Outsourcing

(2nd ed 2005) Outsourcing to India. ISBN 354023943X. The Glock 18C fires in a fully automatic mode; in the mod it only fires a three round burst. 2004. Also, the M4A1 weapon model's animation features the player charging the weapon by pulling backwards on the forward assist, a feat impossible in real life. Mark Kobayashi-Hillary. Perhaps the most notable criticism is the fact that weapons firing the same round (for instance, both the MP5 and Glock 18 both fire a 9mm round) do vastly different damages. Outsourcing departments like Accounts, Payroll and Procurement is now common practice, as seen in August 2005 at the University of Portsmouth. The M249 SAW's rate of fire is much too slow, and many of the game's weapons have artificial sound effects.

It is argued a malicious implementation of the Higher Education Role Analysis (HERA) in the UK may force Higher Education administrative and support staff to prematurely retire or seek for new employment in other organisations, thus freeing of staff many departments which could then be effectively outsourced. The weapons are also notably inaccurate for the ranges they fire at: most engagements in Counter-Strike occur at less than 100 meters. presidential candidate John Kerry blasted firms that outsource jobs abroad or that incorporate overseas in tax havens to avoid paying their fair share of US taxes during his unsuccessful 2004 campaign, calling such firms "Benedict Arnold corporations," in reference to the infamous traitor Benedict Arnold. While it falls squarely into the tactical shooter category, the mod features some inaccuracies. Democratic U.S. Counter-Strike has been criticised for its lack of realism. That database contains personal and work-related information, enabling employers to verify a staff member's credentials and allowing police to track the background of workers. See Metamod, AMX Mod and AMX Mod X for more information.

NASSCOM, which is a forum of IT and ITeS companies, has attempted to address these fraud concerns in India by creating the National Skills Registry. There have been many different mods and scripts to:. Intel would not put up with such fraud. Even though Counter-Strike is itself a mod, it developed its own community of script writers and modders. The report concluded that fraudulent practises such as "faking bills to claim your allowances like conveyance [and] drivers’ salaries" were some common malpractices in India. The prohibitively expensive cost of an up-to-date gaming PC makes it unlikely that another game will become as popular as Counter-Strike has been. The firings followed from Intel's internal Business Practice Excellence programme of expenses claims. Server statistics in 2002 showed that Counter-Strike servers outnumbered their Battlefield, Unreal Tournament 2003 or Quake III FPS counterparts at least 3 to 1.

In 2005, Intel discovered and fired 250 Indian employees after they faked their expense reports. There have been a multitude of games claimed by their developers, reviewers and fans to be "Counter-Strike killers", but none have seriously been able to dent its overall popularity. Outright fraud is also a concern. Even Counter-Strike: Source has been criticised for not progressing the gameplay enough and failing to take full advantage of the Source engine. (See the full report.). There is a growing frustration that the developers are unwilling to make official changes or add new features, maintaining the same map layouts and weapons to appease longtime CS players. Citibank did not find out about the problem until the American customers noticed discrepancies with their accounts and notified the bank. Counter-Strike was realistic for its time, but is dated in comparison to more recent first-person tactical shooters.

In April of 2005, a high-profile case involving the theft of $350,000 from four Citibank customers occurred when Indian call center workers in Pune, India, acquired the passwords to customer accounts and transferred the money to their own accounts opened under fictitious names. But as the the criticisms of Condition Zero showed, many players feel that the GoldSrc engine has reached its limits in its capacity to evolve and to stay updated. There are also security issues concerning companies giving outside access to sensitive customer information. Indeed, one possible reason for Counter-Strike's continued popularity is that almost any PC made since 1997 can play it since the game does not need the powerful CPU and video card required of many current FPS games. With these traditionally "safe" jobs perceived to be endangered, this raises questions regarding whether origin countries can maintain any comparative advantage given the losses in both low and high-value jobs. However, the universal shift to the DirectX 7.0 level and beyond has not happened, and the continued popularity of CS has given older video cards such as the 3dfx Voodoo 3, ATI Rage 128, and Nvidia RIVA TNT2 continued usefulness. Proportions of workers trained for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields fields in developing nations are viewed to outstrip traditional technology leaders such as the U.S. Likewise, gamers were expected to abandon the DirectX 5.0 Half-Life and its mods in favour of games utilising the hardware T&L capabilities of DirectX 7.0 graphics cards such as the Nvidia GeForce and ATI Radeon.

There is also little incentive given that the jobs in their new field could also be outsourced as well. Half-Life and other contemporary games took full advantage of the advent of hardware graphics acceleration in the late 1990s, replacing earlier software-rendered games such as Quake. Retraining to their current level in another field may not be an option due to years of study and cost of education involved. Counter-Strike has had a colorful and dramatic history which reaches far beyond what this document could hope to cover, and still remains extremely popular to this day. However, some of these workers are already highly educated and already possess a bachelor's and master's degree. The success of the game among both casual and competitive players highlights the wide appeal of Counter-Strike's simple game model. One solution often offered is retraining of domestic workers to new jobs. While Counter-Strike is nowadays perhaps the most professionally played computer game in the world behind StarCraft in South Korea, most players simply ignore the professional side of the game and play for fun.

Policy solutions to outsourcing are also criticized. Certain professional teams (such as SK, Team 3D and Team NoA) and players (Ksharp and HeatoN, for example) have achieved a measure of fame. Dealing with lackluster outsourced service is a negative surprise after the money is already spent. Counter-Strike is famous for the culture surrounding it, which includes everything from professional gamers and leagues, to cheating and disruptive behavior. Customers only experience outsourced service and support after they have spent their money since sales is generally done in-house by the original company. All (understandably) fictional. However, service and support are often not considered by customers as part of their original purchases. All names are taken from real groups.

Defenders of outsourcing say if this were true, then companies would experience market forces compelling them to return service and support handling back from the outsourced company. Elite Crew is the skinniest and hardest to see model most of the time, and the GIGN model has the smallest head for Counter-Terrorists.". Criticism of outsourcing from the public and media sometimes tend to concentrate on lackluster customer service and technical support being provided by either local workers who are not actually employees of the company, or by overseas workers attempting to communicate with Americans in broken or incomprehensible English. "5 guys popping in and out 1 at a time will look like the 1 guy if you all have the same skin. Thus, outsourcing is criticized as it represents a new threat to labor, contributing to rampant worker insecurity, and reflective of the general process of globalization where the United States government fails to mediate business-labor relations in a way conducive to prevailing values that places the American middle class worker as a central priority. And as Counter-Terrorists, the GIGN model. Outsourcing appears to work contrary to the claim that “free trade” will create the “jobs of tomorrow” in America when high-tech or high paying white collar jobs are transferred to or created in foreign countries. As Terrorists you should choose the Elite Crew model.

This is especially true for high-tech workers who were promised the “jobs of tomorrow”- a phrase Bill Clinton iterated in 1994 to justify his conservative position on NAFTA. Firstly, all players on one team should choose the same skin. Outsourcing appears to threaten the livelihood of domestic workers and the American Dream. On the matter of the best model for competitive play in Counter-Strike, Whisper's Wiki recommends that:. The poll of over 1,000 Americans was conducted in August 2004 (See Zogby International survey results online at zogby.com). Condition Zero also added two additional models; the Midwest Militia for Terrorists and the Spetsnaz for Counter-Terrorists. A Zogby International poll reports that 71% of American voters believe that “outsourcing jobs overseas” hurts the economy and another 62% believe that the US government should impose some legislative action against companies that transfer domestic jobs overseas, possibly in the form of increased taxes on companies that outsource. The following eight are the original models which were to be (or are in the process of being) reproduced in Counter-Strike: Condition Zero and Counter-Strike: Source.

Criticism of outsourcing, from the perspective of US citizens, by-and-large, revolves around the costs associated with transferring control of the labor process to an external entity in another country. Corresponding player models for both Terrorists and Counter-Terrorists have appeared through development. This debate did not center on problems of declining quality of customer services but on the threat to US jobs and work. In earlier beta versions of the game another official type called "es_" (Terrorist Escape) also existed. The 2004 US presidential election race focused on outsourcing to some degree. The three official types include "cs_" (Hostage rescue), "de_" (Bomb defusal), and "as_" (Assassination). It has been therefore argued that quality levels of customer service and technical support of outsourced tasks are lower than where they have remained 'in-house'. There are three official types of maps in Counter-Strike, along with many more user-created types.

Because "outsourced" workers are not actually paid agents of the company, it has been argued that there is less incentive for the agent to show loyalty or work ethic in its representation of said company. It is available today for download over Steam, bundled with Half-Life 2, or purchased in a stand-alone retail box along with Day of Defeat: Source, another game converted to the new graphical engine. In December 2005, nearly 50 people were indicted in connection with a scheme that bilked at least $200,000 from Katrina relief fund at Red Cross claim center in Bakersfield, Calif., which handled calls from storm victims. Changes include the improvements inherent to the Source engine (such as better graphics and physics) as well as updated models, animations, maps, sounds, and some small gameplay changes. (See the full story.). Counter-Strike: Source (CS:S) was released to ATI Radeon Voucher holders, in Half-Life 2 bundles available on Steam, and with the boxed retail version of the game. For example, 40 million credit card numbers were stolen in June 2005 at CardSystems Solutions in Tucson, Arizona. Following a period when the game was available to select 'beta' testers, the alpha version of the game was released on October 7th 2004.

Advocates of outsourcing also claim that outsourcing-related fraud is insignificant, averring that such malpractices can occur in any country. In 2004, original Counter-Strike developers Minh Le and Jess Cliffe, along with members of Valve and the Day of Defeat team, brought Counter-Strike into the Source engine as an obvious choice for the multiplayer component of Half-Life 2. ^[3]. It sold poorly compared to the original. Nationally, 70,000 computer programmers lost their jobs between 1999 and 2003, but more than 115,000 computer software engineers found higher-paying jobs during that same period. However, the game was criticized for not being up to the standards of graphical quality expected of current commercial releases, due to the limitations of 1998's GoldSrc Half-Life engine. ^[3] Drezner also points out that large software companies such as Microsoft and Oracle have increased outsourcing and used the savings for investment and larger domestic payrolls. Though still very similar to CS 1.6, Condition Zero contains several graphical, sound, model and map changes, as well as including bots.

Professor Drezner reports that for every dollar spent on outsourcing to India, the United States reaps between $1.12 and $1.14 in benefits. It had been plagued by numerous delays, most notably when Valve dropped Gearbox Software (who had developed the highly acclaimed Half-Life: Opposing Force) as developer in favor of Ritual Entertainment, and when Ritual Entertainment in turn lost the project to Turtle Rock Studios partway through development. That in turn makes us all richer.” ^[2]. A long-awaited single-player version of the game called Counter-Strike: Condition Zero was released on March 23, 2004. ‘Creative destruction’ is a discovery process where we find ways to produce goods and services more cheaply. For similar reasons, Valve may have made no attempt to have Counter-Strike ported to the PlayStation 2. The automobile cost the jobs of people who took care of horses or made saddles, carriages, and horseshoes.” ^[1] Walter Williams, another economist, said “we could probably think of hundreds of jobs that either don't exist or exist in far fewer numbers than in the past--jobs such as elevator operator, TV repairman and coal deliveryman. However, the Xbox version of the game (playable on Microsoft's Xbox Live online game service) has proved less successful than its PC counterpart for obvious reasons; the online Counter-Strike audience for Xbox is well outnumbered by the existing Counter-Strike PC community, a subscription cost required to pay online on Live (playing the PC version online is free), and mediocre graphics (only texture upgrades to original CS models) which are below what is expected for the Xbox.

Economist Thomas Sowell from the University of Chicago said “anything that increases economic efficiency--whether by outsourcing or a hundred other things--is likely to cost somebody's job. It features basic single-player gameplay against bots, but it focuses on multiplayer online play like the original. Because outsourcing allows for lower costs, even if quality reduces slightly or not at all, productivity increases, which benefits the economy on aggregate. Valve released a version ported to the Xbox game console in November 2003. the firm is trying to maximize the quality of its product given cost (its productivity). Valve has also been attempting to cash in on the game's popularity by producing more Counter-Strike games. A firm's motivation for replacing workers with machines is identical to the motivation for outsourcing, i.e. Counter Strike:Source was developed using the new Half Life 2 enhanced graphics and physics engine (Source).

Some economists suggest that government training programs be provided. The newest version of CS was labeled Source, released in November 2004 through Valve's new distribution platform called Steam. However, economists do concede that labor is not always perfectly mobile and that some workers may have difficulty getting new jobs. Later, Counter-Strike was bundled with Half-Life and several other expansions in the Platinum Pack. Some argue that greater profits to the labor owners lead to higher consumption, which leads to further job creation, allowing those who lost jobs to gain jobs in other sectors of the economy. The retail version was a standalone alternative that does not include or require Half-Life; alternatively, existing Half-Life owners can download the Counter-Strike mod free. Although workers’ jobs were lost from this replacement of workers with machines, the Ford Motor Company made more money by lowering costs (or increasing quality, thereby increasing revenue). In November 2000, Counter-Strike 1.0 — the first non-beta, official retail version of the game — was released.

Economists argue that machines on the car assembly line must have a higher quality to cost ratio than workers because, if they didn’t, there would be no incentive for the firm to replace workers with machines. The Counter-Strike team was acquired by Valve to turn the fan-created mod into an official mod for Half-Life. Today these workers are replaced by machines because they are cheaper in the long run, produce better quality products, or a combination of both (the firm is trying to increase its quality to cost ratio, quality being defined by the consumer and inferred from revenue). CS gained in popularity just as rapidly. American Motor Company Ford relied heavily on workers in the past to assemble car parts. Counter-Strike Beta 1.0 was released in June that same year, followed by a relatively quick succession of the beta releases (by the end of 1999, beta 5.0 had been released). Some economists have argued that outsourcing is a form of technological innovation analogous to machines on a car assembly line. The Counter-Strike team was formed by Minh Le ("Gooseman") and Jess Cliffe ("Cliffe") in 1999.

That many large businesses outsource and continue to outsource suggests that in many cases outsourcing is successful in that it increases product quality, lowers costs substantially, or both. This mode is not found in Counter-Strike: Source.. Proponents of outsourcing believe that arguing that outsourcing leads to lower product quality is pointless because if it were true, consumer demand will force firms to shift back to producing the good or service in-firm rather than out-firm. The most popular maps of this type are es_jail, es_riverside, es_frantic, and es_trinity. If the company does it correctly, it benefits from higher profits. While not included in the current Counter-Strike distribution, this mode can still be played. The decision to outsource is like the decision to expand a business overseas, to incorporate computer technology, or to hire new workers. Maps of this type are prefixed with es_.

Critics of outsourcing often talk about outsourcing failures without mentioning instances of outsourcing success. Escape was discontinued because such maps gave an edge towards Counter-Terrorists. The decision to outsource is like any other business investment decision in that there is risk. The Counter-Terrorists' objective was to prevent the escape of the Terrorists. In fact, many American companies like Dell have moved customer service divisions back to America as a result of poor quality ^[2]. Weapons, armour, and grenades were placed in hidden locations near or around the spawn point of the Terrorists; the objective was for the Terrorists to secure weapons at the hidden location and then have all living members of the team reach an escape point before the clock ran out; eliminating all Counter-Terrorists would not complete the mission by itself. But the outsourcing firm has freedom to move a firm department or division back home if its profits are suffering as a result of poor quality. The Terrorists started in a position relatively far away from the Counter-Terrorists, armed with only knives and Glocks and unable to purchase additional weaponry/equipment.

One criticism of outsourcing is that product quality suffers. Discontinued in the late-beta releases of Counter-Strike, this gameplay style put Terrorists against Counter-Terrorists in an escape-before-the-clock-expired mission. ^[1]. Members of the community who dislike the scenario argue that the Terrorists would just camp at the VIP's escape destination, shooting the VIP dead as he attempted the run to the exit. A recent poll of economists by the Wall Street Journal found that only 16 % of them saw outsourcing as having a significant impact on the overall job picture. Assassination maps are the least played of the three types of Counter-Strike gameplay and they were not ported to Counter-Strike: Source, although a VIP mod is being produced by the community for Counter-Strike Source and surprisingly for some, is being greatly anticipated. "Offshoring”, on the other hand, represents a relocation of an organizational function to a foreign country, not necessarily a transformation of internal organizational control. Maps of this type are prefixed with as_.

In short, “outsourcing” means sharing organizational control with another organization, or a process of establishing network relations within an organizational field. The lack of ammunition for the pistol means that a VIP should not expect to escape without the team's assistance; however, the pistol in conjunction with the special armour provides adequate protection. “Offshoring”, in contrast, represents the transfer of an organizational function to another country, regardless of whether the work stays in the corporation or not. When time expires, Terrorists win. When this third party is located in another country the term “offshore outsourcing” makes more sense. As usual, if all Terrorists die, the Counter-Terrorists win. To be consistent, “outsourcing”, in corporate context, represents an organizational practice that involves the transfer of an organizational function to a third party. If the VIP dies, the Terrorists win.

Note that “outsourcing”, “offshore outsourcing” and “offshoring” are used interchangeably in public discourse despite important technical differences. The VIP's objective is to reach an extraction zone (1, normally), in which case the Counter-Terrorists win. In some cases, the agents are not allowed to even give out their real name. The VIP may not pick up dropped weapons other than the VIP's own pistol. The agents were often not able to tell the customer they did not actually directly work for the original manufacturer. In this mission, one Counter-Terrorist member chooses to become a VIP, a player with 200 units of Kevlar and nothing more than the Counter-Terrorist standard-issue USP pistol with one extra magazine. These agents generally worked in call centers where the information needed to assist the calling customer was indexed in a computer system. cs_office).

In some cases these companies hired technical writers to simplify the usage instructions of their products, index the key points of information and contracted with temporary employment agencies to find, train and hire generally low-skilled workers to answer their telephone technical support and customer service calls. Maps of this type are prefixed with cs_ (e.g. The term "outsourcing" became more well known largely because of a growth in the number of high-tech companies in the early 1990s that were often not large enough to be able to easily maintain large customer service departments of their own. There is also a penalty associated with injuring a hostage by gun fire or grenade shrapnel (hostages do not take damage for falling). This usually involves continued direct or indirect management and decision-making by the client of the out-tasking business. Killing a hostage incurs a penalty of $2250. A related term is out-tasking: turning over a narrowly-defined segment of business to another business, typically on an annual contract, or sometimes a shorter one. Upon successfully escorting a hostage to a rescue point, $1000 is awarded.

Many companies, most notably Dell and AT&T Wireless, have gained significant negative publicity for their decisions to use non-US labor for customer service and technical support; one of the most prominent complaints being the expectation that the replacement staff will have more trouble communicating with customers. begins to rescue it), the Counter-Terrorist is awarded $150. Due to this demand call centers have sprung up in Canada, China, Eastern Europe, India, Israel, Ireland, Pakistan, Philippines and even the Caribbean. When a Counter-Terrorist 'uses' a hostage (i.e. The logical extension of these decisions was of outsourcing labor overseas to countries with lower labor costs, this trend is often referred to as offshoring of customer service. Therefore, the game may effectively become a 'Terrorist hunt' game if enough hostages are killed, although server settings may be such that players are disconnected (kicked) from the server after killing a certain number of hostages (5 is default). The overhead costs of customer service are typically less where outsourcing has been used, leading to many companies, from utilities to manufacturers, closing their in-house customer relations departments and outsourcing their customer service to third party call centers. When round time expires, Terrorists win.

Outsourcing business is characterized by expertise not inherent to the core of the client organization. If all the surviving hostages have been rescued, and that number is at least half of the initial hostage count, then the Counter-Terrorists win, and each Counter-Terrorist is awarded $2400. Many companies also outsource customer support and call center functions, manufacturing and engineering. If all the members of a team have been eliminated, the prevailing team wins. Business segments typically outsourced include Information Technology, Human Resources, Facilities and Real Estate Management and Accounting. The Counter-Terrorists' objective is to escort the hostages to a hostage rescue point on the map. Many companies look to employ expert organizations in the areas targeted for outsourcing. The map has hostages (usually four) generally placed near the Terrorist base.

In theory, this business segment should not be mission-critical, but practice often dictates otherwise. Professional tournaments are normally only played in Bomb Defusal maps. Organizations that deliver such services feel that outsourcing requires the turning over of management responsibility for running a segment of business. de_dust and de_inferno). Outsourcing always involves a considerable degree of two-way information exchange, co-ordination, and trust. Maps of this type are prefixed with de_ (e.g. Likewise, buying services from a provider is not necessarily outsourcing or out-tasking. Deaths due to the detonation of the bomb do not increment the player's death count.

Buying products from another entity is not outsourcing or out-tasking, but merely a vendor relationship. When the round time expires, the Counter-Terrorists win. Outsourcing and/or out-tasking involve transferring a significant amount of management control to the supplier. If the bomb has been planted and proceeds to explode, the Terrorists win, but if a Counter-Terrorist defuses the bomb (Counter-Terrorists can purchase an optional kit to speed up defusal times), the Counter-Terrorists win. Outsourcing is defined as the management and/or day-to-day execution of an entire business function by a third party service provider. If the bomb has not been planted, if all the members of one team have been eliminated, then the surviving team wins. . The Terrorists' objective is to plant the bomb at a bomb site (of which there usually are two in a map, Bombsite-A or Bombsite-B), and ensure its detonation.

EDS was the first company to establish the outsourcing business. One randomly selected Terrorist begins the round carrying a bomb. Outsourcing became a popular buzzword in business and management in the 1990s. Each map is of a single game type. Offshoring is similar to outsourcing when companies hire overseas subcontractors, but differs when companies transfer work to the same company in another country. There are several game types in Counter-Strike which define the objectives of each team in the game, and rules which determine which team wins. A related term, offshoring, means transferring work to another country, typically overseas. However, movement is restricted while taking damage from gunfire.

Outsourcing is a business decision that is often made to lower costs or focus on core competences. For example, relatively few shots will kill a player, and shots to different parts of the body deal different amounts of damage, but damage has no bearing on ability to run or jump, allowing a player with just a few hit points remaining to keep fighting. Outsourcing (or contracting out) is often defined as the delegation of non-core operations or jobs from internal production within a business to an external entity (such as a subcontractor) that specializes in that operation. Counter-Strike is meant to be more realistic than futuristic FPSs such as Quake III Arena and Unreal Tournament, but is also built to keep the action flowing faster than more realistic tactical shooters such as the Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon series. ^  "Outsourcing is the Kool" (kOOL PEOPLE). This technique, known as "ghosting", is considered cheating in many tactical shooters. 3. They are generally able to watch the rest of the round from multiple selectable views, although some servers disable some of these views to prevent dead players from relaying information about living players to their teammates through alternative media (most notably voice in case of Internet cafes and players in the same rooms of their own homes, playing on the same server).

^  Should we “Save Jobs”? by Walter Williams. Players killed become "ghosts" for the duration of the round; they cannot change their names, nor can their chat/voice messages be received by the live players (unless the cvar sv_alltalk is set to 1). 2. The scoreboard also shows whether each player is dead, carrying the bomb (in bomb defusal maps), or the VIP (in assassination maps), although the player must be dead during the round to obtain this information of players on the opposing team. ^  “Outsourcing” and “Saving Jobs” by Thomas Sowell. The scoreboard shows team scores plus data for each player: name, score, deaths, and ping/latency (ms) on the map. 1. Standard bonuses in the game are:.

Universities in the European Union granted 40 % more science and engineering doctorates than the United States, with that figure expected to reach nearly 100 % by about 2010 according to Freeman's paper. Surviving players retain their equipment in the next round; those who have died begin anew with pistol and knife. were in science and engineering compared with a world average of 27 % and 52 % in China. Players may buy equipment whenever they are in a buy zone for their team (some of which can be for both teams) and the round has not been in session for longer than a specified time (90 seconds is default). He found that in the year 2000, 17 % of university bachelor degrees in the U.S. Players are generally given a few seconds before the round begins (known as Freeze Time) to buy equipment but not move. ^  This view is borne out by a recent study by Richard Freeman at the National Bureau of Economic Research in Washington. Each player generally starts with $800, two magazines of ammunition, a knife, and a pistol: a Heckler & Koch USP .45 Tactical for CTs or a GLOCK 18c for Ts.

Counter-Strike: Condition Zero added two extra models, bringing the total to ten). Each round starts with the two teams spawning simultaneously, as one of eight different default character models (four to choose from for both Counter-Terrorist and Terrorist. Server settings may automatically balance when one team has more players than the other. Counter-Strike is a team-based FPS in which players join either the Terrorists (T's) or the Counter-Terrorists (CT's).

. CS was originally played online through the WON gaming service, but it was shut down in 2004, forcing players to switch to Steam (although some players responded by creating their own WON network, dubbed WON2). According to statistics gathered by Valve's content-delivery platform, Steam (1), these players contribute to over 4.5 billion minutes of playing time each month, making it the most popular online FPS in history. In 2004, GameSpy statistics showed over 85,000 players simultaneously playing Counter-Strike at any point in time, accounting for almost 70 percent of the online FPS audience.

In 2002 there were over 30,000 Counter-Strike servers on the Internet (second place was Unreal Tournament with about 9,800). CS has been the most widely played online FPS for the past few years and has over 19.5 million legal owners. Signs of CS's wide influence can be found in mods for Quake III Arena, Unreal Tournament, and other standalone shooters such as Global Operations and Soldier of Fortune II. CS is widely acknowledged as the most successful and popular of the tactical shooter genre.

The latest incarnation of the game, Counter-Strike: Source (CS:S), is based on the Source engine developed for Half-Life 2. Counter-Strike pits a team of counter-terrorists against a team of terrorists in rounds of competition won by completing an objective or eliminating the opposing team. The series also includes Counter-Strike: Condition Zero and Counter-Strike: Source. Counter-Strike (CS) is the common name given to a series of team-based tactical shooter games which originate with Counter-Strike, a total conversion mod of Valve Software's first-person shooter Half-Life.

Features include: varieties of teamkill punishes, auto-kick by certain triggers, rank system, advanced map changing and voting etc. One of the most successful, if not the only one, "Mani Admin Plugin", is met on nearly every dedicated server nowadays. "Admin plugins", as they are mostly referred as, have become very popular. Give server administrators more flexible and efficient control over his/her server.

The weapon's attributes remain the same.). Only the user sees the differences. Provide options for weapon improvement (AKA Skinning: Affects the way guns look and sound to the user but remain unchanged to anyone else in the game. Keep track of player statistics and scores.

Control players not following set rules. Create different modes of play. Make the game more humorous. Give players superhuman powers (powers from units in Warcraft III, for example.).

Remove features of the games which players felt were annoying. Improve gameplay. Add bots to make a LAN game multiplayer although there is only one computer. VIP - Used in maps prefixed 'as_' eg: as_oilrig.

Hostage - used in maps prefixed 'cs_' eg: cs_italy. Their disgust for American lifestyle was demonstrated in their 1982 bombing of a school bus full of Rock and Roll musicians.". Guerilla Warfare - Added in CS beta 6.5 - "A terrorist faction founded in the Middle East, this group has a reputation for ruthlessness. Infamous for their bombing of the Canadian embassy in 1990.".

Arctic Avengers - Added in CS beta 6 - "Swedish terrorist faction founded in 1977. Elite Crew(L33t Krew prior to CS 1.6) - Added in CS beta 3 - "Middle Eastern fundamentalist group bent on world domination and various other evil deeds.". Formed shortly after the breakup of the USSR.". Phoenix Connexion - First appeared in initial CS beta - "Having established a reputation for killing anyone who gets in their way, the Phoenix Connexion is one of the most feared terrorist groups in eastern Europe.

Consisting of no more than 100 men, the GIGN has earned its reputation through a history of successful ops.". GIGN - Added in CS beta 3 - "France's elite counter-terrorist group, the GIGN, was designed to be a fast response force that could decisively react to any large-scale terrorist incident. Their role in WW2 involved intelligence gathering behind enemy lines and executing sabotage strikes and assassinations against key targets.". SAS (Special Air Service) - Added in CS beta 5 - "World-renowned British SAS was founded in the Second World War by a man named David Stirling.

GSG-9 - Added in CS beta 6 - "GS-9 was formed out of the tragic events that led to the death of several Israeli athletes during the 1972 Olympic games in Munich, Germany.". ST-6 was placed on permanent alert to respond to terrorist attacks against American targets worldwide.". SEAL Team 6 - First appeared in initial CS beta - "ST-6 (to be later known as DEVGRU) was founded in 1980 under the command of Lieutenant-Commander Richard Marcinko. CS: Source - 7 October 2004.

CS: Condition Zero - 23 March 2004. Version 1.6 - 15 September 2003. Version 1.5 - 12 June 2002. Version 1.4 - 24 April 2002.

Version 1.3 - 19 September 2001. Version 1.1 - 10 March 2001. Version 1.0 - 8 November 2000. Beta 7.1 - 13 September 2000.

Beta 7.0 - 26 August 2000. Beta 6.6 - 22 June 2000. Beta 6.5 - 5 June 2000. Beta 6.1 and 6.2 were "Server Only" updates, not for client/user machines.

Beta 6.0 - 10 March 2000. Beta 5.2 - 10 January 2000. Beta 5.0 - 23 December 1999. Beta 4.1 - 1 December 1999.

Beta 4.0 - 5 November 1999. Beta 3.1 - 16 September 1999. Beta 3.0 - 14 September 1999. Beta 2.1 - 17 August 1999.

Beta 2.0 - 13 August 1999. Beta 1.2 - 20 July 1999. Beta 1.1 - 27 June 1999. Beta 1.0 - 19 June 1999.

Kill an enemy: $300. Lose a round: $1500. Win a round: $3500.