UNIT 40 Computer game design: Counter-Strike

History & Gameplay.

Counter-Strike (officially abbreviated as CS) is a series of multiplayer first-person shooter video games, in which teams of terrorists and counter-terrorists battle to, respectively, perpetrate an act of terror (bombing, hostage-taking) and prevent it (bomb defusal, hostage-rescue). The series began on Windows in 1999 with the first version of Counter-Strike. Counter-Strike took the gaming industry by surprise when the unlikely MOD became the most played online PC action game in the world almost immediately after its release in August 1999, said Doug Lombardi at Valve. For the past 12 years, it has continued to be one of the most-played games in the world, headline competitive gaming tournaments and selling over 25 million units worldwide across the franchise. CS: GO promises to expand on CS' award-winning game-play and deliver it to gamers on the PC as well as the next gen consoles and the Mac.

The game was followed-up with Counter-Strike: Condition Zero, developed by Turtle Rock Studios and released in 2004. Later the same year, Counter-Strike: Source (CS:S) was released by Valve. Released only eight months after Counter-Strike: Condition Zero (CS:CZ), in November 2004, the game was a remake of the original Counter-Strike and the first in the series to run on Valve's newly created Source engine, the same engine as Half-Life 2. The fourth game in the main series to have been developed by Valve, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (some people prefer to call it as "CS:GO"), was released in 2012 for Windows, OS X, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Hidden Path Entertainment, who also helped to work on Counter-Strike: Source helped to develop the game with Valve Corporation.