Editor's Note: Anyone familiar with computer games should agree that Counter-Strike has become a phenomenon. Not only does it continue to be the most popular mod of all times, but it has developed a life -- and language -- all its own.

For a game to develop that fanatical of a following is not too unusual. But the lexicon is a different story, and one that has prompted a formal study of the way people communicate in the world of Counter-Strike. Penned by a professor of Sociology at the University of Loyola in Chicago, the following academic paper might be a little heavy, but it's great reading if you want an in-depth analysis of the most popular online action game available.

This paper originally appeared on Game Studies and is reprinted with permission. If you know of any other academic studies that have been published on computer gaming and would like us to print them, drop us a note.

Introduction

The global sale of computer and console games now exceeds $10 billion dollars annually, inducing further integration of the entertainment, computer and military industries (Poole 2000). Cassell and Jenkins (1999), Bryce and Rutter (2000, 2001) and Manninen (2001) in the academic world and Herz and Pietsch (1997) and Poole (2000) in the trade-book market have begun to address the implications of this integration by examining the changes in social relationships resulting from the expansion of new 3D gaming technology employed in one genre of games, the multiplayer, first-person "shooter" (FPS) games. Yates and Littleton (1999) have argued for the need to examine the cultural context of player interactions. Our project is an attempt to understand the social character of online FPS games, best represented by the PC mod for the game Half-Life, Counter-Strike. However, this paper will only focus on a particular subcategory of creative player actions practiced by those that engage in this game.

We argue that the playing of FPS multiplayer games by participants can both reproduce and challenge everyday rules of social interaction while also generating interesting and creative innovations in verbal dialogue and non-verbal expressions. When you play a multiplayer FPS video game, like Counter-Strike, you enter a complex social world, a subculture, bringing together all of the problems and possibilities of power relationships dominant in the non-virtual world. Understanding these innovations requires examining player in-game behavior, specifically the types of textual (in-game chats) and non-verbal (logo design, avatar design and movement, map making, etc.) actions. To study these patterns of in-game talk and behavior among Counter-Strike players and the social significance of that talk, we examined and coded the log text files generated from playing 70 hours on 50 different servers, with durations ranging from 30 minutes to 2 1/2 hours. We also noted in-game logos and non-verbal interactions as we played with other online players. We have also collected interviews and gathered participant-observation data. These are incorporated into some of the observations in this article. Within the game console function, log files are easily generated and are most often used by players to check their kill/death ratios and to examine game action. We were interested in the files simply as a text for revealing spontaneous player talk in the game. Anyone can easily access this public talk simply by going into the "console" command of the game.

Counter-Terrorists (CTs) Move-Out.
Counter-Strike, designed by Minh Le (alias Gooseman) as a modification of the video game, Half-Life, was initially released as free software. Building upon Counter-Strike's success, Sierra Studios and Valve Software released a retail version of the game in 2000. As a semi-realistic game, Counter-Strike (Figure 1.1) allows one to play on a team as either a terrorist or counter-terrorist. Players are able to buy an assortment of weapons, rescue hostages, plant or defuse bombs, switch identities between games or in the middle of games, and to constantly vary tactics and strategies of cooperation and competition. Communication is usually through an in-game chat system or prescribed commands sent to other team members or one's opponents.

During the course of our study we noted that at anyone time there were between 3,000 and 8,000 Internet servers running Counter-Strike, world-wide, with approximately 23-25,000 players online at the same time.