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L.Ligeon
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Half Life's Counter-Strike: The interdependant relation of player productivity and game industry
An analysis of the player's constructive role
Luciano Ligeon
3549488
Introduction
The majority of researches in game studies have focused on structural elements of game systems, different motivations of players, representations in games and the possible effects games may have on social groups. Although some may have scratched the surface, most of them have not really focused on how large social structures and industrial systems have the ability to shape games and the ways they are played. I then came across the dissertation of Olli Sotamaa. In his dissertation Sotamaa argues for closer attention to the role of the player in productive activities in game studies. He states that “as gaming becomes more central in the everyday life of a gamer, the importance of constructive aspects tends to increase.” (Sotamaa, 2009, 77) He further goes on to argue that every game player is a potential game designer. The constructive actions of players that can be considered a form of design range from thinking to negotiating and modifying the rules. Occasionally some of these constructive activities lead to entirely new games. It is not surprising that this potential for players to constitute to the creation of new game elements and in some cases entirely new games has been noticed by the game industry. It is therefore important to consider games to be co-produced entities. The contributions of developers, industries and players have to be taken into account, to fully understand the game.
The decentralization of production is a transformation brought about by the information economy that I find most interesting. I therefore want to know more about the connection between player productivity and game industry, or better said the overlapping between play and design. The research object of this paper is supported by a specific case study. However, the motivations for this specific case differ from my previous motivations, as I will explain now.
When taking the players contribution to a game and the ways it is played into account, one specific game bears to mind. I am talking about Counter-strike. Counter-strike is an online, tactical first-person shooter that finds it's origin in another first-person shooter, namely Half Life. In game culture terms Counter-strike is a modification of Half Life. Game modifications, in short mods, are the player's productive practices that lead to new game elements.
The first modification was made by a 21 year old student by the name of Mihn Le, a year and a half after the release of the first Half Life. In the gaming community he is also known as 'Gooseman'. After the fourth béta version the game gained so much popularity that Valve, the creative company behind Half Life began assisting in the further development of Counter-strike. In August 2000 Valve and Sierra1 began selling Counter-strike as an add-on2 to Half Life. In that year Mihn Le was also employed by Valve. From that point on the game grew in popularity and more fans began engaging in all kinds of productive play by creating new scenario's, weapons and characters. Valve even began supplying fans with development kits for creating their own modifications.
I am most interested in the kind of productive play that leads to these new game elements because they not only have a significant influence on the experiences of the game amongst the players, but they also play a significant role in the design of the game (Sotamaa, 2009). Counter-strike is an excellent example of how digital games have the ability to implement player creative productivity in the design of the game, hence adding a great deal to the popularity of the game (Sotamaa, 2009, 102). This kind of productive play is also the main focus of my paper and is studied in relation to the game industry.
In my paper I will be focusing on two main aspects; the way productive play can constitute to the experience and design of digital games and the blurring of the boundaries between players and producers. What kind of affordances3 constitute to the kind of productive play that leads to new game elements? How does this relate to playing, the game in general and the game industry? What are the game industry perspectives on player production? To what extent does the game industry try to control the productive play? How can the game industry benefit from player production? The main question of my paper is:
How is player productivity that leads to new game elements related to the core design of the game and the game industry?
In my attempt to answer this question I will critically analyze the discourse surrounding the modification of Half Life leading to the development of Counter-strike, to expose the dynamics between player productivity and the game industry. With this paper I argue for closer attention to player productivity as it becomes more important in defining what a game is and how it is played and experienced.
The theoretical demarcation begins with the concept of Construction as defined by Joost Raessens in The Handbook of Computer game Studies (2005). I will use this concept to explain in which domain of participation this research is focused. Secondly, I will use the concept of Gaming capital, by Mia Consalvo, to examine the various player activities and the potential to shape a game and the way it is played and experienced. I will also use the concept of Extended Cultural Industry, introduced by Mirko Schaefer to explain how gaming capital is being used by the game industry and how player productivity is implemented in the design of a game. The concept of Post-fordism will be useful for exposing the increasingly blurring of boundaries between players and producers.
Game modifications represent one of the many forms of participation among game culture and in large among culture of participation. This research is an attempt to contribute to the existing literature on participation culture in game studies.
Player
In game research there are various definitions and viewpoints about what a player is (Sotamaa, 2009). In order to make clear what is described as player further on in this research I will use the four categories of player models outlined by Jonas Heide Smith (2006, 23-24):
- The Susceptible Player Model: Here the player has his or her post-game behavior influenced predictable by certain features of a game. The audiovisual content of the game or rewards granted by certain actions.
- The Selective Player model: Here the player is perceived as making a reflected choice between games based on personal preferences.
- The Active Player Model: Here the player is seen as actively engaged with the game or gamespace in ways often not prescribed or predicted by the game designers.
- The Rational Player Model: Here the player is seen as entities that employ skills and strategies to complete the goals of the game.
Though these categories supply different descriptions of relationships between game design and player behavior, they are not all mutually exclusive as Heide Smith also argues. For instance, a player can choose a game based on his personal preferences (The Selective Player Model) but that game affects the player through it's characteristics (The Susceptible Player Model). The player I am referring to in this research fits in the Active Player Model. However I do not want to overemphasize the player's autonomy. I do not want to run the risk of denying any media influence and, what Morley calls “slide into postmodern pluralism” (Sotamaa, 2009, 65;Morley, 1992, 26). Taking that into account, I also think the critical political economy approach is important. This approach argues for more attention towards the social, political and institutional activities and structures that influence the productive processes (Sotamaa, 2009). I will be returning to this point later on.
So what does it mean to be actively engaged with the game or gamespace in ways often not prescribed or predicted by the game designers? Joost Raessens provides an insightful division of three domains which participation consists of: the domain of interpretation, the domain of reconfiguration and the domain of construction (2005, 380-381). The first domain applies to all texts because a text relies on the interpretative function. In the domain of reconfiguration the player explores the unknown in the world represented in the game. The player takes different paths, but does not make history nor does he change the plot of the game. The domain of construction represents the adding of new game elements and in some cases creating whole new games. I will be mainly be focusing on the latter.
The adding of new game elements is also referred to as modifying (Raessens, 2005). Modification is referred to as the way “the users can extend or change the text by adding their own writing or programming” (Aarseth, 1997, 64). The constructive activity can take on many forms as both Raessens and Sotamaa argue. And I also agree with the notion that the constructive activity is less common than the first two (Sotamaa, 2009). Nevertheless, it represents the kind of players' activities that constitute to the experience of the game and the game content (Sotamaa, 2009).
You can speak of construction when a player works with game mods, game patches, editing tools and source codes. Mods and patches form add-ons to an existing game engine that alter the original code of a computer game (Raessens, 2005, 381). These mods and patches can consist of a simple repair to an error in the original code or manipulation of graphics, sounds, game play etc.
These acts of modifications have been accepted, encouraged and commercially exploited by developers and publishers but can still be seen as an act of resistance (Raessens, 2005). Personally I think that if the players can engage in the acts of resisting the text, this act can also be commercially exploited. Developers like id Software, Valve Software and Epic Games increasingly provide players with tools to assist the players in the act of creating mods. These developers have the opportunity to leverage the success of a popular mod, as the internet provides an inexpensive medium to promote and distribute these mods. Mirko Schaefer uses the term Extended Cultural Industry to describe the dynamics between various actors and to argue for conceptualizing participation as a heterogeneous and complex interaction (Schaefer, 2008, 215). The case study on Counter-strike that will be following later on shall illustrate this. I first want to look into production to get a better understanding of player productivity.
Defining Production
The phenomena of content created by users is often referred to as user-generated content or user innovation. These terms are however slippery and open to diverse interpretations due to the use of them in marketing discourses (Sotamaa, 2009). I therefore use the term Player Productivity. I already explained Player in the previous chapter but what is production? More specifically, what is production in the current media environment?
Basically we are all producers in the fact that we all regularly produce symbols in the form of words, sounds, images etc. (Sotamaa, 2009). According to this we are all symbol producers but still not all of us are media producers. This is however not easily applied to the current media environment and especially not to computer games. Hardt and Negri state that the contemporary economy is characterized by a dominance of immaterial production and immaterial labour (Hardt & Negri, 2000). They distinguish between three types of immaterial labour that characterizes the contemporary information economy (2000, 289-293):
- The first is highlighted by the immediate communication between production, planning and the market. This means that Production and Consumption have overcome the boundaries of time and space.
- The second type highlights how production increasingly results in no material and durable goods. Here one can consider the continual exchange of information and knowledge.
- The third type is affective labour that focuses on the production and manipulation of affect.
What is most visible from these three types of immaterial labour that lead to immaterial production is the decentralization of the production process. The production is organized and managed by a dispersed network (Sotamaa, 2009). The practice of game production becomes more flexible and specialized, and the labour becomes cheaper (Sotamaa, 2009, 80). The game industry is increasingly capable of making use of this flexible, specialized and cheap labour in the development of games.
In this network of production the strategy takes form in involving large numbers of consumers and letting them accomplish tasks for companies over the Internet. This strategy is often referred to as Crowdsourcing4, and can come in different forms. For instance, many developers of games incorporate play-testing during the design process. These testers are often recruited from the community. As I already mentioned in the chapter on the player, developers increasingly facilitate players with tools that allows them to create and distribute their contribution to the game (Sotamaa, 2009).
“With the editors, recently often bundled with the retail title, players can design levels and other game-elements of their own and these player-designed game pieces can significantly transform the whole gaming experience” (Sotamaa, 2009, 81).
This collaboration forces one to reconsider the boundaries between producers and consumers. The technology that enables or averts this collaboration is a force of equal significance (Schaefer, 2008). Schaefer uses the term affordances to examine the relation between design, discourse and technology. Affordances are the very aspects that channel consumers certain uses (Schaefer, 2008, 31).
“The basic reconfiguration of our media culture is rooted in the computer, in software, and in the global interconnectedness of the Internet” (Schaefer, 2008, 95).
In the light of affordances it is not only important to recognize the role of the internet, as I have mentioned above, but it is also important to take into account the role of the computer and software. First of all, the computer is a universal machine, a meta-medium. It is the platform on which the design and the use of software operates. Secondly, software is in-material, loss-less copyable, modular and a tentative resource (Schaefer, 2008, 95). These affordances constitute to the potential for collective production.
Software is immaterial but is better referred to as in-material. This is used by Schaefer to describe how software has the ability to move between worlds. It consists of programming language, that can execute a certain action when read by the computer as a program code. Specific programming language leads to specific actions (Schaefer, 2008, 110-114).
Software is modular because software programmers use and contribute to a database of written codes, and learn from other programs by even integrating certain parts into new programs. The modularity of software also means that complex programming can be divided into a number of sections. therefore different tasks can be divided amongst different programmers, according to their knowledge, skill, time and personal involvement (Schaefer, 2008, 115-118). The affordances of the Internet make the outsourcing of the different tasks fairly easy.
Unlike a television that is considered finished at the end of it's development and design process, software is tentative, therefore unfinished. The development does not stop, but continues with the addition of new features. Furthermore, software seems to offer a variety of ways to appropriate, that may differ from the original intentions (Schaefer, 2008, 118-123).
“Software is tentative in terms of its methodology, its development, and its use” (Schaefer, 2008, 119).
This quote considers a relation between play and design when talking about the development of a computer game. Game designers Andrew Rollins and Ernst Adams suggest that every game player is a potential game designer (Sotamaa, 2009, 82). The next chapter will be focusing on this aspect.
Play and Design
There are different ways in which players and design are connected with each other. As I have mentioned in the introductory chapter, the player activities that can be considered a form of design range from thinking to negotiating and finally modifying the rules. Players will not hesitate to change the rules in order to make the game more enjoyable. For instance, in the Grand Theft Auto series the player can choose to do other things like steal and collect the best cars out of the game, instead of following the path of the missions. However, there is a long way from this kind of play with the rules to the development of new game elements or an entirely new game. But what lies at the basis of this is that players consciously decide to play with the rules and the structure of the game (Sotamaa, 2009, 82).
It was during the 1970's that games were starting to be not only professionally designed but also consumed as commodities (Sotamaa, 2009). This lead to the perception of the designing and playing of games as two separate spheres, namely there are those who design, commercialize and sell games, and there are those who consume (play) games. However, the delineation of these two spheres should be reconsidered.
As I have mentioned in the previous chapter, many designers incorporate play-testing during the design and production process. This is an example of how important players and the act of play is for the design and production of a game. This dialogue between players and designers is also maintained after the launch of the game, because players and their activities form an important source of inspiration for designers (Sotamaa, 2009).
Some design choices are influenced by particular player activities as the example of Doom (1993) shows. The designers got their inspiration for opening up the game structure from a modification of their earlier game made by a player (Sotamaa, 2009, 84; Kushner, 2003, 165-167). This illustrates that even after the design and production process is considered complete, the players activities remains an important source of input for designers.
The example of the first-person shooter game Doom can be seen as a pioneer when speaking of designers opening up the game structure in recognition of the player's productive activities (Sotamaa, 2009, 85). Id Software encouraged player productivity to the point that hobbyist not only competed as players, but also as creators (Herz, 1997, 89-90). Id first launched a free version via the internet and after the reputation was built, they released a full retail version. Furthermore they encouraged players to explore and expand the game by simplifying the structure of the game code and by releasing descriptions of the file formats (Kushner, 2003, 165-169).
“Hacking and adding to the game became an essential part of the game, with new levels widely available on the Internet for anyone to download. Here was a new cultural economy that transcended the usual relationship between producers and consumers […] “ (Manovich, 2001, 245).
Central to this mode of design and production is the term game engine that refers to the main parts of the software code that control the physics of the game, the visual representation and the central functions of the gameplay (Sotamaa, 2009, 85; Bogost, 2006, 55). A game engine can facilitate other developers in creating similar games or different games. During the past 15 years tools like API's5, plug-ins and developer kits have been delivered to players (Bogost, 2006).
As I have said in the chapter on player I do not want to overemphasize the player's role. Along with the availability of the game engine for the player to contribute to the game come the capabilities and limitations defined by this game engine. According to Schaefer the latter is a form of implicit participation which depends on the formalization of user activities as default functions in the technological design (Schaefer, 2008, 209). He distinguishes between explicit participation6 and implicit participation to finally argue for combining the two and coining the term hybrid participation. He argues that while users can still perform explicit and even critical activities, these activities are used to improve information management and often serves commercial interests. Sotamaa also argues that “the industry benefits from the alterations and additions made by players as they can crucially extend the popularity of a game both in scale and in duration” (2009, 91).
This act of contributing to the design and production process of a game is increasingly being promoted in popular discourse and forms an extension of the established design and production processes of media texts and consumer goods (Schaefer, 2008). Schaefer describes this phenomena as an extension of the culture industry7 that he calls the Extended Culture Industry. This refers to the extension of the modes of production (and design) into the realm of the users, consumers, and audiences. Personally I use the term to emphasize the ability of the game industry to control and exploit player productivity. It is the game industry that largely provides players with the platforms. It is therefore only logic that they have the ability to control and exploit this productivity to some extent.
Modifications can be seen as concrete outcomes of gaming capital8 (Sotamaa, 2009, 95). Creating mods requires special knowledge of the structures of the game engine and a variety of tools. Uploading a mod to a fan site or contributing to a larger project is a way of using that special knowledge to contribute to the community. The player's productive activity then acquires recognition in the community amongst fans of the game.
Consalvo also points out that large media companies can also benefit from this use of gaming capital (2007, 181-182). These companies can make use of this phenomena in more than one way. For instance, developers like Valve and Epic Games have their own site dedicated to the modding community where fans can follow their every move, thus increasing customer loyalty. Furthermore, the constant flow of new mods increases the life of the original title (Sotamaa, 2009, 95-96). The exemplary case in the next section will illustrate how the results of player production can turn into commercial products.
Exemplary case: Counter-strike
Counter-Strike is an excellent example of the value that player productivity can have for the community and the game industry. Today mods and other player-made content can be found in any genre of PC games but according to Sotamaa it was the first-person shooter (FPS) that opened the way for this phenomena (2007). As I have mentioned in the previous section the FPS Doom is considered a pioneer. But it was Quake (1996) that introduced to the gaming world such team-based mods like Capture the Flag and Team Fortress. These mods became standard game mods in popular shooter games (Sotamaa, 2007). Counter-Strike began as such a team-based mod but grew into the first commercially released mod. No other developer was able to replicate the success of Counter-Strike.
Mihn Le, the creator of Counter-Strike began experimenting with game mods after the Software Development Kit (SDK) of Quake came out. In the section on production I have already discussed the modularity of software and how programmers use and contribute to a database of written codes. This is exactly what Mihn Le was doing.
While working on Counter-Strike he was still in school finishing his last semester. He spent more than 20 hours a week working on Counter-Strike, which meant that he spent more time working on the mod than school.
He chose to work on making a mod for Half Life because he“tapped all the good resources [from Quake]” and wanted to move on to a new game engine (McLean-Foreman, 2001). When asked if mods would endanger the profitability of retail games, he answered: “I don't think it's going to happen. I don't think that it will change the way people make games. […] If anything, they might make them more open to mods this time. That's the way to go, to keep the longevity of your game going, you really have got to make it editable” (McLean-Foreman, 2001).
The concept of gaming capital is very visible in the community surrounding Counter-Strike. By the time of the first beta version the community was relatively small. Le argues that it grew by itself and blew up after the fifth version. “I think that the most important thing is if you keep releasing new versions, it keeps the interest going. People tell their friends, and that sort of thing, and it just grows and grows” (McLean-Foreman, 2001).
By the time of the fifth beta version he received help from Barking Dog Studios and Valve. Barking Dog Studios helped with the adding of user-friendly features and additional maps. Valve began helping him with the codes and the graphics (Yu, 2001). In 2000 Valve had announced that they teamed up with the Counter-Strike developers. Later on the rights to Counter-Strike were sold to Valve as Mihn Le states:
“When we sold it to Valve, we didn't have much of a choice because I was just graduating and I really needed to turn this into something more than just a hobby, I needed to actually make a living off it. It was a good decision, I think, on my part” (McLean-Foreman, 2001).
Mihn Le also recalls that the biggest change in his life, based on the success of Counter-Strike was his involvement with Valve. It gave him the opportunity to turn his hobby into a career.
Following the example of the Counter-Strike community a handful of gamers from around the world used that same SDK to build a single-player mod called Gunman Chronicles. Valve also assisted them in finishing their code and got them in touch with publishers Sierra. Similarly, Cspromod is an organisation who's mission is to “improve the graphical quality, feature set, and spectatorship of Counter-Strike, while preserving the title's beloved gameplay, and in doing so provide community with the assurance of unlimited gameplay longevity”9.
Players who create mods do it mainly for the glory in the community. This glory is however increasingly being noticed by the game industry, as the example of Mihn Le shows. The success of Counter-Strike shows how developers like Valve and publishers like Sierra have come to think differently about their titles and the players. This is why many developers are following this example and providing modification tools for their own games. For instance, Electronic Arts's Maxis division released tools months prior to the official release of their game called The Sims (2000). According to Will Wright, the designer of the game: “The idea behind that was to get would-be players excited about the release and hope they'd develop characters and scenes to upload to the game upon it's release” (Red Herring Staff, 2001). This was a successful move, because during it's release in February 2000 the game already had 250.000 players and 50.000 player-created characters. The Sims has sold more than 3 million copies worldwide.
This use of player productivity has not always been eagerly accepted as described above. Some developers dislike the idea of players modifying their games. For instance, Tim Schafer of Double Fine Productions accuses these programmers when he says: “You're just lazy programmers trying to get the users to do your work” (Red Herring Staff, 2001). According to the Red Herring staff, most developers see user-modified games as a means to get gamers hooked, and not as a substitute for good design. Warren Spector, a game designer at Ion Storm says: If you want to be competitive, you have to keep the users hooked on it” (Red Herring Staff, 2001). Personally I think that player productivity works both ways. It has the ability to keep players hooked for a long time as some strive to improve the game by continuing the work with mods as others anticipate the release of these mods. Furthermore and also what I have been trying to explain is that player productivity also has the ability to add a great deal to the design of a game. Central to this idea is that players have the ability to (co)produce their own entertainment experiences and will grab the chance to and that the community surrounding player-made modifications has changed the design and production process.
“All things considered, players are often capable and motivated to produce their own entertainment experiences. At the same time, the business models that rely on player-created content require a lot of after-launch work both in content development and ongoing support for the community” (Sotamaa, 2009, 105).
Discussion
I close my research with a discussion about the future of player productivity in relation to the game industry. As I have tried to make clear, the potential for players productivity to contribute to the development and maintenance of a game has already been noticed by the game industry. It is therefore important to examine how player productivity is managed, because it is clear that game developers face new management and support tasks (Sotamaa, 2009, 107). Furthermore, game developers are increasingly providing players with tools to create their own content. Will the development of games in the future be characterized more by this kind of co-production or will the players productive role remain marginal, therefore making Counter-Strike an exception that will write history?
References
- Aarseth, E. (1997). Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
- Bogost, I. (2006). Unit Operations: An approach to Video Game Criticism. Cambridge & London: MIT Press.
- Consalvo, M. (2007). Cheating: Gaining Advantage in Videogames. Cambridge & London: MIT Press.
- Hardt, M., & Negri, A. (2000). Empire. Cambridge & London: Harvard University Press.
- Herz, J.C. (1997). Joystick Nation: How Video Games Gobbled Our Money, Won Our Hearts, and Rewired Our Minds. London: Abacus.
- Kushner, D. (2003). Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created am Empire and Transformed Pop Culture. New York: Random House.
- Manovich, L. (2001). The Language of New Media. Cambridge & London: MIT Press.
- McLean-Foreman, J. (2001). Interview with Mihn Le. Gamasutra. Retrieved: 28-01-2011.
- Morley, D. (1992). Television, Audiences and Cultural Studies. London & New York: Routledge.
- Raessens, J. (2005). Computer Games as Participatory Media Culture. In: Handbook of computer game studies Red. Joost Raessens en Jeffrey Goldstein. Cambridge: MIT Press, p.373-388.
- Schaefer, Mirko Tobias. (2008) Bastard Culture! User participation and the extension of cultural industry. Utrecht, 2008 ---, “Participation inside? User activities between design and appropiation” in Digital Material, tracing new media in everyday life and technology red. Boomen, Marianne van den, et. al., Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2009. 147-158
- Smith, J.H. (2006). Plans and Purposes: How Video Games shape Player Behavior. PhD dissertation, IT University, Copenhagen.
- Sotamaa, Olli. (2009). The Player's Game: Towards understanding Player production among Computer Game Culture. PhD dissertation, Finland: University of Tampere.
- Sotamaa, O. (2007). On Modder Labour, Commodification of Play, and Mod Competitions. First Monday, 12:9.
- Staff. (2001). Development a la mod. Red Herring Magazine. Retrieved: 28-01-2011.
- Yu, J. (2001). Gooseman Counter-Strike Interview. FiringSquad. Retrieved: 28-01-2011.
1Sierra Entertainment, Inc. The publishers of Half Life.
2The term add-ons refers to software packages created by fan-programmers (Sotamaa, 2009, 92).
3The term affordances refers to the very aspects that channel consumer's use (Schaefer, 2008, 31).
4A variant of outsourcing. In order to decrease the costs of labour, tasks are transferred to hobbyists, part-timers and dabblers (Sotamaa, 2009, 81; Howe, 2006).
5Refers to Application Programming Interfaces.
6“Explicit participation reflects conscious, voluntary, often intrinsically motivated activities; it is often community-driven, based on mutual social relations and communication” (Schaefer, 2008, 209). Both forms of participation are considered heterogeneous with respect to the various participants, their social context, motivations and mindsets.
7A term coined by Theodore Adorno and Max Horkheimer in Dialectic of Enlightenment: The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception (1972) that refers to the way popular culture is being used to produce standardized cultural goods, through film, radio and magazines, to manipulate the masses into passivity. This view preserves a Marxist understanding of participation.
8The term, introduced by Mia Consalvo aims to illustrate that being part of a culture surrounding a game is about more than just playing the game (Sotamaa, 2009, 73-74; Consalvo, 2007, 18).
9http://wiki.cspromod.com/About
