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First Person Shooters (Games) PC Games (Games) Entertainment Games

Can Counter-Strike Players Be Summed Up By Nation? 108

Posted by simoniker from the oh-boy dept.
Thanks to GotFrag for its article discussing whether players from different countries are good at different aspects of online FPS Counter-Strike. The writer tries to claim: "Some countries, most of which are the leading ones in Counter-Strike, have certain specialities. This often means that the players in this country will have a 'special touch' in this area." Among the supposed conclusions are that Americans excel at "shooting [and] logistics", whereas Germans are best at "thinking [and] teamwork", and the French come off best when using "reflexes". How seriously can we take such broad conclusions?
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Can Counter-Strike Players Be Summed Up By Nation? More

Can Counter-Strike Players Be Summed Up By Nation?

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  • Superstition (Score:5, Insightful)

    by August_zero ( 654282 ) on Sunday March 07, 2004 @07:03PM (#8493595)
    I think this is just a superstition. CS players think that Germans are better at teamwork and Americans are better with 1337 and sniping so they will naturally assume attribute those traits to players of various nationalities even if they don't demonstrate anymore skill than anyone else. "We got pwned by those Germans, man they stick together" or "Those Americans all talk with numbers and are so interested in our mothers"

    • Re:Superstition (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Toxygen ( 738180 )
      I wouldn't be too sure about that. It's certainly true that people may jump to conclusions sometimes to justify their loss, but there ARE countries that are well known for certain trades, like the swiss make good watches, the french make excellent wine, germans design some of the finest cars around, japan is home to some wonderful electronics, etc. While it can't be true for every single citizen, you can't tell me that those reputations aren't well deserved.

    • Culture (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Radical Rad ( 138892 )

      Canada:
      I would like to refer to the Americans here; they and the Canadians are quite alike when it comes to Counter-Strike. The Canadians benefit much from close competition with some of the most developed American teams, and they also seem to adopt the same kind of abilities as the Americans.

      If the differences in play style he has observed are due to culture then this makes sense. Canadian culture and American culture is remarkably similar. I occasionally go up there on business, and I sometimes forget

      • Re:Culture (Score:3, Interesting)

        by evilad ( 87480 )
        How entertaining.

        When I, an anglophone Canadian, spend long periods of time in the Eastern US, I am continually amused by subtle reminders of what an alien culture y'all have.

        And I'm not just talking about the candy bars, either.
        • We Americans are just too full of ourselves to notice "subtle differences".

          I agree though. the cultures are quite different. But so are regions in our own country. So that does not say much.
          • Funny, I'm from California, and noticed all sorts of tiny little differences when I went up to Toronto. And the people I was staying with could *not* tell that I had any sort of an accent.
            • People from California do not generally sound like they have accents in other countries. The reason I've heard for this is that most of the American television, and thus English, the world watches comes from California, so that "California Accent" becomes the de-facto standard way English is supposed to be spoken.

              I found this to be the case when I travelled in Europe; people knew I was an American from my customs and mode of dress, but not once did anybody have difficulty understanding me or complain about

            • Tim Horton was a hockey player. There are Tim Hortons in the US now too - Niagra Falls and Buffalo at least.

              I don't know any native Californians, but upstate New York is only 2 hours away I can detect their accent and they can detect mine (i.e. a waitress in a restaurant knows we are from Canada). I notice all sorts of cultural differences when I travel in the US too.

        • I can't even step across the border without noticing this. Of course maybe it's just driving into Buffalo that's a bad idea :)

  • The answer is there in the first sentence. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 07, 2004 @07:03PM (#8493597)
    Let me start off by saying that this will not be any article of greatly described facts or complex analysis.
    In other words, don't take his words seriously.

  • And the Koreans... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Stone Rhino ( 532581 ) <mparke@@@gmail...com> on Sunday March 07, 2004 @07:03PM (#8493599) Homepage Journal
    are probably best at playing too much [iol.co.za] and dying.

  • And according to star wars logic... (Score:3, Funny)

    by UltimaL337Star ( 641853 ) on Sunday March 07, 2004 @07:14PM (#8493650)
    Mexicans excel at zerging while our blue collar replacements in India fill in teams quite cheaply

  • Not Likely (Score:5, Insightful)

    by AstrumPreliator ( 708436 ) on Sunday March 07, 2004 @07:18PM (#8493672)
    Somehow I don't think that the location of a human being on the Earth inherently determines their specialty in Counter-Strike. Infact it's a ridiculous concept that suggests humans of a different nationality are fundmanetally different than that of another nationality.

    The author needs to think about the generalizations he's making and realize that they're just that, generalizations.

    • Re:Not Likely (Score:5, Insightful)

      by BoomerSooner ( 308737 ) on Sunday March 07, 2004 @07:41PM (#8493798) Homepage Journal
      So you're saying all cultures develop the same over time and place importance on the same skills, right?

      Apparently you're not a world traveler.

      • Re:Not Likely (Score:5, Insightful)

        by AstrumPreliator ( 708436 ) on Sunday March 07, 2004 @07:52PM (#8493865)
        Cultures do develope differently, I won't argue with that. But we are talking about a very specific game. Cultures don't evolve differently where gamers of different cultures magically gain the ability to snipe better in Counter-Strike, or work as a team better. This is just my opinion, but I don't think culture has anything to do with how you play video games. You learn how to play video games from scratch, not from culture.

        • Re:Not Likely (Score:4, Interesting)

          by BoomerSooner ( 308737 ) on Sunday March 07, 2004 @08:02PM (#8493935) Homepage Journal
          Yes, however your culture (and thus nationality) can affect this. Do you think women and men play games the same? My wife is doing studies right now in her PhD program that study specifically the differences in gender in intelligence tests. You can generally say men are better spacially and women are better verbally.

          People are different and culture plays a part. For example since everyone must "learn to eat" from scratch I bet we all prepare our food the same. Oh wait, we don't. There are thousands of examples of this in society.

          • Re:Not Likely (Score:5, Insightful)

            by August_zero ( 654282 ) on Sunday March 07, 2004 @08:55PM (#8494200)
            Except that most of the gender studies that have been carried out in the past were not built on the soundest foundation and often reported "findings" perfectly inline with what the researchers already believed in. Read some of these studies you are referring to, look at their methodology and their actual results. My experience is that "you can generally say" is synonymous with the expression "they say" which has all the verifiability of a granfaloon and only half of its value.

            So good aiming skills are taught to all American youngsters? I had no idea that the NRA had such a robust membership these days.

            • Re:Not Likely (Score:2, Interesting)

              by BerntB ( 584621 )

              Except that most of the gender studies that have been carried out in the past were not built on the soundest foundation and often reported "findings" perfectly inline with what the researchers already believed in. [...} My experience is that "you can generally say" is synonymous with the expression "they say" which has all the verifiability of a granfaloon and only half of its value.

              If you can show that, you will get tenure! :-)

              Your thesis needs that the large majority of e.g. cognitive psychologist

              • Note that your theory is very similar to creationism

                I gave no theory; I simply stated that the field of research that the parent was citing, and I have read much of it, is suspect. I am not about to advocate the idea that men and women have no differences, I am just saying that these gender studies should be taken with a grain of salt.

                Your thesis needs that the large majority of e.g. cognitive psychologists are idiots

                A good number are idiots (but then again a good number of people are idiots in their

                • I gave no theory; I simply stated that the field of research that the parent was citing, and I have read much of it, is suspect.

                  All research is suspect -- and much will be modified by later findings. Of course. But there is a cottage industry of writers trying to suspect results that go against their ideologies...

                  Those writers are not interested in the research really, but changing the public's view (i.e. political posturing). A typical example was a PhD thesis at a local university about personalit

          • Re:Not Likely (Score:3, Insightful)

            by neverkevin ( 601884 )
            Do you think women and men play games the same?

            No, but American, German, and French men probably play the games in a similar way. Gender does not have anything to do with nationality, or the article for that matter. The fact that the sexes do thing differently was discovered thousands of years ago.

        • Re:Not Likely (Score:3, Interesting)

          by wcbarksdale ( 621327 )
          In many games, such as chess, there have been observed regional and national variations in particular skills. This is likely due simply to the fact that players geographically closer play each other more often and come to focus on those particular skills most effective against the locally popular style of play.
      • Exactly. I was at an anime workshop at my college, and we were presented a study between Japanese and American children of the same young age (10 I think). The differences were astounding. The Japanese already had a solid grasp on perspective while the Americans were very far behind in terms of skill. It just so happens that because of the pervasiveness of manga and such in their culture, they grow up with this stuff, and become very accustomed to it very early on.

    • You have never played a korean in warcraft have you?
    • Hmm somewhere Sierra is kicking themselves for not selling all this data to Eugenecists.

      I may have the world's darkest humour.

  • totally true (Score:5, Funny)

    by pizza_milkshake ( 580452 ) on Sunday March 07, 2004 @07:28PM (#8493714)
    the study also found:
    • germans do well at the levels which require building a combustion engine from spare parts to power your team's vehicle
    • americans excel at the level that combines eating fast food, talking on your radio and driving over endangered species with a Lincoln Navigator
    • the french are good at surrendering

  • Basic geography (Score:3, Informative)

    by Pentagram ( 40862 ) on Sunday March 07, 2004 @07:33PM (#8493738) Homepage
    Gaaaaaa! MUST... CONTROL... FIST OF DEATH!

    England [wikipedia.org] != United Kingdom [wikipedia.org]

    And may I say that this is one of the sillier stories posted on /.

    this will not be any article of greatly described facts

    Indeed.

  • Proud to be in the AU (Score:4, Funny)

    by McCarrum ( 446375 ) <mark.limburg@gm[ ].com ['ail' in gap]> on Sunday March 07, 2004 @07:40PM (#8493791)
    Australians have the best aim (well, considering the counter-effect due to the amount of beer I drink when playing)

  • Hofstede (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Vincman ( 584156 ) <vincent.vanwylick@nOSPaM.gmail.com> on Sunday March 07, 2004 @07:52PM (#8493874) Homepage
    Similar studies into cultural differences have been undertaken by, for example, Geert Hofstede [spitswww.uvt.nl] et al. He identifies 5 dimensions by which cultures may differ. For instance some countries, like the US, score high on the individualistic scale, while countries like Germany or China score higher on the collectivist scale. Power distance indicates the need, or lack of, for structure in an organisational context. Cultures with high Uncertainty Avoidance will be take less risk and vice versa, etc, etc. Anyway... his summary explains it way better than I ever could. A country-by-country-chart can be found here [uce.ac.uk].

    In conclusion, according to this study, yes, where you are from may affect your fragging-routines, i.e. "storm the front" or "camp and defend". But it will certainly not be the only factor affecting performance!
    • I always thought there was a reason that the pronoun indicating the speaker, I, is capitalized in English but not any other language I learned.
      In the individualism portion, he ranks the USA, Australia, and the UK as first, second, and third.

    • Re:Hofstede (Score:2, Insightful)

      by 7-Vodka ( 195504 )
      No offense, but without reading any further I call a big dose of bullshit on those rankings.

      I have lived in three of those countries for long periods of time and those rankings in no way resemble the realities which you discern only when fully immersed in the cultures.

      Most anthropologists I have met, are left in the dust by multinational, multicultured, multilingual individuals who don't even call themselves anthropologists.

      Maybe the problem is, that you have a predetermined cultural notion of how the co

      • But when you were in those countries for that extended period of time...

        Did you spend a lot of time playing Counterstrike? I'm pretty sure the article was about how they played Counterstrike- not what the general (non-CS) society was like in those countries.

        I don't think you need to be immersed in the culture to get a sense of how they play Counterstrike, I think that you just need to play CS with a lot of different people from each of the countries.

        It seems like you are trying to expand the scope of th

  • My friend is Indian... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 07, 2004 @07:54PM (#8493886)
    And he's great at helping my clanmates with tech support problems.....

    /me runs

  • Attributions of the so-called "special touch" (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jeremy_dot ( 734236 ) on Sunday March 07, 2004 @07:55PM (#8493891)
    It is likely the case that certain countries have a "special touch" in a video game, however the cause is likely not attributable to the country itself. Some of the commonly assumed attributes of countries have very little correlation to what would normally be assumed about the country.

    I suspect that it is the way certain people play in a country that spreads the "special touch." I am an avid gamer, and have found myself playing in a certain style because all my peers play in a similar fashion, and they seem to be effective players. Thus, the "special touch" is caused by how effective the player's peer's style's of gaming are.
  • How seriously can we take such broad conclusions?

    We can't. It's as simple as that.

  • How seriously? (Score:3, Funny)

    by s88 ( 255181 ) on Sunday March 07, 2004 @08:18PM (#8494016) Homepage
    VERY seriously.

    I, for one, welcome our new "thinking [and] teamwork" overlords.
  • Which reflexes are those? The ones that make your arms shoot straight up in the air and surrender? I didn't think you could surrender in Counterstrike.

  • Of course! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Cosmik ( 730707 ) on Sunday March 07, 2004 @09:15PM (#8494365) Homepage
    This is all very obvious. It just comes down to years of social engineering.

    Americans excel at "shooting [and] logistics"

    Years of gang warfare, drive-by murders and shooting to get the 'bling-bling' has provided Americans with unbeatable markmanship skills.

    whereas Germans are best at "thinking [and] teamwork"

    After the 2 World Wars, and having their Army, Navy, and Air Force taken away from them, the Germans have had to fall back on brains instead of guns. They regularly get together and team up for some beer and to try to take over the world again, only to pass out drunk.

    the French come off best when using "reflexes".

    These reflexes have been perfected through years of running away quickly and surrendering.

    (All above comments made in jest, for those with a broken humour detector)
    • (All above comments made in jest, for those with a broken humour detector) and yet if I said something like "whereas the isrealis have a tendancy to mess up when playing on hostage maps, because in their attempts to get the terrorists, they kill all the hostages first and call them terrorists" I'd get modded down for being anti-semitic even though "it's only a joke"

  • By that logic... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by MMaestro ( 585010 ) on Sunday March 07, 2004 @09:33PM (#8494489)
    Americans excel at "shooting [and] logistics",

    By that logic, that makes Americans more likely to play FPSes and strategy games. So why do Sports games dwarf every other genre in the game industry? *cough*Madden*cough*

    • Re:By that logic... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Synic ( 14430 )
      Americans do play quite a bit of FPS and strategy games, but you must realize that they are drawing conclusions from a pool of Counter-strike players and not from the general populace. Additionally, the majority of Americans don't play computer games because of the many headaches involved with system requirements, patching, and overall price of computer systems, and so most prefer to purchase an easier to understand video game console to play their games. It's hard to argue with the ease of just plugging th
  • we are the obscure team who blends in with american clans! yes! obsurity! yes! #14 right between the power house nations of singapore and brazil!

  • Play Styles? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Deliveranc3 ( 629997 ) <<deliverance> <at> <level4.org>> on Monday March 08, 2004 @03:31AM (#8496285) Journal
    I'm a reasonably good CS player I've played in some clans and gone to a couple tournaments where we placed.

    Online you can tell where someone is from depending on the way they play, specific areas I find easy to tell are Russia, France and Quebec. I'll check the name afterward and realise I was right. I can't describe why it feels diffrent to play against someone from one of these areas however I feel I could prove it given certain tests.

    I think the reasons for this are that diffrent countries discovered gaming at diffrent times, there is a huge diffrence in feel between people who did and didn't play quake 1.


    There are advantages and disadvantages to each school of play at diffrent levels, a French strategie is not as useful on a public server but works well in clan matches(demos).

    The most obvious elements of this occur when there is a dramatic change of strategies around the net some countries are left behind, for example "classic" camping came back but the German's didn't understand it for several months after everyone else did.

    I would say it's very noticable, I'd also say that certain play styles have advantages over specific other play styles, it only takes about 4-5 rounds for opponents to have a decent chance of outguessing one another and players who lose learn faster. So no country will ever drop out of gaming, they may have to adjust though.
  • Interesting.. Is there a top nation at being fragged? I think they should also consider: best croucher, best knife killer, hardest to frag, best jumper, fastest runners, fastest runners while being shot in the back, best sight through smoke-grenade smoke, fastest flash-grenade sight recovery, etc.
  • Its funny Americans are only good at the skills the cheats provide.

    The only reason there are people still playing this game is because mommy won't buy them a decent PC to play with.
  • As much as these generalizations sound rediculous, they most certainly have some merit. However, I don't think it has to do with how these players grow up, more like who they play on a regular basis. Americans tend to play Americans and Europeans tend to play Europeans just due to the nature of the internet. The closer the server, the lower the ping, so most teams play on local servers. You won't see Americans playing Russians on a regular basis simply because no one like playing CS, or any FPS, with a

  • My experience (Score:5, Insightful)

    by cavemanf16 ( 303184 ) on Monday March 08, 2004 @11:31AM (#8499031) Homepage Journal
    I think this study has some signifigance, and I'll illustrate to you all why:

    I attended a university with a lot of foreign students in the mid-90's. I play soccer. I played soccer at this university on the intramural teams. My team was comprised primarily of Americans. Because of the large population of foreign nationals at our school, there were teams made up almost entirely of the following nationalities: south african, mideastern/middle african, korean, japanese/chinese, mexican, south american, etc. I have played soccer since I was 5, and I can tell you for certain that each of these teams had a distinct playing style. The south africans were all about speed, but weren't as concerned about ball control - pass and run, the mideasterners had AWESOME ball control and passed ok, but didn't have a lot of speed (or didn't concentrate on that aspect - some of them were fast when they wanted to be), my team was of course a little more individualistic and generic in our play style, mexicans were very physical (not hacks, but in your face physical), and the differences continued.

    Despite how much you think we're all exactly the same, our cultures and societies we grow up in do influence our lives a great deal, and do tend to show up in sports. While CS isn't the most grueling sport to play, it is none-the-less a team "sport" activity, and I think the differences in nationality do affect a team's playing style, strengths, and weaknesses. Just watch the World Cup sometime - you'll see what I'm talking about pretty quickly.
  • Okay you retards, that's enough "french surrender" jokes for today.
  • I think the article has some kind of point. Because of the internet's lagtimes, online do tend to play online with someone from their own country - playing on a Russian server from France really isn't much fun. So the skilled players from one country play against each other more - they watch each other's games more because they're part of the same community, and as with everything, they mirror what they see. If one country has a dominant clan of one style, the others would copy that. It won't give them b
  • I used to live in a small town where 4 of Norway's 10 best Starcraft players used to live. To be honest, I find most of the population to be nitwits in other things than CS. Im pretty sure that its mostly based on how your friends play, what they play, which stily of play, and how willing they are to teach you the same skills. I very much doubt that geographical location has anything to do with skills other than what the local population can teach you.

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