Welcome to CS:GO’s phenomenal community

To start off, I would like to say, I am not here to whine about the fact that much of the CS:GO community runs around like a headless chicken. My goal is to tell you how I see CS:GO and what I think are the most misunderstood things about the game.

As we know CS:GO is the second most played game on Steam and, with 150k hours being spent playing it each week, one of the most popular games… period. This means that the community is as culturally diverse as is humanly possible. As a result, whenever you want to play you are in for a real treat. Here is a friendly tip though – it might well turn out to be like one of those birthday gifts that you never really wanted. Very nice wrapping, but the content could make your stomach twist. This is what the article is going to be about. 

It’s all fun and games until…

I think you will agree – mostly people play games to have fun. But how do we perceive “fun” in the context of video games? For example, I see it as having a quality game, where I try to do my best and go for the win. But that doesn’t mean that others perceive “fun” the same way. Here is an example of Casual game mode players having fun.

Somewhere lost in cs_assault
Fun, eh?
 NO!

This is where the community becomes a mess. The game environment is set for two teams to play against each other and aim at accomplishing a conflicting goal – plant/defuse a bomb or rescue/guard hostages. That’s how the game should be. Whether you do it or not, however it’s up to you. So even if the environment is set for a specific game mode, it’s up to you whether you actually do it or not, since you have the freedom of choice. This is where those differing notions of “fun” I talked about conflict.

Have a good look at the picture above. Now, I’m sure that these two clowns are having a whale of a time, but what about the others? It’s quite an unsatisfying sight to be presented with, after you spend a whole round trying to invade a hangar full of paranoid shaky Terrorists, trying to defend their two exposed hostages from a team of shifty CT’s that have already surrounded them, and are now peeking through every little crack in that thin can of a building that they’re sitting in. And after this intense battle spells my death, this is what I see – instead of trying to help the team and challenge themselves as they should, they decided that they will climb on a road sign and shoot at each other until the end of the round. This is one of many things that will occur within this community because we all want to have fun but our interpretations of “fun” are quite different.

Diverse European communities

The next great thing about the community, especially in Europe, is that there is a whole variety of different cultures you encounter. What makes it a problem however, is that you get to play with people that are unable to communicate with each other because of the language barrier. From my point of view, the hardest part is to try and play with Russian speakers… More often than not, they have little to no knowledge of English and are not that shy about it. Since I have a little knowledge of Russian, sometimes I can make out that they are very unsatisfied with the fact that they get “Americans” to play with. A lot of them seem to think that whoever is speaking English is an American. So sometimes you have to endure outbursts such as “F*ck Obama” or “Idi nahui (literally “go on a d*ck”) American”, whenever you try to speak to some of them. Dreadful words… What is surprising though, is how many different curse words you can actually hear from these guys. 

           The reason why there is such an overlap with Western Europe is because, correct me if I’m wrong, but Valve based the server for Russian players in Stockholm. This means that they have perfect latency with the rest of Europe and are then free to introduce their share of vocabulary and opinions about Obama and other western political figures. Just to make sure we understand each other – I have nothing against Russian people in general, and I am sure you don’t either, however we all know what I am talking about – sometimes Russian players are bewilderingly rude and intolerant.

In short then, CS:GO will let you enjoy not only the results of varied perceptions of “fun” amongst players, but also a strong dose of culture shock due to Valves server distribution strategies. So, if you are a competitive and determined player, keep in mind you might have to endure watching your teammates spend half the round playing tag and listening to a loud and unsatisfied non-English speaker on the intercom.

“When you think you’ve had enough…”