Counter-Strike, commonly abbreviated to CS, is a
tactical first-person shooter video game which originated from a
Half-Life mod of the same developers,
Minh "Gooseman" Le and
Jess "Cliffe" Cliffe, featuring real-world weapons and shootouts. The game has been expanded into a series since its original release, which currently includes
Counter-Strike: Condition Zero,
Counter-Strike: Source and Counter Strike on Xbox.
Counter-Strike puts a team of
counter-terrorists against a team of
terrorists in rounds of competition won by completing an objective or eliminating the opposing force. The latest incarnation of the game,
Counter-Strike: Source, is based on the
Source engine developed for
Half-Life 2. Signs of Counter-Strike's wide influence can be found in mods for games such as
Quake III Arena,
Unreal Tournament, and other standalone shooters such as
Global Operations,
America's Army,
Call of Duty,
True Combat Elite and many more.
As of May 2006, Counter-Strike is still the most widely played online first-person shooter in the world. In 2002 there were over 30,000 populated Counter-Strike servers on the
Internet (second place was
Unreal Tournament with about 9,800). In 2004,
GameSpy statistics showed over 85,000 players simultaneously playing Counter-Strike at any point in time, and in 2006, Steam regularly shows over 200,000 players for Counter-Strike
[1] (this includes Counter-Strike: Source, Counter-Strike: Condition Zero and Counter-Strike). According to statistics gathered by Valve's content-delivery platform,
Steam, these players collectively contribute to over 6.177 billion minutes of playing time each month, as in February 5, 2007
[1] solidifying its position as the most popular online first-person shooter in history. Counter-Strike was originally played online through the
WON gaming service, which was shut down in 2004,
[2] forcing players to switch to Steam (to which a section of players responded by creating their own WON network, dubbed
WON2).
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