article: the gulf

[.skywalke|2.]

great to get some insight on cs players and just all gamers alike from different cultures.

[bobo51881]

Not to be an obnoxious hippy, but holy racism batman. If you judged the US based on the way people play in pubs, we'd be screwed. I'm not saying their social structure doesn't suck, but its not like kids over here are playing from the ghetto. And as far as comments about importing cheap labor, um pot and kettle don't you think. And for the record, as much as I love cs, I don't think I'd hand k-sharpan m4 and send him into Iraq.

[EjeKt]

bobo51881 wrote..

And as far as comments about importing cheap labor, um pot and kettle don't you think.

The imported labor issue in the Gulf region is of a completely different stratum than here in the U.S. The last statistics I read placed the foreign population in the UAE near 70% (of the total, man!), and the percentage of the workforce is of an even greater magnitude. It really is different -- maybe a glimpse into our future, I don't know.



As far as the racist accusations, I'm (obviously) extrapolating from a small sample, and the chatty conclusions I draw certainly merit criticism. Nonetheless, I play on LAN cafe servers here in the U.S. occasionally, and there are actual, real differences in the cooperative aspects of play. I don't know how else to talk these differences ...



and for the record, I enjoyed playing there, i enjoyed hanging out with the emiratis, and i had my ass handed to me a couple times by some bona-fide sharpshooters.

[Gpig]

I hope we don't end up finding this on a checkers site since it is a guest contributor.

[GriffinMouse]

gah! Sounds terrible.

AWP whores, frag hunters, LAN ghosting,

no interest in game objectives, teamplay or team balance, etc.

But a great article nonetheless.



Heh, I use the arrow keys for movement basically in every fps

I play, and my friends think I`m all weird. :P

[[CoBrA]NiTeViPeR]

Best CS article EVAR.

[3a5tw00D]

GriffinMouse wrote..

gah! Sounds terrible.

AWP whores, frag hunters, LAN ghosting,

no interest in game objectives, teamplay or team balance, etc.

But a great article nonetheless.



Heh, I use the arrow keys for movement basically in every fps

I play, and my friends think I`m all weird. :P

Hey, I use the arrow keys too! But then again, I got some bigass hands...

[p!ge0n]

GriffinMouse wrote..

gah! Sounds terrible.

AWP whores, frag hunters, LAN ghosting,

no interest in game objectives, teamplay or team balance, etc.

But a great article nonetheless.

go to an internet cafe, it has all of that plus lots of people smokin and stuff....greatest experience playing games ever...i go a lot, once or twice every 2 weeks....in fact, i went just yesterday. it really is a lot of fun...



edit: o, and the music blasting....lan cafes are really awesome, try one sometime

[PieWarrior]

[The Family God]

Good article. I little bit too presumtuous about their social and personal habits to be a cultural article, but definitely the best perspective article this site has seen.



One can only imagine what they think of Americans (or the West in general) with all our own habits - especially our terms like "gay" and "fag" being used in common cs conversation. I'm sure they'd have a good laugh about that.

[Bongo]

I used to use the arrow keys for tfc, but theres hardly any keys around near them that you can press without having to move your hand. I though WASD users were wierd but you have at least 10 reachable keys around WAS and D

[-:Nighthawk:-]

First off, excellent article EjeKt. With that said, time for a typical length post...



I would have to agree that CS is played quite differently from culture to culture. Heck, even between Europeans and Americans there's noticable differences in play style, though not quite as extreme, it seems.



The part mentioning the general desire to be on the terrorist team was quite interesting, I must admit. It seems that the CT's are more popular here by a bit (perhaps for some simply because of the M4A1, but I know I have a bigger fascination with being a CT than a T). Seeing as there's no real gameplay advantage to being a terrorist on every map, I think it's a fair statement to say that we can draw some conclusions from that preference.



I have to laugh about the keyboard configurations. Once upon a time I played using the number keypad instead of WASD, but even that is far superior to the arrow keys. Have to put your keyboard at a weird angle, though, or it's rather uncomfortable. :)



As far as the general attitude towards play, I'd have to say I'm rather mystified by it. This is another area where that whole CT vs. T appeal comes in, I think. We in the West are often puzzled at the apparent insanity and disregard for any sense of their own safety that we see displayed by some terrorists, or members of some other countries.



Take the conflict in Somalia (recently portrayed in Black Hawk Down) that America was involved in. Their culture was one that emphesized personal bravery over tactical wisdom, so Somalis would often charge toward enemy forces, AK-47's firing wildly toward them, only to be cut down quickly in hoardes by accurate fire. (And no, my knowledge of that conflict is not coming from the movie, in case you're wondering.)



It just makes me wonder if, in parts of the middle east, like in parts of Africa, that style of combat is what's glorified and seen as normal. Bravery over all else, ignoring wisdom, ignoring coordination, ignoring everything else that western culture (aside from holywood shoot-em-ups) tends to emphesize as what military or counter-terrorist teams should use to emerge victorious.



Perhaps simply being part of a battle is fun enough for them, no matter how it's played, fairness in the game, or even which team wins. This article definitely made it clear that they don't take CS strategy as seriously as many of us in the West do. Hard to understand, really, but that's how cultures go, can't really just flat out state that one is better than the next.



As far as the military thing, well, training definitely changes the way people react in combat situations. Sure, if it was a war of the USA CS players versus the UAE CS players, assuming that the UAE kids don't go home and play with real guns, I'd guess that the USA would be coming out on top. But seeing as the military isn't using CS to train, I'm going to say that middle eastern soldiers in general are going to act quite differently from their CS players.



However, your average middle eastern terrorist probably doesn't act a whole lot different than some of these CS players, which would certainly explain why they tend to get shot to pieces whenever they confront military forces. Of course, when it comes down to it, I tend to be pretty confident that any military force going against the US military is going to not have a pretty time of it, and that goes even more so for non-western forces.



Thanks again for this excellent and quite unique article, the education you mention definitely shows in the writing. Good luck in your further ventures, and if you ever stumble across something else as interesting as this, we'd love to hear about it. :)

[abel]

that was a great article, i sort of visualized the whole thing makes me really interested in what other people think about cstrike and how they play, i'm sort of suprised about the whole dm thing but i guess that was my stereotypical side taking over (bad bad)

[syclone]

What do you have against awp :/

[SteveDemers]

Hahahhahahahahaa this article is aweomse, lolz



really sweet ownin' it up dude, nice work



US Pride