Counter-Strike and its different mods started their journey on Windows in 1999. Initially, it was released as a mod for Half-Life. This is a multiplayer first-person shooter game where five players get to be terrorists who have to plant the bomb on specific sites (site A, site B), while on the other hand, five other players get to be counter-terrorists whose primary objective is to stop the terrorists from planting their bomb on those sites or to defuse the bomb if it gets planted on the site.
This game has seen a lot of remakes over the years. These remakes were made for some modifications in the game or graphics and for additional platform compatibility in order to make the user experience better.
Gameplay
As mentioned above, Counter-Strike is a multiplayer first-person shooter where there are two teams, each comprising five people. One team will be called terrorists and will have to plant a bomb at either of the two sites (A or B) available on the map, while the other team will be called counter-terrorists and will have to either secure the bomb from the terrorists or defuse it if they have already planted it.
They have to play 12 rounds on each side, i.e., by being terrorists as well as counter-terrorists. At the end of each round, every single player is rewarded with some in-game money with which they could buy better arsenals like shields, rifles, snipers, bombs, etc. Winning rounds will give you a good amount of money, whereas losing rounds will give you a small amount of money. Killing your own teammates can result in the deduction of your in-game money as a penalty.
Competitive tournaments
Competitive tournaments for Counter-Strike have been organized for 20 years. The Cyberathlete Professional League, along with two other tournaments until 2007, was the first major professional Counter-Strike competitive tournament in 2001. After this, Valve started organizing big professional competitive tournaments for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive with huge amounts of prize money in 2012. Valve organized this tournament due to the increase in popularity of Counter-Strike through some of the streaming services in 2012, like UStream, Justin.tv, and Twitch.
Prize Money
The prize money for this tournament was announced to be US$250,000, which was a community-funded prize pool for its first CS:GO Major Championship, which was taking place in Sweden. This tournament became the tournament for Global Offensive. This has resulted in an increase in the development of eSports. Several teams were formed, e.g., FaZe, C9, Fnatic, Team Liquid, etc. Each of these teams appointed the best players in the game for a monthly stipend that increased year after year.
Conclusion
Counter-Strike is the game that made esports famous. Today, the major competitive tournaments of Global Offensive are streamed on certain television channels too. Counter-Strike made first-person shooter games more popular. There are multiple first-person shooter games with the same mechanics as Counter-Strike on the market today, but they still haven’t gained the same popularity yet. The major Counter-Strike tournaments are even held in huge arenas where people come to see them. The arenas get fully packed. Nowadays, a lot of other games are trying to gain the same amount of popularity, but Counter-Strike will always be the classic.