Guilty Pleasures

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No way I'm going to play that

Ever since the early days of this company, there's been an unspoken gaming hierarchy present. When I first joined Gamers.com (there was no FiringSquad then), the "cool" people played Quake, Quake 2, and Starcraft. We all made fun of Terence for playing Team Fortress and, until we weaned him off of it, Total Annihilation. I've been on the other side too - last year I took some flak for letting Tribes cut into our 4 on 4 Quake 1 matches, but Terence always remained at the bottom of the totem pole for his TF addiction. It's not that we have something against TF - Gamers.com actually employs a lot of TF players now. It just became one of those things we made fun of him for because he was the only one who played it.

A CT and the VIP on Oilrig

You can create 64x64 logos to 'tag' in the game

The TF stigma

So when Terence started playing a Half Life mod called Counter-Strike, I dismissed it initially as one of those "lame things that Terence plays." I watched him play it once in a while, and couldn't understand how he put up with the Half Life net code. The engine feel isn't as crisp as a lot of the other shooters on the market either, and I especially couldn't fathom why anyone would be willing to wait several minutes after dying to respawn. Quake always lets you respawn right away, so the action never stops.

Oil rig is full of confusing platforms

Lots of multilevel action

Things came to a head in this office a couple of weeks ago. For a long time we used to play a lot of intra office Q3 CTF with the guys in Gamers.com production, but that all ended abruptly when the Gamers.com boys started playing more and more Counter-Strike. I resisted for a long time by playing Q3CTF and instagib online, but it just wasn't the same because the players online generally aren't as good as the guys here. I resorted to ridicule, name-calling, and threats to try and get them to come back, but nothing would get them off of C-strike and back to Q3CTF. So I watched them play Counter-Strike. And watched. And watched. And watched some more.

Peer Pressure

I have to admit that I have been conned into doing a lot of things that I initially disdained. Eating vegetables, watching Pokemon on TV, and listening to Korean pop music - all of that gets filed under "never thought I'd ever do that." Well, the K-pop thing wasn't such a tough sell actually - some of those girl groups are pretty darn cute. But getting me to play Counter-Strike was different. There were no cute pop stars to help convince me. As a matter of fact, getting me to play CS was an even tougher hill to climb than getting me to watch Pokemon. (don't ask) Yet, the peer pressure ended up getting me there too.