Counter-Strike and Emergent Gameplay

In class we talked about emergent gameplay as a holy grail for many game designers. Encouraging players to make their own experiences within the game that go beyond the simple mechanics that can easily be programmed into it helps create a richer experience for players and can increase the longevity of a game. Different games have different ways to encourage emergent gameplay. Grand Theft Auto, for example, gives you a large open world to explore and create your own stories within. But Counter-Strike handles emergent gameplay in an interesting and different way that incorporates its eSports ambitions to make for a better competitive gaming experience.

The main piece of emergent gameplay I wanted to discuss was the emergence of roles within Counter-Strike. At the top level of Counter-Strike, teams assign roles to different players. Unlike in other eSports games like MOBAs, Counter-Strike never explicitly states what these roles are, but instead lets players and teams create them themselves. In MOBAs the game will tell you if a character is a tank or a jungler, but in Counter-Strike roles emerged naturally through competitive gameplay.

AWPer
Some roles are pretty obvious, like the AWPer. The AWP is the main sniper rifle in the game, and most of the time only one player per team needs to be a sniper, so a dedicated sniper player called the AWPer emerged. Snipers have been in shooter games for a long time, so the emergence of a sniper role in a team isn’t much of a surprise.

In-Game Leader
A less obvious role is the in-game leader (IGL). The IGL is like the quarterback in football. They are like a coach, but they are also playing the game while they coach. This gives them a better perspective as to what is really going on in the game. All the players in a competitive team will feed information to the IGL through their teamspeak and with this information the IGL will make a decision for the team.

Entry Fragger
In Counter-Strike when you die your dead for the remainder of the round. There is no respawning, so each death means a lot. The entry fragger’s job is to enter unknown territory in the hope of getting information for their team, and hopefully get a frag (kill) upon entering. Unfortunately, that will rarely happen. Most of the time the entry fragger will die in search of information, but hopefully the information they gather while in enemy territory will allow the rest of the team to make a better tactical decision going forward. It is an interesting piece of emergent gameplay to see a team give up a kill in order to win the round when death is such a serious risk, but teams have shown that good entry fraggers can win games.

There are other roles like the lurker or the support, but I find it interesting that although the game doesn’t specify these roles, they appear in almost every professional team. These roles are part of what makes a professional Counter-Strike team better than a random team of amateur players. When each player only has one thing to worry about they can be an expert in one area of the game, and a team can play to each player’s strengths.

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One Response to Counter-Strike and Emergent Gameplay

  1. jcl259 says:

    I haven’t played too much CS but when I have I’ve enjoyed it. I always really liked the original Gears of War because it had these element to the game play as well. Teams were composed of only 4 players, and each map usually only has 1 power weapon for each side and one in the middle to fight over. Who gets the weapon is for each team to decide and is typically a contributing factor in the winning team. Also like CS when you die you have to wait for the round to be over, and your communication to your team mates is cut when they die. There’s no mini-maps and finding the enemy often involves getting “jumped”. I played with a clan and we all got really good at working as a team. Usually we just played a private match against each other since there’s only room for 4 on a team. It’s still to this day my favorite shooter because it requires team work and skill to be successful. Its not a game like call of duty where you can just shoot people in the back. You have to be right next to someone to kill them quickly (or have a power weapon). Even if your team gets crushed and its 1V4, its not unheard of to take them all out. If you are good you can one shot people with the shot gun and evade enemy bullets while doing it. I was definitely disappointed with the progression of the GOW series since they got away from rounds and more geared towards re-spawning, and making it more fun for beginners. I did get GOW ultimate edition for Xbox 1 which is a remake of the original GOW, at least they did something right.

    I definitely agree with you that games with inherent team roles are much more fun. In GOW there’s usually a guy that gets the sniper every time because he is amazing with it, and 2 people go after the middle power weapon, and the last guy will try to flank or scout the enemies positions (much like the frag in CS).

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