbish. At most ESL, Blast, PGL events, the most that is even talked about odds is a brief mention of the odds, no breakdowns, no match betting options, etc. It's very, very tame. I likely have hours watching CS than I do playing too.
CS eSports is in a weird place because the funding comes from two main places in 2025, Saudi sportswashing and gambling. There used to be tons of VC, although that dried up when eSports didn't take off exactly how everyone expected it to. CS was one of the more safe investments are the game has been around for effectively two decades and has always had a competitive scene, dating back to early 2000s. CS is one of the most enjoyable and easy to watch eSports so its pretty enticing for viewers (and advertisers) although the marketablility of CS is hard due to bombs, guns and terrorists.
eSports needs a pay per view option otherwise the funding is always going to come from sketchy places, but the average eSports fan does not care enough to pay because they are too cheap to pay for stuff, or too young to have the funding to do so. Unlike traditional sport.
You are seemingly fine with killing gambling, so might as well kill all tier 2 and 3 scenes, including local scenes. They are mostly funded by gambling and even so, people throw matches because they get like 1k a month for being a tier 2 pro. People need to live and throwing gets more than their wage.
Your final point is Twitch chat messages saying stupid shit about match-fixing, I am not sure why this is even relevant. Studying twitch chat is like studying The Onion, not sure why you would.
Richard Lewis has talked extensively about everything I've said above.
People will willingly blow their paychecks, week after week, hoping to strike that 0.00275% chance for big money. This is bad for society, just like slot machines.
Back then I got dozens of crates that I didn't open, now worth as high as 31$CAD each. I looked it up last week and it's worth over a thousand dollars in Steam. I cashed in on almost half of it and now I have some cash to buy games for my family and friends.
There are plenty of sites out there that can give you a value of your inventory. Just make sure your privacy settings for your inventory are set to "public": https://steamcommunity.com/my/edit/settings (though I'd recommend changing it back to private after you use one of the tools, since scammers will try and target you if you have public high value items).
"Back in my day" you brought your own skins, maps, and mods to your clan's Quake 2 server and they'd be automatically copied-into other players' q2base profile directories when they connected: free and fast. Making skins in a cracked copy of Photoshop 5.5 or PaintShopPro (don't forget to save to PCX!) was trivial and because nothing really mattered no-one could possibly get angry at anything.
...but now you're telling me that if I want to add custom skins to CounterStrike I have to pay other people hugely inflated sums for the privilege of something that was still free and open to all only yesteryear? And we're surprised at how toxic the "gamer" community has become over the past 15 years since tradable lootboxes, cosmetics, and microtransactions became the norm?
The skin is worth over $2k now, oh well.
However, if I reflect on how much time I spent in the game in order to receive that much money it's laughable as it was easily 2 thousand hours of game play.
I have two tips:
Sell hardware and then you can get real cash. For example, use the Steam Wallet balance to buy Steam Deck Docks which you ship directly from Steam to your customer on eBay.
Secondly, use Steam Economy Enhancer.
but, you weren't playing the game as a job to make money, you were playing to have fun (hopefully?) so arguably the extra surprise money is a bonus.
for me, playing a game in order to make real world money would turn it into an awful grind and sap all the joy out of it
Is there a more valuable one?
Game with cool mechanics and a universe to play it in, that is worth $$$. Making your shirt green is not worth $... it is worth a colour-wheel implementation.
Maybe I'm old but I feel as though there's still a place for shooters of this nature. Every time I hear about new seasons dropping for some ultra-popular game I lose interest; I've no desire to keep up with the evolution of a game coordinated by a billion-dollar company to extract money from my wallet after I already paid for it.
But yes, I was never really a 1.6 player but I felt the same way about Garry's Mod maps. Joining a random server and seeing the maps and assets download and never really knowing what you were going to spawn into... it was wonderfully weird in a way that reminds me of the individuality of the Old Internet™. It might be nostalgia talking but there's some crispness and snappiness to the Source engine that games these days don't quite have.
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An entire shooter based solely upon the principles of fy_iceworld & gun game would wipe the floor with most other AAA titles on offer right now.
But to be honest, I think it's an artifact of our (or at least my) generation. I've played CS for thousands of hours, same with l4d and cod2/4, and I don't _need_ a battle pass, seasons, constant updates etc. Though when chatting with my ~14 year younger cousin about this some months ago, he said it'd be "boring to play a game that doesn't get updates". So.. different times :)
There was also a whole sub-genre of skill surf, with mechanically challenging courses to complete.
Oh and then kz maps too, which was just for climbing up huge structures.
Good times
I don't really play games anymore. The last one I got into was Tribes: Ascend, and when that died, I never started another one. I enjoyed the community aspect of it, and I was never one for RPG elements in games that weren't RPG games, which seemed to become an increasingly emphasized strategy for driving engagement and retention.
I don't recognize the industry anymore, and while I used to feel sad about that, I've since come to realize that, for me at least, the experiences I had playing those games were as much a product of the time and place as they were about the game. I can't go back and see stormwind for the first time again, but I'm sure kids these days are experiencing their own version of that, even if it's not quite the wild west that it used to be. The gambling aspects can piss right off, though.
I got my fun from balls out running and firing rockets and rails in the chaos of free for all, and CS offered what was essentially the 'we're all campers' version, which wasn't fun at all (for me, at the time).
I didn't want to simulate anything, I want(ed) chaos, instant respawn, lightning reflexes, constant motion. Maybe I do have ADHD.
CS has stood the test of time though, so respect for that.
I did try playing CS more serious for some time but I just couldn't stand it and I never had the patience. Got to respect that.
Quake requires more skill btw.
+10
I still get a buzz watching the old Q2 / Q3 frag videos.
I was never that good, but have scored a handful of ridiculous flick rails over the time. I think Rocket Arena 3 was peak for me. I'm nearly 20 years out of practice now though. Feels like I'm getting closer to picking up some light hardcore PC gaming again though ;)
My niece is looking forward to having a crack at Portal 2 in the near future (yes, it's old, but it came up somehow or other recently, and she knows it from memes), so I'm aiming to enjoy that together. Gotta refresh myself through Portal 1 first.
Competitive Quake is to CS, like bowling is to basketball btw