Dennis Hollingsworth

Counter-Strike

What's cool about Counter-Strike (aside from the KICK ASS avatar-you are there first person shooter action) is that the game was created by people who just love the game and not some big money corporate gambit. They were amateurs in that they did it for love, simply amour... amare, to love. It's a modification of another game called "Quake", an existing computer game taken off the shelf, the makers of which were open to the changes made. For a few years after 2000, the game prolliferated on the net, all grassroots enthusiasm.

Low ego.

Playing this game here in Dallas isn't as easy as I had it in LA's ChinaTown, where "CyberLan" was just around the corner from my studio. What was cool about the place in LA is that it was created by two "kids" (young men, really) for thier friends. Real down home, with class. The place was put together really tight and real to the economic milieu of thier community.

The gaming place here is decked out alright, but the owners are all business baby tycoon types, with a surly MBA wannabe attitude. They have L.L.C. appended to thier name and they talk about bankruptcies over the phone.

High ego.

Prior to this, I had only played CS once since leaving LA February. I've got a little jones, but it's not too bad.

In Counter-Strike, a team of counter terrorists go after a team of terrorists. There are several "maps", or virtual environments: Las Vegas, an oil refinery, etc. Sometimes, there are hostages to rescue, sometimes not.

After 2000, this game took on an enhanced edge. My father was a casaulty of the Korean Conflict, 50 years after the fact. After my my father passed away, I would imagine how he might possibly have been cured by playing this game. Silly of me, I guess. Playing this game is a way to get closer to my dad, living a ridiculously miniscule fragment of what he went through... if that.

After 911, playing this game became a way to cheer the troops on. Through the avatars, you surge through the gameplay, adrenalin pumping, flush. And somewhere else in the world, someone was surging in real "play", adrenalin pumping, flush.

This week, three bad guys died, monsters all. The world is better now that they are gone.