sometimes you probably sit there and wonder about your life, and what you do with it, and how you maintain a server for an ancient game with a dwindling playerbase. and in those moments I hope you remember that there are people on that server, having fun, smiling, because of your work. they don't know you're there, in the background, but they know *someone* is there and it's enough to keep being happy. thank you
Seen this video, redownloaded CS and played on your server for 3 hours straight, had a beautiful time and with great people. Definitely like the olden days, I'll be back frequently! Thanks for keeping this community up. ~ Subcomandante
I love how raw CSS still is. Where everything ever was so community driven. Where voice chat is pure fun. I'm glad I played it for many many hours. Returning to it now and then always brings joy.
The consistent server community was what made games so fun back then. It was more like having a huge group of friends rather than a bunch of adderall raging sweats. I remember staying home sick one day back in middle school and meeting another kid who was doing the same just a city over. As we got older and could drive we eventually met up and became real life friends for quite a while.
I still play 1.6 *exclusively* and I fully get every word you've said, couldn't have put it more eloquently. 3 years ago, I started counting the lonely white hairs growing in my beard, now I've lost count. for me and many others, Its not about the graphics nor the about the hype. It's always been about the friendship, community and memories. Thank you Luke.
Im many many years younger than you and we still play 1.6 in our school. I was thinking about how i will be feeling when I look back at these teenage years when im older. This only shows me that I should enjoy every single day!
thats why cs 1.6 is so legendary, there is still more servers and there is also a "face it like" named fastcup when u can play 5v5 mix, CS 1.6 WILL NEVER DIE
Honestly, I had to watch this video twice. What a magnificent story. I was in high school in 2005. Games like Counter-Strike, Halo: Combat Evolved, Unreal Tournament 2004, Call of Duty, Guitar Hero and so many more dominated the landscape. These games were kept alive for so long not just because of how much the gamers loved them but because of the community and comradery that was developed throughout the years. I think the most powerful aspect of any gaming community is that feeling you get like you've been transported back to your local LAN party. There's no better feeling than meeting up with your boys for a night of gaming at your local rec center or someone's basement. It was this feeling that led me to join every community I've been apart of. I have no more words but thank you.
I came from the same era of gaming and subculture, so this one hit home. What I miss most about these games was the sheer creativity of the community. To stay within the example of CS:S, I remember so called Jailbreak servers, where most people were inmates in special jail maps witj functioning cells and a lot of things to do, while a few players were overseers. The jailmates had to find a way to kill/overwhelm the guards, and therefore had to coordinate together in some way. All-Talk was enabled, so you couldn't just tell everyone your plans, because the guards would hear it. There were times during these games where the guards would open the cells to let the inmates out, so that they could get some fresh air, and it was very hard to not have an inmate escape into some small niche or air-vent at some point. I swear, the anecdotes of hilarious or awesome moments that I could tell still send shivers of excitement down my back. And this is only one community-made mode out of literal dozens that I have played in different source-engine games. Others, like prophunt or deathrun, just to name two, were also wonderful. Its quite sad how short-lived they were, and how few people got to experience these things in the full scope of things. They will be mostly forgotten in the sands of time. But that is the way of things in this world. That's why we should always strive to live in the now.
This brought back so many memories! Say what you will about the source engine, it did allow for a lot of community mods. I remember Jailbreak so clearly, and zombies as well. I believe the zombie mode is what inspired Left 4 Dead
@@HeyItsLukka Left 4 Dead was planned to be a new game mode in Counter-Strike Condition Zero developed by Turtle Rock Studios called Terror Strike, where CTs only had knives and occasional automatic force respawn and Ts had a buy zone but only one life, and terrorists also had to plant a bomb and defend it. As the new game mode didn't seem to fit into Counter-Strike, but still was looking interesting, Turtle Rock continued to experiment with the format in the Source game engine, which resulted in Left 4 Dead we all know.
I just want to thank you for making this video. I'm 27, and just fell down the CCS nostalgia rabbit hole. I suddenly realized how much fun, and just how unique this game game been. The community servers with minigames, fun game moes, zombies, gun games, weird ultimate maps, bhopping, knife fights, anti gravity, RPG, warcraft. It was so glorious and the most incredible yearning came over me. I searched and searched for a video that would capture this ''feeling''. Well, it's as if you made this video just for me in that moment. Thank you brother.
Your words literally brought some tears to my eyes. You did an incredible job conveying my feelings of this game and more importantly it's players base and communities. As someone who has played this game consistently for 24 years, your video has done a great service in encapsulating the enjoyable exchanges and memories shared between players over decades. A small part of my soul feels connected to this. I don't know you, but I love you. Thank you. - Wired`Wrong
For me the real stuck in 2005 is servers with minigames, excluiding Jailbreak and most important game mode: Zombie Mod and Zombie Escape. It's funny because for you is the 'only' server alive. But in Argentina servers or 'latino' servers there's like many servers with still 32/32 people playing. And there's more people and servers in Counter-Strike 1.6. This is because in the south america loves so much the classic shooters and the ones you played in cyber-cafes. And in Argentina like in soccer there's so much passion and love in Counter-Strike 1.6 is exactly the same thing. You can encounter in 1.6 like 40 years or maybe old guys (boomers basically) still playing, the 18-25yrs guys and then little kids around 7-15yrs maybe. And there's constant chaos in voicechat, people insulting each other, others focusing verbal words to one guy, guys using a voicechanger to sound like a girl, people spaming sounds or music. And many more. It's normal to join a new server, or join one you've already played for a while, because i can assure you. You are going to encounter any NPC or character, and you are going to doubt if he is really the one who is crazier than yourself. And even you can encounter some possibly: Transexuals or transvestites (from the old school, no like the femboys from today). There's mix servers, the ones you can play more serious and competitive, like csgo or old majors. Zombie gamemodes (but mostly this ones has the CSO/CS Nexon style, so is boring and this is why for me this gamemode is dead, and a bunch other reasons) There's Jailbreak, minigames, soccer, deathrun, there was a Rocket League gamemode that i still don't know if it's still alive. It's amazing. And for the last thing, if you someday try to join servers from Argentina or other country from SA. There's a high chance that maybe: You may find people who make fun of you and try to speak with a very poor accent or directly invent words in English, who say racist insults (the n word) or common insults in English repetitively. But all this does not mean that you will not find a minority that will try to be nice to you. This is very important and I need to anyone reading this to understand it because things work very differently compared to the United States or other countries: *DON'T BE OFFENDED AND DON'T GET ANGRY ABOUT WHAT YOU HEAR, READ OR SEE.* Insults of Xenophobia and Racism in Spanish are VERY common, something every day. And it is explained simply for 2 reasons Rivalry like in gaming and soccer and that people are not easily offended by insults of racism and xenophobia. (More than anything, it is very common and because almost all Latinos, including Spain, say all kinds of insults to each other, about the countries' problems and so on.) This only happens in gaming, what you are reading, but if you go to Argentina as a tourist in irl they will treat you very well and be very charismatic and very kind with you.
dont worry i still play this, not just playing it, i mod it, like changing the menu background or gun skin, counter strike source is not just a game, it's someone childhood, mine or your, even if you don't play it with friends, bot in this game also has grown on me, i love them as well, everytime i boot the game up it felt exactly like 2009 weekend, when your parent let you uses the computer and owning noob and having fun, good time...
As someone who returned after 15+ years, It's pretty sad to see the player base this small. Shoutout to Dont Drop The Soap(DDTS), Witness Protection(-=WP=-), Infinity Gaming, and all the others I've been a part of since I was a teen. Sometimes I explore empty maps and such, just to reminiscence of the place I've been and some of the people I've met in this game. Thanks for making this video man..
Awesome video dude. This server is like going to the bar with all your buddies for me. Appreciate you telling the world we're still just chilling. - JohnyTsunami
This vídeo was recommended to me in the feed and I’m super happy I clicked on it. I still play CSS everyday, in the last Spanish server remaining in the game, and every time you log in it feels like hanging out with friends, even though I don’t even know the real name of any of them. It truly feels like home, and it warms my heart how good you captured that feeling in the video. Big up man, hope you do well
I still play on this server and i love it, i like how everyone is welcoming to people who join and are well known it just shows how much everyone cares and sees the same names each time they play
I still play with the same people I met in CS in 2004. We started out as just some people on a server having a laugh, and now we play everything together. It's comforting to know they're still there, no matter what. I can leave for a year and know that when I get back it'll be like I never left. It's a stable friend group with no obligations, just an open invitation to reconnect and joke around like we did as teenagers.
its amazing how just one video can throw you back to the "good old days" where things like you said where simple. i remember playing Office like it was the best thing ever and then hoping over to a Surf Deathmatch, Surf_buckwild for life and a little bit of GunGame. the odd gamemodes like zombies where it wasnt a rush to a finish line but to defend off with using props and infinite amount of ammo and stacking everyone in a single room. an when that one person that was too darning and got to close getting turned into a zombie and getting everyone in that room, that was always a good time. CSS is the reason i got into game design and hoping to at some point grasp the community feeling again. thanks for the trip down memory lane
We grew up during a period with an ever increasing library of videogames and back then we felt like there were only a few good options. I switched from playing competitive games and mmorpgs to strictly single player games with no interactivity, I feel like I have gotten so much more from playing single player games than games with a competitive or social aspect, experiences are temporary but what you learn from them is not so while I am happy I have shared these experiences with other people they barely form a memory in my mind, I can place myself in that period in time and space but I can't really point at a specific situation, I still get nostalgia over that period though, I played a lot of different modes once I started getting bored of the vanilla servers, I went for jailbreak, zombie mode, zombie escape, surf, minigames, saw map/trap modes and I honestly get more nostalgia from these modes. A person that grows up will progressively get more and more nostalgia, I started getting at 12 years old, reminiscing about the days when I played on my ps2 and had less pressure from school, if a 12 year old is getting nostalgia, then imagine someone that has gathered up even more memories since then. While I still get nostalgia, I understand that it is an inevitable feeling, one thing I noticed aswell is when I play a game that gives me nostalgia for a couple of hours, I no longer get nostalgia from it, it gets incorporated into me, like the memories die if you experience something that replicates the feeling, so I avoid experiencing these games again. I don't think we miss playing these games, we miss being younger and our missed opportunities.
Your last sentence is spot on and well said. I feel the same as you in many ways. I’ve also naturally drifted towards more single player/narrative games as I’ve gotten old, though I don’t think I would have had the attention span or emotional depth to have appreciated some of them as I do now.
I was born in 2005, and never really started playing online multiplayer games like Cod WW2 and GTA Online until middle school. I never got to experience the time period that you did, but that makes me really appreciate this video. It connects my interest in earlier eras to my own, because I know that even in the 80s the gaming community was more close knit than it is today. Early multiplayer games like Mario 1 and Contra brought friends together, (though in a somewhat limited way, you would need to be in the same room with them) and strengthened their bonds as friends. Single player games like Metroid, Zelda 1, and Simon's Quest just to name a few, did the same thing, but with the added layer of bringing them together to figure them out. The accomplishment of figuring things out together I think making it the feeling that much stronger. Counter Strike and other games during the late 90s and the 2000s brought friends even closer together with voice and text chat in an online multiplayer setting. People my age don't really play the kinds of servers you highlighted in this video because we're not incentivized to. We aren't really encouraged to make friends on servers anymore, we just wanna get shiny guns and wear funny hats. We aren't expected to return to the same server every day, but are generally forced to cycle through dozens and dozens of servers. Matchmaking makes it almost impossible to experience these kinds of close-knit communities. With TF2 at least there's community servers, but most people just don't play those.
Welp, yeah, you just made me cry. This made me feel like going back to my childhood bedroom at my parents house I grew up and finding everything still in there, untouched. Dial-up Counter-Strike Beta veteran here. Man, time flies.
This cuts deep through emotionally. I first played Counter-Strike: Source around 2015 - 2018 occasionally. I expected a seriously vicious of players. Instead, it's just people living and enjoying time with players they have known for over 10 years. I remember hearing conversations about people wondering what happened to sudden inactive friends, someone who passed away, moved on for a new life, talked about their families, old fond memories, or told me to stop camp sniping because it's not 2005. It shows the long lasting brotherhood amongst these players. It reminded me of where I used to live. It's like seeing my neighbors play basketball in the afternoon while throwing jokes till evening. I now want to reinstall Counter-Strike: Source again. Ever since game developers took away freedoms from their customers like no more private servers, disable peer-to-eer connection, no SDK, shutting down and delisting games. It made harder for games released in 2010s and above to maintain a cult following. Right now I regularly some games that do have a small community. I'll add CS:S to my list. Thank you for this video.
Thank you for sharing this video, it brings tears to my eyes as the CSS lover i am. Playing it since my childhood, i just can't stop it. I eat CSS, i breath CSS, i sleep CSS, it feels like an enjoyable curse I like being stuck in the past, the past lives insides me. There are still a lotta populated servers in my country, but i pretty much remained alone, all my friends moved on from that game "You can easily go back to the past, but nobody's there"
I've first played Counter Strike Source when I was like 10 years old on a family laptop and I've spent so much hours on it in offline bot lobby knowingly I will be at the top in the leaderboard against bots, numerous matches goes on and I still have the fun with it because I tend to be entertained by the ragdoll system. Laughing at the sound of the hostage getting hurt and then throwing them a nade afterwards. But then when it comes to online servers it was just pure fun and adrenaline. No skill based matchmaking to worry and to be bored at, you get to hear all the people in voice chat sharing about anything and that's what I miss about gaming, the environment and the respectfulness, though I can agree the repetitiveness of Counter Strike but it's just hits different when you spent hours playing this game in a community server, it's like listening to a podcast getting to hear their experiences while playing.
You almost made me cry. Whatever I am today is because I found a similar server in CS:GO. We all still to this day come to the discord and have fun. I am really proud that we created a small community.
I met a guy on CS 1.6 back in 2017 and we became friends simply because we shared similar interests like having a TH-cam channel and making videos thats how we started to connect then discord and we are friends till this day, I love old CS community
This video rlly spoke to me. Im one of the last quake 1 players and that feeling of logging on to the inside jokes, the stories, people asking about my day. It’s something impossible in modern games. Somehow I feel that the games the world has declared dead have communities that are the most alive.
You almost made me tear up, man. Thank you for bringing back my childhood memories. You have a great writing talent, keep up the amazing work, best wishes!
That comment about "returning to my hometown, somehow smaller than I remembered" is so funny to me. People often talk about the world feeling impossibly large as a kid and "shrinking" as your age, but the fact that the sentiment can hold true for video games is so interesting to me. I could walk around bot matches of Source as a kid and the maps would feel endless. Dust 2 might as well have been a city on its own and its so hard to really explain how because it just makes no sense unless you've experienced it yourself. I have so many fond memories as a kid of loading up bot matches and queueing up every map that came with Source. I'd spend hours just running through the entire list as it swapped from map to map. The atmosphere of the Source engine coupled with CS:Source's lack of map detail and themeing make the game feel so mysterious, labyrinthian and almost "cold".
Thanks for this awesome video. CSS was always the unwanted cs for most people, but most people just forget how social and community based it was and still kind of is. Great video
i dont know why but this video made me cry, maybe i just miss my friends and the simpler times of before we used to play team fortress classic a lot back when we were kids, your experience with cs resonated with me and brought back so many good memories thanks so much for the video man
absolutely beautiful video. i noticed something similar myself with the last remaining quake 3 arena servers, and some oldschool multi user dungeons. i cried, amazing work.
This. Everything about this. I'm 31 years old now, still always a gamer in my heart even though I have moved onto other bigger commitments and responsibilities. This was the game that I wanted so bad back when I was in the 7th grade. Family finally bought it for me after begging. This is one of my "Hall of Fame" game where it opened up a whole new world of the meaning of comfort gaming. TH-cam back then was also a big influence towards my time with CSS. All the hilarious home-made skits that these creators made, their best frag compilations, also let's not forget the LeetWorld and Pure Pwnage series. It's bittersweet to see how the popularity of CSS has died down due to its shelf life, but it still puts a smile on my face to see a strong community that still desires to play this game. I still think about this game and all the fun & rage inducing moments I had playing this game trying to get really good lol.
We had a gaming community that was started in Counterstrike 1.3, we still hang out with a lot of them, not in CS these days but in Discord. We played CS, from 1.3 through 1.6. We played CS Source when it came out. We made custom maps for CS. We used Ventrilo, TeamSpeak and now discord. Some of the community has been hanging out with us for over 20 years now! A lot of them were just kids, including my own kids. all are grown up, have families and jobs. But still pop in from time to time. Your video captured the essence of that perfectly. The community we had was born out of the fact that the CS servers we hosted were consistent, reliable, friendly places for kids to hang out together. None of that match making nonsense. Custom Maps, Mods, those were the days! We still have a server up and running and will join in from time to time. The map rotation is varied, a bunch of our favorite maps including the ones the community made. Fun times!
this is a very touching video. Although I'm still young, I definitely share very similar sentiments with my of the communities I've been in, whether that be tf2, quake, Unreal, or the CSS Climb server I always join. I guess I'm on the opposite end? I realize that I have the most time now gaming, having fun, and creating strong connections with others. I've been making many efforts, getting out of my comfort zones to do things online I haven't before. It's a great shame that community servers in CSS, and video games in general, have just been completely phased out for matchmaking, because it's one of the things I enjoy most and serves as the more pure way of gaming. Excited to see more content from you.
This video perfectly encapsulates my feelings with Counter Strike and specifically Counter Strike: Source I swear there is more to it than nostalgia. But at the same time, im 28 years old and have been playing counter strike since I was 7. So maybe im a little biased. But this feeling also stretches into other games like Day of Defeat: Source and Half Life 2: Deathmatch. The close communities within these games are amazing. But CS:S holds that special place. Amazing video! Been playing on the Ego server for many years off and on. Crazy to see people in the vid I recognize. Im glad to see other people have the same feeling. -Shaggy
@cococock2418 while it may be nostalgia. I'm not going to deny that. For me, it's a game I always come back to. Not only for the friends and people I play with amongst servers. But the gun play and the replay ability that cs has, along with zombie servers, scouts and knives, gungame. Or I'll find a pub match and do a 5v5 comp. I enjoy csgo/cs2, I have over 2.3k hours in it, but css just feels great. And bhopping is a + lol
Very very glad I stumbled into this video. I was never a CS:S fan but played ET, BF2, TC:E (a multiplayer TC for ET) and many others during the mid 2000s. Fast forward 20 yrs, and as someone who works full time to support his family, I think what we're missing is a 'third place,' somewhere that we get to socialize that is not our home or workplace. Games provided that third place for us and it transcended borders, race, religion, politics - we simply enjoyed each other's company, and playing to win really was only just a small piece of icing. Here's to the bygone days - I hope everyone whom I exchanged cyber bullets with is doing well.
honestly, back in 1.6 days that were still strong despite css already been out at the time, such servers with regulars used to be a thing, same with internet cafes where people would just know each other or go with friends and then meet new people, servers that would slowly die year by year eventually being empty.. thank you for reminding me of this. the hope for us isnt gone with the matchmade games, as long as the game has a friends list.
There's one swedish CS 1.6 server that has been active and still is since the early 00's and a couple of days ago I experienced exactly what you showed at 6:15. It really felt like I was back in 2005 ! I miss the days of joining a random server on games like CS or Day of Defeat and becoming a regular on one specific server.
I play counter strike source periodically and witness the environment you mentioned. It is an old game but it has a player base that never gets old, most people know each other. It is not just a game, it is a chat environment. This increases the playability of the game significantly.
Thank you mate! I’ve recently picked CSS again after almost a decade off, and you’re exactly right. But there are a few more servers up than you think! I love the video, keep going!!!!
Great video. I sometimes find the nostalgia to be overwhelming when I think of the servers and communities that once existed, the friendships that I once had, never to be repeated again.
This video was touching, I've felt like this playing 1.6, halo 2, and now CS2, playing with a squad of old highschool buddies and re connecting again. Well Done!
I didn’t get to experience the same era as some of you. I’m 25 now, and for me, the magic was in the years between 2010 and 2015. It’s wild to think that it’s been almost 15 years since then. I grew up playing CSGO most of the time, though I did dabble in CS: Source and 1.6 before that at some local internet cafe with some friends back then (best time I've ever had too)-but not as much. CSGO was always the one for me. Now that it’s gone, it feels...lonely. I always had this thought in the back of my mind, like, “CSGO will always be there, even if I take a break for a few years.” But then CS2 came out, and something about it just doesn’t feel the same. But I guess for me, CSGO wasn’t just about matchmaking or the game itself. It was the community servers, the stories people shared over mic chat-it felt alive. And now, it’s like a piece of the puzzle is missing. I miss it. I've recently downloaded cs source and 1.6 as well and I'm having a blast. Though there aren't many English speakers where I live, I still enjoy the game for its simplicity. I feel lots of game lost that mark nowadays. Thanks for uploading this video. :) I'm glad I wasn't the only one that has a similar experience.
i run a cod4 server on pc back in the day. casual tdms to clan wars. made friends along the way and i communicate with them still on facebook til this day. me seeing them having families warms me heart.
You can still find this kind of community in VR. It's exactly why I'm so fond of VR. No battle pass, no progression, no skill based MM, just pure gaming. Cause making the core gameplay the best already cost so much for VR, adding more would break the bank for developers.
This video unlocked a core gaming memory for me. For me It was winter 2010, or your 2005 per say and I was outside at the neighbors house waiting for the school bus to come and pick us up for school. It was winter on the east coast and temperatures had been dropping fast all week and everywhere you looked it seemed like we had entered a kind of a mini-ice age. My brother, myself, and the two neighbor kids were all good friends and we always waited for the bus together and on this particular morning we had been waiting for the bus for an extra 15 minutes which to us wasn't out of the ordinary because the bus often came late in the winter. While mid conversation a neighbor came over to us all and told us that because of how cold it had gotten the school buses had been unable to start so school was canceled for the day. This was the best news we could have ever heard at that moment, instead of spending the day at school studying suddenly our plans took a 180 turn. Our friends invited my brother and I inside and we spent the entire morning playing Counter Strike Source. CS Source was a big part of our gaming/life for many years following that event. It became not just a game for us but a way to bond and represented our childhood. Eventually we all bought our own laptops and would game together on LAN, sometimes every day in the summer.
Thanks Lukka for sharing these thoughts! They resonated deeply. I've been thinking a lot about my childhood lately, especially playing Doom and Quake, and making my own maps with a friend. Later when HL1 released we switched to that, and as soon as the Counter-Strike mod came out, we played up until version 1.6 and the early days of Steam. I think there's more to all this than just nostalgia. Things that have a strong history (like the Quake engine, which still exists in some form in GoldSrc and even in Source 1 and 2), and a lasting community of people who faithfully keep coming back, have a certain special charm. I think such things are precious.
Hi Lukka. Thank you for this video. You're a captivating story teller who made me laugh and cry with one simple video. You also made me, playername =(eGO)=Artimus, wish I had played CS all these years.
There are games, few they may be, that truly allow players to make connections, and even form communities. Although I never played CS, I feel like I can relate to the emotions you described when I revisit certain games. Thanks for reminding me!
I didn't play much CSS. But I played a ton of a free fps. Blacklight Retribution. It died shortly before the great lockdown of '18. But I did find a small community that's done everything they can to make it possible to host your own matches through the client. Granted, everything is unlocked but it's the same kind of thing here. A community sticking together through the roughness of life. Its kinda beautiful to see.
great video. i think we sometimes forget that we will get old like our parents and grandparents. aging and time passing is honestly tuff to accept. but man these are stories well tell our children. the hours and days and months spent on our faoriete games. unbeatable times and such incredible memories. ill be telling my kids about my days wasted on minecraft or csgo and cs2. not wasted time but fun and connections made.
Back in 2009, I was 12, i picked up CSS and used to join the italian servers cause I am italian. And I still have fond memories of all the banter going around the servers, everyone was a bit older than me so I would keep it to myself cause they even had mature type of discussions. To this day, one dude from those servers still invites me to play CSGO or CS2 even though I havent talked to him in 10 years
I remember when I started playing CS 1.6, I was only 12-11 years old, no one cared that you were a kid, you only cared about having a good time and having fun, no one cared how good you were, what level you were, etc. and people were less toxic, a better community is not what it is now. Now it's all about the toxic community, levels and all. Everyone is wondering how good you are, what your level is and how well you play. I can admit that CSS was never my main game that was played all the time and kept on my computer, but after plugging it in and playing it for a couple of hours a minute, you realize that this game is completely different from the others, how many times have I played on DM servers, everyone is friendly , everyone communicates, there is no toxic community like now. I never understood why CSS was never as popular a game as CS 1.6 or CSGO, it is like an abandoned and dropped toy that is picked up and played with and thrown away again. Thank you for the video.
The quality of this video is surreal. The narration, vibe, minimalistic, slow editing to match the subject, everything. And it hits the spot too. I hear myself in your words, or rather, my thoughts, which happens rarely. Thank you.
The relationships that players form with each other is the same reason that people keep going back to wow classic. There is something about having to put in a little effort that makes the relationships matter more.
this reminded me of something, i get stuck on a game a long time where many of my friends just switch to another once they feel bored or complete it, and it's hard to talk about games im interested in depth with people because they eventually move on whereas i still stay, grinding, improving and whatnot. So it's refreshing when you find people who dedicate their playtime to only one game that they can talk about and share their experiences with unlike people who switch games all the time and have no deeper insight.
I have so many good memories of CS: Source. It was the first FPS I could ever run on my shitty HP family desktop. I couldn't even run the vanilla maps. All I played was mostly orange box map style DM servers, Gun Game and Zombie Survival.
2005 was such a great year. Graduated HS that year, Tech was there but not intrusive or over-bearing, like if your forgot your phone at home you werent upset about it. Simpler times, better music, better fashion, the world wasnt so PC. God take me back.
I was waiting for this to talk about 1.6, but yea this is good. I haven’t tried source since uni days, but recently fell back into CS2 now and am enjoying it quite a bit, so am glad to be back into gaming with friends at least there!
this video hits me hard i remember the great times i had with old source game communities and it all started with CSS for me i had many friends teach me many mechanics of the game like head shot training and making your crosshairs just a dot and train like that many days of just 1v1 each other while we wait for the server to fill it was truely amazing and i bet i still have these people on my steam friends list maybe i should reconnect
Lukka one day this will be the only video that will tell of the time we lived in, the time that no one else will ever experience again. It’s so beautiful to know that I got to experience this chunk of eternity with people I will never forget. Thank you for making this video
I still play TF2 to this day but in middle school I was a regular on a community server and getting to know people and log on everyday was a great experience
Source is to you as Global Offensive is to me. It was my high school relief from stress about grades, the isolation I felt from my friends after being pulled into an online school years before it became "normal" with the pandemic. I made do with what I was given in the situation, and making do meant playing Counter Strike on the weekends, sometimes during the weekdays after I was particularly swift with my work without letting the quality drop. My school-issued laptop wasn't the best, a refurbished i5 with integrated graphics that ran CSGO at a mere 40 fps, but it was my home. Taking a few years off the game to focus on existing, and building my value as an adult. Recently, I've gotten back into CS2, and it is kinda sad that my Global Offensive is gone as I knew it, but I do look forward to the good times ahead, as I've not lost my skills from highschool, they just had to shake off some dust. I look forward to finding a crew to game with, maybe download Source, myself, to find my own place again. I love Counter Strike, whatever version it is that I play, because like you've said in the video, it's consistent, it's constant. I haven't come back and asked, "What the hell is this?", but instead, "How do I do this, again?" and that's what keeps me in love with CS. Other series have changed too much between times that I played them, leaving me utterly confused and lost. But not Counter Strike, I feel right at home playing CS2 after a day of hard work, it is special to me. I love you guys, thanks for keeping this place special and surviving.
CSS is my most played game ever. This my childhood, my first online game experience, my online friendship. Few servers was like a family. I never seen like this relationship in videogames after CSS. I miss about 00s and 10s.
Reminded me of the zombie escape servers i used to play on. Both css and csgo. When certain peope logged on, they would casually discussed about their day, lives, and what maps theyre going to play. I had most of them on my steam friendlist, but while some of them are still active, its still sad to see a couple people that havent touch steam for a while
I love that comparison of many modern games versus older ones feeling like going from Doritos to a simple slice of orange. I'm gonna try to be objective, cause I know there are a ton of newer games that are great. But the vibe of older games is worth something, too. They give you a very different gaming experience, which is worth preserving and remembering. Just like how both the ancient and modern times are interesting in their own ways.
Thank you for uploading this. I still play CS:S just cause its fun, chill and made even new friends in public servers. I still get best laughs in CS:S and everyone else laughs with me as well, even the guy who gets hit by his own nade. No toxic votekicking, no bad stuff.
I liked CS in the past but never played it that much. The video still reminds me of a better and simpler times. Yeah some of these feelings are being young and don't have many things to worry about but it is also a lot of how online communities changed. I played a ton of Halo back in the day with many friends I made online. We talked about everything, sometimes until the sun rised again in the next morning while playing a lot of custom made game modes. I also played a lot of WoW back in the day. It was awesome to just run into random people, talk a bit and do some quests or a dungeon together. Today you often don't even get an "hi" or "bye" out of some people in the game. It just feels empty. There are thousands of people around you in these games and you have 0 communication with them.
I played this game every day during lunch in high school (2006). It’s been a while since I’ve played it, but because of this video, I’m reinstalling it.
I think I've played on this server at one point in 2018 when I downloaded Source as a newbie. And man I remember seeing people from both overseas and locally in there. It's a good place to chill compared to any competitive tactical shooters nowadays.
![How To Download Custom CSS SKINS/KNIFES IN 2023 [Works With Multiplayer]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/uRdH6CiO1ZU/mqdefault.jpg)
Thank you for reminding me the reason why I work my damnest to keep this server up for everyone ~3rd generation EdgeGamers dust2 tech maintainer
Thank you for all of your hard work
All the best ❤
sometimes you probably sit there and wonder about your life, and what you do with it, and how you maintain a server for an ancient game with a dwindling playerbase. and in those moments I hope you remember that there are people on that server, having fun, smiling, because of your work. they don't know you're there, in the background, but they know *someone* is there and it's enough to keep being happy. thank you
Lmfao I just commented that I still play on there. I’m drdongdonald on there used to be Jimmy p
Seen this video, redownloaded CS and played on your server for 3 hours straight, had a beautiful time and with great people. Definitely like the olden days, I'll be back frequently! Thanks for keeping this community up. ~ Subcomandante
I love how raw CSS still is. Where everything ever was so community driven. Where voice chat is pure fun. I'm glad I played it for many many hours. Returning to it now and then always brings joy.
There really wasn't anything better than joining your favorite cs_crackhouse or fy map and just having fun
The consistent server community was what made games so fun back then. It was more like having a huge group of friends rather than a bunch of adderall raging sweats. I remember staying home sick one day back in middle school and meeting another kid who was doing the same just a city over. As we got older and could drive we eventually met up and became real life friends for quite a while.
Good Times! Thanks for sharing
Thanks for the shoutout! We would like to repost this video with credits to you.
Yes, absolutely-I would be honored. Thank you
Who would voluntarily put "ego" into their steam names? LOL
@@Mai.Calico Your mom did
@@Mai.Calico you must be new to fps games..
im edging gamers
I still play 1.6 *exclusively* and I fully get every word you've said, couldn't have put it more eloquently.
3 years ago, I started counting the lonely white hairs growing in my beard, now I've lost count.
for me and many others, Its not about the graphics nor the about the hype. It's always been about the friendship, community and memories.
Thank you Luke.
Im many many years younger than you and we still play 1.6 in our school. I was thinking about how i will be feeling when I look back at these teenage years when im older. This only shows me that I should enjoy every single day!
you are a legend man, a true damn legend
thats why cs 1.6 is so legendary, there is still more servers and there is also a "face it like" named fastcup when u can play 5v5 mix, CS 1.6 WILL NEVER DIE
Honestly, I had to watch this video twice. What a magnificent story. I was in high school in 2005. Games like Counter-Strike, Halo: Combat Evolved, Unreal Tournament 2004, Call of Duty, Guitar Hero and so many more dominated the landscape. These games were kept alive for so long not just because of how much the gamers loved them but because of the community and comradery that was developed throughout the years. I think the most powerful aspect of any gaming community is that feeling you get like you've been transported back to your local LAN party. There's no better feeling than meeting up with your boys for a night of gaming at your local rec center or someone's basement. It was this feeling that led me to join every community I've been apart of.
I have no more words but thank you.
I came from the same era of gaming and subculture, so this one hit home. What I miss most about these games was the sheer creativity of the community. To stay within the example of CS:S, I remember so called Jailbreak servers, where most people were inmates in special jail maps witj functioning cells and a lot of things to do, while a few players were overseers. The jailmates had to find a way to kill/overwhelm the guards, and therefore had to coordinate together in some way. All-Talk was enabled, so you couldn't just tell everyone your plans, because the guards would hear it. There were times during these games where the guards would open the cells to let the inmates out, so that they could get some fresh air, and it was very hard to not have an inmate escape into some small niche or air-vent at some point. I swear, the anecdotes of hilarious or awesome moments that I could tell still send shivers of excitement down my back. And this is only one community-made mode out of literal dozens that I have played in different source-engine games. Others, like prophunt or deathrun, just to name two, were also wonderful. Its quite sad how short-lived they were, and how few people got to experience these things in the full scope of things. They will be mostly forgotten in the sands of time. But that is the way of things in this world. That's why we should always strive to live in the now.
This brought back so many memories! Say what you will about the source engine, it did allow for a lot of community mods. I remember Jailbreak so clearly, and zombies as well. I believe the zombie mode is what inspired Left 4 Dead
@@HeyItsLukka Left 4 Dead was planned to be a new game mode in Counter-Strike Condition Zero developed by Turtle Rock Studios called Terror Strike, where CTs only had knives and occasional automatic force respawn and Ts had a buy zone but only one life, and terrorists also had to plant a bomb and defend it. As the new game mode didn't seem to fit into Counter-Strike, but still was looking interesting, Turtle Rock continued to experiment with the format in the Source game engine, which resulted in Left 4 Dead we all know.
This is the exact reason eGO exists, for the community. I'm so glad you refound CSS and the eGO server. I look forward to seeing you on it soon.
I just want to thank you for making this video. I'm 27, and just fell down the CCS nostalgia rabbit hole. I suddenly realized how much fun, and just how unique this game game been. The community servers with minigames, fun game moes, zombies, gun games, weird ultimate maps, bhopping, knife fights, anti gravity, RPG, warcraft. It was so glorious and the most incredible yearning came over me. I searched and searched for a video that would capture this ''feeling''. Well, it's as if you made this video just for me in that moment. Thank you brother.
Your words literally brought some tears to my eyes. You did an incredible job conveying my feelings of this game and more importantly it's players base and communities. As someone who has played this game consistently for 24 years, your video has done a great service in encapsulating the enjoyable exchanges and memories shared between players over decades. A small part of my soul feels connected to this. I don't know you, but I love you. Thank you. - Wired`Wrong
Thanks for sharing this link Wired`Wrong. Amazing Video...After all these years... wife, kids etc... I still enjoy the game for the community. - x.
thank you for this video, i have some tears actually. much love
I'm 28 still got goosebumps and almost cried by your intro 😢❤
"from ivy, out middle, through our connector like a speed demon" ~probably Phoon
@@snowiecore what did u just say there? lol
@@snowiecore again, what did u just say here, can you speak English or?
For me the real stuck in 2005 is servers with minigames, excluiding Jailbreak and most important game mode: Zombie Mod and Zombie Escape.
It's funny because for you is the 'only' server alive. But in Argentina servers or 'latino' servers there's like many servers with still 32/32 people playing. And there's more people and servers in Counter-Strike 1.6.
This is because in the south america loves so much the classic shooters and the ones you played in cyber-cafes. And in Argentina like in soccer there's so much passion and love in Counter-Strike 1.6 is exactly the same thing.
You can encounter in 1.6 like 40 years or maybe old guys (boomers basically) still playing, the 18-25yrs guys and then little kids around 7-15yrs maybe.
And there's constant chaos in voicechat, people insulting each other, others focusing verbal words to one guy, guys using a voicechanger to sound like a girl, people spaming sounds or music. And many more. It's normal to join a new server, or join one you've already played for a while, because i can assure you. You are going to encounter any NPC or character, and you are going to doubt if he is really the one who is crazier than yourself.
And even you can encounter some possibly: Transexuals or transvestites (from the old school, no like the femboys from today).
There's mix servers, the ones you can play more serious and competitive, like csgo or old majors.
Zombie gamemodes (but mostly this ones has the CSO/CS Nexon style, so is boring and this is why for me this gamemode is dead, and a bunch other reasons)
There's Jailbreak, minigames, soccer, deathrun, there was a Rocket League gamemode that i still don't know if it's still alive.
It's amazing. And for the last thing, if you someday try to join servers from Argentina or other country from SA.
There's a high chance that maybe: You may find people who make fun of you and try to speak with a very poor accent or directly invent words in English, who say racist insults (the n word) or common insults in English repetitively. But all this does not mean that you will not find a minority that will try to be nice to you.
This is very important and I need to anyone reading this to understand it because things work very differently compared to the United States or other countries:
*DON'T BE OFFENDED AND DON'T GET ANGRY ABOUT WHAT YOU HEAR, READ OR SEE.*
Insults of Xenophobia and Racism in Spanish are VERY common, something every day. And it is explained simply for 2 reasons
Rivalry like in gaming and soccer and that people are not easily offended by insults of racism and xenophobia. (More than anything, it is very common and because almost all Latinos, including Spain, say all kinds of insults to each other, about the countries' problems and so on.)
This only happens in gaming, what you are reading, but if you go to Argentina as a tourist in irl they will treat you very well and be very charismatic and very kind with you.
latinx
hellsgamers jailbreak was the best back then
LATAM Mentioned
Same here in Europe
How can one try to connect to servers in other countries like yours?
dont worry i still play this, not just playing it, i mod it, like changing the menu background or gun skin, counter strike source is not just a game, it's someone childhood, mine or your, even if you don't play it with friends, bot in this game also has grown on me, i love them as well, everytime i boot the game up it felt exactly like 2009 weekend, when your parent let you uses the computer and owning noob and having fun, good time...
damn.
As someone who returned after 15+ years, It's pretty sad to see the player base this small. Shoutout to Dont Drop The Soap(DDTS), Witness Protection(-=WP=-), Infinity Gaming, and all the others I've been a part of since I was a teen. Sometimes I explore empty maps and such, just to reminiscence of the place I've been and some of the people I've met in this game. Thanks for making this video man..
I miss all the great clans
we all do that. these maps will forever keep our history.
Every game is truly a time capsule
Awesome video dude. This server is like going to the bar with all your buddies for me. Appreciate you telling the world we're still just chilling. - JohnyTsunami
Soldier of Fortune 2 MP is basically my CS:Source. An elegant game for a more civilised age.
I’ve never played it-I’ll have to check it out!
Bro we need new gen graphics sof 1 and sof2 I still have the CD of sof1
This vídeo was recommended to me in the feed and I’m super happy I clicked on it. I still play CSS everyday, in the last Spanish server remaining in the game, and every time you log in it feels like hanging out with friends, even though I don’t even know the real name of any of them. It truly feels like home, and it warms my heart how good you captured that feeling in the video. Big up man, hope you do well
The fact after 20 years it is still going strong. I enjoy playing the AWP lego deathmatch matches.
I still play on this server and i love it, i like how everyone is welcoming to people who join and are well known it just shows how much everyone cares and sees the same names each time they play
I still play with the same people I met in CS in 2004. We started out as just some people on a server having a laugh, and now we play everything together. It's comforting to know they're still there, no matter what. I can leave for a year and know that when I get back it'll be like I never left. It's a stable friend group with no obligations, just an open invitation to reconnect and joke around like we did as teenagers.
I miss this era of gaming too. Those were good times. Thanks for a great video!
You hit all the nails in one strike of the hammer, Thank you for the video. - EdgeGamers Staff
The amount of fun I had staying up until 4am playing gun game in CS:S is something I will never forget.
its amazing how just one video can throw you back to the "good old days" where things like you said where simple. i remember playing Office like it was the best thing ever and then hoping over to a Surf Deathmatch, Surf_buckwild for life and a little bit of GunGame. the odd gamemodes like zombies where it wasnt a rush to a finish line but to defend off with using props and infinite amount of ammo and stacking everyone in a single room. an when that one person that was too darning and got to close getting turned into a zombie and getting everyone in that room, that was always a good time. CSS is the reason i got into game design and hoping to at some point grasp the community feeling again. thanks for the trip down memory lane
We grew up during a period with an ever increasing library of videogames and back then we felt like there were only a few good options. I switched from playing competitive games and mmorpgs to strictly single player games with no interactivity, I feel like I have gotten so much more from playing single player games than games with a competitive or social aspect, experiences are temporary but what you learn from them is not so while I am happy I have shared these experiences with other people they barely form a memory in my mind, I can place myself in that period in time and space but I can't really point at a specific situation, I still get nostalgia over that period though, I played a lot of different modes once I started getting bored of the vanilla servers, I went for jailbreak, zombie mode, zombie escape, surf, minigames, saw map/trap modes and I honestly get more nostalgia from these modes. A person that grows up will progressively get more and more nostalgia, I started getting at 12 years old, reminiscing about the days when I played on my ps2 and had less pressure from school, if a 12 year old is getting nostalgia, then imagine someone that has gathered up even more memories since then. While I still get nostalgia, I understand that it is an inevitable feeling, one thing I noticed aswell is when I play a game that gives me nostalgia for a couple of hours, I no longer get nostalgia from it, it gets incorporated into me, like the memories die if you experience something that replicates the feeling, so I avoid experiencing these games again. I don't think we miss playing these games, we miss being younger and our missed opportunities.
Your last sentence is spot on and well said. I feel the same as you in many ways. I’ve also naturally drifted towards more single player/narrative games as I’ve gotten old, though I don’t think I would have had the attention span or emotional depth to have appreciated some of them as I do now.
Poetic speech
I was born in 2005, and never really started playing online multiplayer games like Cod WW2 and GTA Online until middle school. I never got to experience the time period that you did, but that makes me really appreciate this video. It connects my interest in earlier eras to my own, because I know that even in the 80s the gaming community was more close knit than it is today. Early multiplayer games like Mario 1 and Contra brought friends together, (though in a somewhat limited way, you would need to be in the same room with them) and strengthened their bonds as friends. Single player games like Metroid, Zelda 1, and Simon's Quest just to name a few, did the same thing, but with the added layer of bringing them together to figure them out. The accomplishment of figuring things out together I think making it the feeling that much stronger. Counter Strike and other games during the late 90s and the 2000s brought friends even closer together with voice and text chat in an online multiplayer setting. People my age don't really play the kinds of servers you highlighted in this video because we're not incentivized to. We aren't really encouraged to make friends on servers anymore, we just wanna get shiny guns and wear funny hats. We aren't expected to return to the same server every day, but are generally forced to cycle through dozens and dozens of servers. Matchmaking makes it almost impossible to experience these kinds of close-knit communities. With TF2 at least there's community servers, but most people just don't play those.
thanks for the documentary champ love being a part of it!
Thanks man, you were on fire those games
Welp, yeah, you just made me cry. This made me feel like going back to my childhood bedroom at my parents house I grew up and finding everything still in there, untouched.
Dial-up Counter-Strike Beta veteran here.
Man, time flies.
This cuts deep through emotionally. I first played Counter-Strike: Source around 2015 - 2018 occasionally. I expected a seriously vicious of players. Instead, it's just people living and enjoying time with players they have known for over 10 years. I remember hearing conversations about people wondering what happened to sudden inactive friends, someone who passed away, moved on for a new life, talked about their families, old fond memories, or told me to stop camp sniping because it's not 2005. It shows the long lasting brotherhood amongst these players. It reminded me of where I used to live. It's like seeing my neighbors play basketball in the afternoon while throwing jokes till evening. I now want to reinstall Counter-Strike: Source again.
Ever since game developers took away freedoms from their customers like no more private servers, disable peer-to-eer connection, no SDK, shutting down and delisting games. It made harder for games released in 2010s and above to maintain a cult following. Right now I regularly some games that do have a small community. I'll add CS:S to my list. Thank you for this video.
I resonate with your thoughts on this vid pretty much! Your channel truly deserves more recognition.
Thank you for sharing this video, it brings tears to my eyes as the CSS lover i am. Playing it since my childhood, i just can't stop it.
I eat CSS, i breath CSS, i sleep CSS, it feels like an enjoyable curse
I like being stuck in the past, the past lives insides me.
There are still a lotta populated servers in my country, but i pretty much remained alone, all my friends moved on from that game
"You can easily go back to the past, but nobody's there"
Love your vids. Can’t wait until this page pops off, you deserve it
Thanks for the positive reinforcement!
I've first played Counter Strike Source when I was like 10 years old on a family laptop and I've spent so much hours on it in offline bot lobby knowingly I will be at the top in the leaderboard against bots, numerous matches goes on and I still have the fun with it because I tend to be entertained by the ragdoll system. Laughing at the sound of the hostage getting hurt and then throwing them a nade afterwards. But then when it comes to online servers it was just pure fun and adrenaline. No skill based matchmaking to worry and to be bored at, you get to hear all the people in voice chat sharing about anything and that's what I miss about gaming, the environment and the respectfulness, though I can agree the repetitiveness of Counter Strike but it's just hits different when you spent hours playing this game in a community server, it's like listening to a podcast getting to hear their experiences while playing.
You almost made me cry. Whatever I am today is because I found a similar server in CS:GO. We all still to this day come to the discord and have fun. I am really proud that we created a small community.
I met a guy on CS 1.6 back in 2017 and we became friends simply because we shared similar interests like having a TH-cam channel and making videos thats how we started to connect then discord and we are friends till this day, I love old CS community
This video rlly spoke to me. Im one of the last quake 1 players and that feeling of logging on to the inside jokes, the stories, people asking about my day. It’s something impossible in modern games. Somehow I feel that the games the world has declared dead have communities that are the most alive.
You almost made me tear up, man. Thank you for bringing back my childhood memories. You have a great writing talent, keep up the amazing work, best wishes!
Thank you, I really appreciate hearing that
much love from germany, thank you for that 13 minute of flying through old memories in this ugly world
Phenomenal story telling
That comment about "returning to my hometown, somehow smaller than I remembered" is so funny to me. People often talk about the world feeling impossibly large as a kid and "shrinking" as your age, but the fact that the sentiment can hold true for video games is so interesting to me. I could walk around bot matches of Source as a kid and the maps would feel endless. Dust 2 might as well have been a city on its own and its so hard to really explain how because it just makes no sense unless you've experienced it yourself. I have so many fond memories as a kid of loading up bot matches and queueing up every map that came with Source. I'd spend hours just running through the entire list as it swapped from map to map. The atmosphere of the Source engine coupled with CS:Source's lack of map detail and themeing make the game feel so mysterious, labyrinthian and almost "cold".
this was such a treat, thank you
Thanks for this awesome video. CSS was always the unwanted cs for most people, but most people just forget how social and community based it was and still kind of is. Great video
i dont know why but this video made me cry, maybe i just miss my friends and the simpler times of before
we used to play team fortress classic a lot back when we were kids, your experience with cs resonated with me and brought back so many good memories
thanks so much for the video man
absolutely beautiful video. i noticed something similar myself with the last remaining quake 3 arena servers, and some oldschool multi user dungeons. i cried, amazing work.
This is one of the deepest videos that I've ever seen,great work from the music to the script!
This. Everything about this. I'm 31 years old now, still always a gamer in my heart even though I have moved onto other bigger commitments and responsibilities. This was the game that I wanted so bad back when I was in the 7th grade. Family finally bought it for me after begging. This is one of my "Hall of Fame" game where it opened up a whole new world of the meaning of comfort gaming. TH-cam back then was also a big influence towards my time with CSS. All the hilarious home-made skits that these creators made, their best frag compilations, also let's not forget the LeetWorld and Pure Pwnage series. It's bittersweet to see how the popularity of CSS has died down due to its shelf life, but it still puts a smile on my face to see a strong community that still desires to play this game. I still think about this game and all the fun & rage inducing moments I had playing this game trying to get really good lol.
We had a gaming community that was started in Counterstrike 1.3, we still hang out with a lot of them, not in CS these days but in Discord.
We played CS, from 1.3 through 1.6. We played CS Source when it came out. We made custom maps for CS. We used Ventrilo, TeamSpeak and now discord. Some of the community has been hanging out with us for over 20 years now! A lot of them were just kids, including my own kids. all are grown up, have families and jobs. But still pop in from time to time.
Your video captured the essence of that perfectly. The community we had was born out of the fact that the CS servers we hosted were consistent, reliable, friendly places for kids to hang out together. None of that match making nonsense. Custom Maps, Mods, those were the days! We still have a server up and running and will join in from time to time. The map rotation is varied, a bunch of our favorite maps including the ones the community made.
Fun times!
this is a very touching video. Although I'm still young, I definitely share very similar sentiments with my of the communities I've been in, whether that be tf2, quake, Unreal, or the CSS Climb server I always join.
I guess I'm on the opposite end? I realize that I have the most time now gaming, having fun, and creating strong connections with others. I've been making many efforts, getting out of my comfort zones to do things online I haven't before. It's a great shame that community servers in CSS, and video games in general, have just been completely phased out for matchmaking, because it's one of the things I enjoy most and serves as the more pure way of gaming.
Excited to see more content from you.
This video perfectly encapsulates my feelings with Counter Strike and specifically Counter Strike: Source
I swear there is more to it than nostalgia. But at the same time, im 28 years old and have been playing counter strike since I was 7. So maybe im a little biased. But this feeling also stretches into other games like Day of Defeat: Source and Half Life 2: Deathmatch. The close communities within these games are amazing. But CS:S holds that special place. Amazing video!
Been playing on the Ego server for many years off and on. Crazy to see people in the vid I recognize. Im glad to see other people have the same feeling.
-Shaggy
100% nostalgia actually. Shits boring af if you go back to it today. Anyone who’s honest will admit they play a few rounds and then get off.
@cococock2418 while it may be nostalgia. I'm not going to deny that. For me, it's a game I always come back to. Not only for the friends and people I play with amongst servers. But the gun play and the replay ability that cs has, along with zombie servers, scouts and knives, gungame. Or I'll find a pub match and do a 5v5 comp. I enjoy csgo/cs2, I have over 2.3k hours in it, but css just feels great. And bhopping is a + lol
Very very glad I stumbled into this video. I was never a CS:S fan but played ET, BF2, TC:E (a multiplayer TC for ET) and many others during the mid 2000s. Fast forward 20 yrs, and as someone who works full time to support his family, I think what we're missing is a 'third place,' somewhere that we get to socialize that is not our home or workplace. Games provided that third place for us and it transcended borders, race, religion, politics - we simply enjoyed each other's company, and playing to win really was only just a small piece of icing.
Here's to the bygone days - I hope everyone whom I exchanged cyber bullets with is doing well.
honestly, back in 1.6 days that were still strong despite css already been out at the time, such servers with regulars used to be a thing, same with internet cafes where people would just know each other or go with friends and then meet new people, servers that would slowly die year by year eventually being empty.. thank you for reminding me of this. the hope for us isnt gone with the matchmade games, as long as the game has a friends list.
There's one swedish CS 1.6 server that has been active and still is since the early 00's and a couple of days ago I experienced exactly what you showed at 6:15.
It really felt like I was back in 2005 ! I miss the days of joining a random server on games like CS or Day of Defeat and becoming a regular on one specific server.
I miss it all so much 😭
This was so incredibly wholesome, CSS has a special place in my heart forever.
I play counter strike source periodically and witness the environment you mentioned.
It is an old game but it has a player base that never gets old, most people know each other.
It is not just a game, it is a chat environment. This increases the playability of the game significantly.
As someone who played CS from back when it was a beta HL1 mod this video was a slice of nostalgia for me and an age i wish i could go back to.
Thank you mate! I’ve recently picked CSS again after almost a decade off, and you’re exactly right. But there are a few more servers up than you think! I love the video, keep going!!!!
Great video. I sometimes find the nostalgia to be overwhelming when I think of the servers and communities that once existed, the friendships that I once had, never to be repeated again.
This video was touching, I've felt like this playing 1.6, halo 2, and now CS2, playing with a squad of old highschool buddies and re connecting again. Well Done!
I didn’t get to experience the same era as some of you. I’m 25 now, and for me, the magic was in the years between 2010 and 2015. It’s wild to think that it’s been almost 15 years since then.
I grew up playing CSGO most of the time, though I did dabble in CS: Source and 1.6 before that at some local internet cafe with some friends back then (best time I've ever had too)-but not as much. CSGO was always the one for me. Now that it’s gone, it feels...lonely. I always had this thought in the back of my mind, like, “CSGO will always be there, even if I take a break for a few years.” But then CS2 came out, and something about it just doesn’t feel the same.
But I guess for me, CSGO wasn’t just about matchmaking or the game itself. It was the community servers, the stories people shared over mic chat-it felt alive. And now, it’s like a piece of the puzzle is missing. I miss it.
I've recently downloaded cs source and 1.6 as well and I'm having a blast. Though there aren't many English speakers where I live, I still enjoy the game for its simplicity. I feel lots of game lost that mark nowadays.
Thanks for uploading this video. :) I'm glad I wasn't the only one that has a similar experience.
i run a cod4 server on pc back in the day. casual tdms to clan wars. made friends along the way and i communicate with them still on facebook til this day. me seeing them having families warms me heart.
You can still find this kind of community in VR.
It's exactly why I'm so fond of VR. No battle pass, no progression, no skill based MM, just pure gaming.
Cause making the core gameplay the best already cost so much for VR, adding more would break the bank for developers.
Your review here is the best, by far, I've seen.
Thank you !!!
This video unlocked a core gaming memory for me. For me It was winter 2010, or your 2005 per say and I was outside at the neighbors house waiting for the school bus to come and pick us up for school. It was winter on the east coast and temperatures had been dropping fast all week and everywhere you looked it seemed like we had entered a kind of a mini-ice age.
My brother, myself, and the two neighbor kids were all good friends and we always waited for the bus together and on this particular morning we had been waiting for the bus for an extra 15 minutes which to us wasn't out of the ordinary because the bus often came late in the winter. While mid conversation a neighbor came over to us all and told us that because of how cold it had gotten the school buses had been unable to start so school was canceled for the day.
This was the best news we could have ever heard at that moment, instead of spending the day at school studying suddenly our plans took a 180 turn. Our friends invited my brother and I inside and we spent the entire morning playing Counter Strike Source. CS Source was a big part of our gaming/life for many years following that event. It became not just a game for us but a way to bond and represented our childhood. Eventually we all bought our own laptops and would game together on LAN, sometimes every day in the summer.
Thanks Lukka for sharing these thoughts! They resonated deeply. I've been thinking a lot about my childhood lately, especially playing Doom and Quake, and making my own maps with a friend. Later when HL1 released we switched to that, and as soon as the Counter-Strike mod came out, we played up until version 1.6 and the early days of Steam. I think there's more to all this than just nostalgia. Things that have a strong history (like the Quake engine, which still exists in some form in GoldSrc and even in Source 1 and 2), and a lasting community of people who faithfully keep coming back, have a certain special charm. I think such things are precious.
Hi Lukka. Thank you for this video. You're a captivating story teller who made me laugh and cry with one simple video. You also made me, playername =(eGO)=Artimus, wish I had played CS all these years.
Cheers Artimus-looking forward to running into you in the lobby
This whole video, community, and perception is so wholesome and legit, just some damn good people I love to see it.
You got to send this to the time traveler from 2005
There are games, few they may be, that truly allow players to make connections, and even form communities.
Although I never played CS, I feel like I can relate to the emotions you described when I revisit certain games.
Thanks for reminding me!
I never really liked CS I thought it was hard but this video is incredible! Your storytelling is amazing!!
I didn't play much CSS. But I played a ton of a free fps. Blacklight Retribution. It died shortly before the great lockdown of '18. But I did find a small community that's done everything they can to make it possible to host your own matches through the client. Granted, everything is unlocked but it's the same kind of thing here. A community sticking together through the roughness of life. Its kinda beautiful to see.
This essay went straight to my heart. Counter Strike as "a reminder or where I've been and where I am going" hits home, thank you for the work man ❤
great video. i think we sometimes forget that we will get old like our parents and grandparents. aging and time passing is honestly tuff to accept. but man these are stories well tell our children. the hours and days and months spent on our faoriete games. unbeatable times and such incredible memories. ill be telling my kids about my days wasted on minecraft or csgo and cs2. not wasted time but fun and connections made.
I could cry at the end of this. Excellent video.
Back in 2009, I was 12, i picked up CSS and used to join the italian servers cause I am italian. And I still have fond memories of all the banter going around the servers, everyone was a bit older than me so I would keep it to myself cause they even had mature type of discussions. To this day, one dude from those servers still invites me to play CSGO or CS2 even though I havent talked to him in 10 years
I remember when I started playing CS 1.6, I was only 12-11 years old, no one cared that you were a kid, you only cared about having a good time and having fun, no one cared how good you were, what level you were, etc. and people were less toxic, a better community is not what it is now. Now it's all about the toxic community, levels and all. Everyone is wondering how good you are, what your level is and how well you play. I can admit that CSS was never my main game that was played all the time and kept on my computer, but after plugging it in and playing it for a couple of hours a minute, you realize that this game is completely different from the others, how many times have I played on DM servers, everyone is friendly , everyone communicates, there is no toxic community like now.
I never understood why CSS was never as popular a game as CS 1.6 or CSGO, it is like an abandoned and dropped toy that is picked up and played with and thrown away again. Thank you for the video.
great video, brought a tear to my eye
The quality of this video is surreal. The narration, vibe, minimalistic, slow editing to match the subject, everything. And it hits the spot too. I hear myself in your words, or rather, my thoughts, which happens rarely. Thank you.
Thank you for the thoughtful feedback, really appreciate it!
thanks a lot for this video man, a real OG, a real Legend, one the rarest player still playing counter strike original game these days
Awesome video man. What a time capsule of a server.
The relationships that players form with each other is the same reason that people keep going back to wow classic. There is something about having to put in a little effort that makes the relationships matter more.
this reminded me of something, i get stuck on a game a long time where many of my friends just switch to another once they feel bored or complete it, and it's hard to talk about games im interested in depth with people because they eventually move on whereas i still stay, grinding, improving and whatnot. So it's refreshing when you find people who dedicate their playtime to only one game that they can talk about and share their experiences with unlike people who switch games all the time and have no deeper insight.
I have so many good memories of CS: Source. It was the first FPS I could ever run on my shitty HP family desktop. I couldn't even run the vanilla maps. All I played was mostly orange box map style DM servers, Gun Game and Zombie Survival.
2005 was such a great year. Graduated HS that year, Tech was there but not intrusive or over-bearing, like if your forgot your phone at home you werent upset about it. Simpler times, better music, better fashion, the world wasnt so PC. God take me back.
I was waiting for this to talk about 1.6, but yea this is good. I haven’t tried source since uni days, but recently fell back into CS2 now and am enjoying it quite a bit, so am glad to be back into gaming with friends at least there!
this video hits me hard i remember the great times i had with old source game communities and it all started with CSS for me i had many friends teach me many mechanics of the game like head shot training and making your crosshairs just a dot and train like that many days of just 1v1 each other while we wait for the server to fill it was truely amazing and i bet i still have these people on my steam friends list maybe i should reconnect
Lukka one day this will be the only video that will tell of the time we lived in, the time that no one else will ever experience again. It’s so beautiful to know that I got to experience this chunk of eternity with people I will never forget. Thank you for making this video
I still play TF2 to this day but in middle school I was a regular on a community server and getting to know people and log on everyday was a great experience
Source is to you as Global Offensive is to me. It was my high school relief from stress about grades, the isolation I felt from my friends after being pulled into an online school years before it became "normal" with the pandemic. I made do with what I was given in the situation, and making do meant playing Counter Strike on the weekends, sometimes during the weekdays after I was particularly swift with my work without letting the quality drop. My school-issued laptop wasn't the best, a refurbished i5 with integrated graphics that ran CSGO at a mere 40 fps, but it was my home. Taking a few years off the game to focus on existing, and building my value as an adult. Recently, I've gotten back into CS2, and it is kinda sad that my Global Offensive is gone as I knew it, but I do look forward to the good times ahead, as I've not lost my skills from highschool, they just had to shake off some dust.
I look forward to finding a crew to game with, maybe download Source, myself, to find my own place again. I love Counter Strike, whatever version it is that I play, because like you've said in the video, it's consistent, it's constant. I haven't come back and asked, "What the hell is this?", but instead, "How do I do this, again?" and that's what keeps me in love with CS. Other series have changed too much between times that I played them, leaving me utterly confused and lost. But not Counter Strike, I feel right at home playing CS2 after a day of hard work, it is special to me. I love you guys, thanks for keeping this place special and surviving.
I had a very similar situation growing up and you described the feelings I’ve had. Cheers to you!
csgo lost that feeling somewhere after 2015-2016
CSS is my most played game ever. This my childhood, my first online game experience, my online friendship. Few servers was like a family. I never seen like this relationship in videogames after CSS. I miss about 00s and 10s.
This is why I play Insurgency and Insurgency Sandstorm. The vibes, the community.
Reminded me of the zombie escape servers i used to play on. Both css and csgo.
When certain peope logged on, they would casually discussed about their day, lives, and what maps theyre going to play.
I had most of them on my steam friendlist, but while some of them are still active, its still sad to see a couple people that havent touch steam for a while
I love that comparison of many modern games versus older ones feeling like going from Doritos to a simple slice of orange. I'm gonna try to be objective, cause I know there are a ton of newer games that are great. But the vibe of older games is worth something, too. They give you a very different gaming experience, which is worth preserving and remembering. Just like how both the ancient and modern times are interesting in their own ways.
Thank you for uploading this. I still play CS:S just cause its fun, chill and made even new friends in public servers. I still get best laughs in CS:S and everyone else laughs with me as well, even the guy who gets hit by his own nade. No toxic votekicking, no bad stuff.
Awesome video man. You got me to hop on the server and enjoy a few rounds
I liked CS in the past but never played it that much. The video still reminds me of a better and simpler times. Yeah some of these feelings are being young and don't have many things to worry about but it is also a lot of how online communities changed.
I played a ton of Halo back in the day with many friends I made online. We talked about everything, sometimes until the sun rised again in the next morning while playing a lot of custom made game modes.
I also played a lot of WoW back in the day. It was awesome to just run into random people, talk a bit and do some quests or a dungeon together. Today you often don't even get an "hi" or "bye" out of some people in the game. It just feels empty. There are thousands of people around you in these games and you have 0 communication with them.
Man that intro was beautiful, thank you.
I played this game every day during lunch in high school (2006). It’s been a while since I’ve played it, but because of this video, I’m reinstalling it.
I think I've played on this server at one point in 2018 when I downloaded Source as a newbie. And man I remember seeing people from both overseas and locally in there.
It's a good place to chill compared to any competitive tactical shooters nowadays.