Flow: Counter Strike - The Revisit
It must have been several years since the original release of Half Life and the release of the Counter Strike mod. I still remember running Counter Strike at LAN parties back in elementary school and in middle school off of my insanely slow computer, which would have a 4092 ping even on a LAN server. Back then, the challenge and the flow was very different in that I had to get accustomed to 28.8 k modem lag and eventually to 56 k. By this time I had a slightly better computer although it was not much faster in comparison and would barely cut the minimum specs. However, it was in these dark days that my humble roots as a gamer started and where my friends influenced me into playing. I eventually got pretty decent in that I would get kills even though I would probably be the one lagging servers whenever I joined but it was indeed a challenge. Trying to predict where people were represents not just skill but also luck because it requires either the other player to be bad and not move for a long time or the other player to simply get shot by my bullet.
In Counter Strike, there is agon plays a major role as players compete against one another to get the best scores and best kill to death ratio. Because there are usually players that are better than you, this keeps the level of play constantly competitive and lets the player become more skilled and higher as you try to perfect the use of a specific weapon.
While school and other games have gotten the better of me and caused me to neglect the original Counter Strike, my revisit was very pleasant. I saw many new changes in the game that I had played many years ago. The Flow reading states “Flow is a powerful motivator it does not guarantee virtue in those who experience. Possibility that enjoyment of life is at expense of someone else” definitely applies in competitive games like first person online shooters such as Counter Strike. When I was playing back in the day, the fact that I was using an old computer and using a dial up modem made other people able to capitalize on my disadvantage. However, after I got a newer computer and play on the fast connections at USC, I am now taking the enjoyment of life on the people on slower connections like those still on dial up or even dsl and cable now. While I am a bit rusty after playing other games so much, I was able to quickly pick up from where I left off a couple years ago.
In the same way as the tennis example, Counter Strike definitely creates an experience of flow to the point that I had to stop myself from playing a lot of times because I was so captivated by the game and did not want my grades to suffer as a result. There is so much to do and explore a lot of times. While I was an average player, many of my friends were addicts that would play with me and try to just get me to play at my highest level. It was not because they wanted to see me get killed more but because they wanted an elevated game play. At one point, I was even in a clan where coliberation was pretty high in that we wanted each other to do well because we would play other teams. This improves the experience of flow because it requires another skill set as it is critical to work together in teams and makes one person not enough to save the whole team as random lucky shots can kill people. With this social aspect in the game, it further creates more opportunity to experience flow in the game.
In playing on different servers and clan servers, there are also many modifications from Warcraft 3 mods to low gravity mods to surfing maps. With all the different parts in just the original modification of Half Life, Counter Strike has evolved steadily through the years. While the graphics is starting to become outdated, the impact of the game design and flow has become an integral part of the way most first person shooters are designed today.