Let me start off by saying a little bit about myself: I began playing counterstrike in 2000 on the 8ball clan servers. The environment was an extremely friendly and unique one as it was one of the few servers that had a consistent amount of people playing as well as a custom map rotation which the pubbers usually had on their hard drive.
I garner a large amount of satisfaction out the relationships I build while playing competitive counter-strike. The people who I associate myself with are a great bunch of guys with positive attitudes, friendly mannerisms and maintain a level of decorum when interacting with other human beings, even with the anonymity provided by the net. However, once an individual decides to commit time to competitive gaming in the counter-strike community they will inevitably be confronted by the bastions of derision and immaturity. What is the cause of this phenomenon and what are its implications for the growing community? One can only make conjectures based on experience and what the counter-strike community has done to represent themselves.
Let's face it, competitive counter-strike gaming appeals to children, teenagers, and the subculture that has grown up in the aforementioned categories while participating in the "scene." It comes to no one's surprise that after posting a question about how to fire the ak47 or m4a1, the original poster will often get flamed and told to "stfu noob" instead of receiving the much desired and appreciated help that could be given. The unexpected occurs when older gamers hop onto the post only to reinforce the immaturity displayed by previous posters. While this behavior certainly isn't prevalent only in counter-strike, no one can deny that this has become a commonality in the community, if not an endemic behavior. I give as an example a recent post on the gotfrag forums. For "shits and giggles" purposes I've placed the individuals age next to their username. An individual asking for help on his no scoping can expect to see responses such as:
Enigma21 (Josh James Born October 10, 1981) Wrote:
Ok, the secret to no scoping and it worked for me, is put ur sens to 7.0 and use invert mouse, and set ur dpi up all the way. Then you will be 1337.
While I congratulate Josh's attempt at formulating a sentence, it remains littered with unnecessary comments and poor information that does nothing to help the person requesting advice. Another example which "hits home" a little more is when several members ridiculed my groups attempt to help others through a guide that we offer for sale on our website (this guide is also what keeps our server running). I wrote a post explaining our position on the guide:
SkyGheNe (Andrew Leigh Born: 3/2/86) wrote:
Perhaps I should clarify.
To date we have had over 50 happy customers who have given us praise for the work we have done on our guide. Not only that but they come back to us with their success stories and we hope that they enjoy many of the features and exclusives found within the guide. At first I said to myself, "what can you offer to someone?" Only what I know. The information in the guide is enough to set a player on his way and essentially give them a strong foundation to grow and develop their own playing style. If you're cal-m, yes, the guide perhaps is not for you.
Brady games offers a counter-strike guide, but I am pretty sure they are no where near CAL. Besides, that's a horrible guide anyway. An analogy to our situation would be how I handle my music lessons. I provide lessons for three different instruments charging 15 dollars a half hour, but I am no Wynton Marsalis or Maynard Ferguson. However, I do have information that can benefit new players and hopefully I can help them develop skills on their instrument. Unlike the money received from my instrumental lessons, the money from the guide goes directly to paying for our server, our public ventrilo, the website and bandwidth costs for the videos we provide for people. We do not receive any of the cash nor do we have the luxury to spend it on personal endeavors. Everything we get from our customers goes directly back into providing them a hospitable, fun, and unique gaming experience on our server.
This is the first season WoP has played together. We are optomistic about how we will finish up in play offs but either way we will take set backs with stride and hope for the best as we climb our way to main. We encourage people to come and play on our pub, get to know us and grow with our community. We love the company.
The only parting words I have is that I didn't come on to this forum on behalf of the creators of the guide nor did I do it to try and persuade people into purchasing the guide. I did it because I believe in what we teach and what we try to promote: doing well in any task you take up in life. Life is a game, so own it like you would cs. We have many plans in store for the future and we hope that the community will support us as we grow.
I do not expect warm and fuzzy reactions to this post, but I hope people who have managed to read it can now understand that what we do is out of good intentions.
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In response we get several unintelligible remarks in response:
Dex (Dex Badgett Born: May 27, 1986) Wrote:
that's because it took him a year to type it
Using his superior, mind shattering logic Mr. Badgett responds with a quip using his quick-minded wit. Unfortunately for Dex, he must have overlooked the original post which explicitely points out the date that the post was created.
Perhaps he was going by how long it would take him to develop such a post? Who knows what he meant by it, but it took about 10 minutes of my time to write up a response to the hecklers on gotfrag.
Here is a final example because two examples are always better than one and three examples are always better than two.
qwerty99_03 (Jason Mason Born: January 17, 1982) Wrote:
lol did anyone even bother to read #30's essay? get a life geekfest. take your guide and shove it! loser
Jason, who currently resides in Canada, manages to uphold the stereotype of the ignorant Canadian as he fulminates my post with epithets instead of sound logic or reason in the same way a child might. Thank the higher powers that we have more intelligent Canadians such as Vallon (a member on my team) and ClanOz within the counter-strike community.
You might be asking yourself, "Wow, that was quite the tangent - now what does this have to do with counter-strike or the community/it's future?" Let's get to that, shall we?
If you didn't notice, take note now: each of those posters are over 20 years old. Their maturity and ability to think is lacking. This is rife throughout the community and breeds a self destructive nature where those who went seeking help and providing help now imitate those with unproductive feedback and behavior. While this sort of behavior is notorious for the counter-strike community, what about competitive counter-strike players? Shouldn't those with more influence and power have a little more respect for their fellow gamers?
While there have been some set backs in regards to how the pro gamers are viewed, clans such as #nerdpolice are attempting to perpetuate a "nice guy" feeling to their group by remaining friendly and courteous a majority of the time. Professional players such as Fatality and 3D are also stepping up to the plate and while there have been set backs are developing a sense of maturity and decorum around the professional gaming arena. One can only hope it trickles its way down to the rest of the community, but this most likely too optimistic.
In the meantime the players in the counter-strike community will have to endure the egos, arrogance, and adolescent thinking of a majority of its companions.
