Gamers That Became Pioneers

1up has a feature up looking at videogamers that have become pioneers. They profile several folks who have made an impact on gaming as a hobby, and the view of gaming in the world at large. The piece includes people like Patrick Wildenborg (the Hot Coffee whistleblower), Minh "Gooseman" Le and Jess Cliffe (makers of Counter-Strike), Gabe and Tycho of Penny Arcade, and (most infamously) Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. From a more upbeat part of the piece, on Counter-Strike: "[CS] is one of the most ubiquitous and popular games ever made, period -- Valve's Steam distribution service calculates that nearly 120 million man hours are lost to various versions of Counter-Strike monthly. Such a statistic is even more mind-boggling considering the humble roots of the game -- both Cliffe and Gooseman were college students at the time of the project's inception. They had some amateur experience in the disciplines they brought to the mod; Cliffe had previously mastered several gaming websites, and Gooseman had done programming and modeling work on other fairly popular mods like Navy SEALs and Action Quake 2."

Re:Grammar Nazi mode: engaged!

[cptgrudge]

I'm pretty partial to their, there, and they're myself.

You, of course, assume that gamers actually are people. 24 hour Starcraft sessions? Playing games until all energy is depleted and the host shuts down? I present you with this [infopackets.com]. Halo 2 Legendary in an afternoon?! Humans do not do this. Call them meat bags, if you must, but I doubt that they are people.

Re:

[mr_mischief]

In some cases, meatbags with aimbots. I'd hardly call that "people" at all.

Oh, and in reference to your sig, Windows XP does still need to be rebooted more than it should. So much less than previous versions it's hilarious, but still more than it should need.

Oregon Trail?

[gEvil (beta)]

Yeah, I was a big fan of Oregon Trail back in the day, too...

Re:

[michael_allison]

the best was when your family members died off, one by one and then you were given the ability to write a name on a gravestone that could be viewed by future players of the game...whoever thought it was a good idea to let elementary school students anonymously write things for others to see was a far thinker...i learned so many new deragatory terms for people from reading those gravestones... damn the man...save the empire!

Klebold and Harris Pioneers?

[Skynet]

Of what? Killing innocent people and fueling the media frenzy that violent games create killers?

Re:

[nido]

They're simply the most successful victims of the government schools. The majority of students hate school, Klebold and Harris did something about it. Not a very productive "something", but something none the less. Every so often I see a report of some poor kid plotting to "pull a columbine" on his/her fellow inmates, so they've obviously been an inspiration to some of the more disgruntled of the lot.

The real shame in the Klebold and Harris event is that only a few got the message. They blame the videog

Re:

[MMaestro]

School replaced agrariran work responsibilities with industrial training responsibilities. Of course kids hate school, most people hate to work, but it's a necessary part of survival.

Except for the fact that with work you can at least SEE the end result. If you don't chop wood in the morning, you're gonna freeze your ass in the evening. If you don't plow the land, you aren't getting dinner. If you don't get the fence up, your livestock are gonna run off or get eaten by wild animals.

With school, if you fail

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[servognome]

I think the biggest impact is the seperation of children from their parents.
Children on the farm were directly responsible to their parent, don't clean the barn and pa would beat you. There were daily checks on whether the kids were doing what they were supposed to. If parents aren't involved in their child's education (not just looking at grades at the end each quarter), then the child isn't really held accountable.

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[sesshomaru]

Going Postal by Mark Ames is also worth reading on this subject.

Oh, and the Millenium Season 2 episode, "A Room with No View," heh...

ftw

[Chaffar]

Valve's Steam distribution service calculates that nearly 120 million man hours are lost to various versions of Counter-Strike monthly.

I wouldn't call an hour spent playing CS a "loss"... and I'm pretty sure I'm not the only CS addict here :)

Re:

[Brothernone]

Your one of those people who spam "You take the point!" aren't you?

But it is a loss of man hours

[Travoltus]

Not quite as much a loss of man hours as going to the movies, eating, vacations, etc.

Haven't you heard, America is all about productivity and anything short of productive behavior is a loss of man hours.

The most dubious recognition you can get

[elrous0]

And now, let us pay tribute to Tim Johnson, the obsessive Halo 2 player who first discovered the giant soccer ball on the rooftop. Tim was born in Des Moines Iowa in 1980. Little did his parents, Bob and Sheila, know then the greatness that lie within him...

-Eric

Goosman's Guns kicked butt

[Rifter13]

I remember playing with Goosman's guns, back in the Q1 or Q2 days (I don't remember which one). Our LAN group played that game for so many hours... We never really got into CS.

Hey... That's Me!

[Gertlex]

Indeed... I played games from a tender age. And I became a Pioneer at Pioneer High School...

Oregon Trail 2 was also mandatory: in elementary school, it brainwashed us into accepting such a lame mascot.

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[Ninwa]

Hopefully not Pioneer, Ann Arbor. I'm afraid as a lawful Huron River Rat I must spit at you in disgust.

Steve Polge

[El_Muerte_TDS]

How about Steve Polge, probably unknown to many. He created the Reaper Bot for Quake which got lead him to a job at Epic Games working on the A.I. for Unreal at the basics for Botmatch which in the end resulted in Unreal Tournament.

Clearly a gamer that became a pioneer, but yet remained fairly unknown to many.

Re:

[Rifter13]

True, I had forgotten about Steve Polge. Also, the guy that made the really popular level editor for Quake 1... Jeeze, pathetic, no name of program, or programmer... but I know he went on to another game company to build the level editor for their products.

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[Das Modell]

You must mean Worldcraft, which was purchased by Valve for use with Half-Life. It's now known as Valve Hammer Editor.

Re:

[Rifter13]

THAT is it. Thanks. :-) I was thinking it was Half-Life that picked it up, but I was not sure.

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[Osty]

How about Steve Polge, probably unknown to many. He created the Reaper Bot for Quake which got lead him to a job at Epic Games working on the A.I. for Unreal at the basics for Botmatch which in the end resulted in Unreal Tournament.

Or David "Zoid" Kirsch [loonygames.com], who built the first CTF mod for Quake, which lead to his efforts on the Linux ports of Quake 1 and 2 and eventually landed him with Retro working on the Metroid Prime series.

Quake was a revolutionary time period in the history of games. It marked the

Re:

[Das Modell]

CTF should have definitely been mentioned, and you're right about the fact that Quake modding seems to have been forgotten. The modding culture of Half-Life and other games is nothing but a continuation of what was done with Quake. Even Gamespy and its seemingly infinite network of Planet sites (as well as Fileplanet) are here because of Quake. The whole thing started as a small server browsing tool called QSpy. I guess Quake also pioneered machinima. Quake established so many things that it isn't even funn

Putting the Columbine idiots along with people who

[kinglink]

actually did something to benefit the industry? I can live with the hot coffee "whistleblower". He at least found something unique, but the people who pulled out guns and killed innocent people are on the list for what? For Doom mods? If you could use a computer and write a simple line of code you could mod Doom, it wasn't just a simple game to mod it was beyond easy.

It's not like they did anything to really change the world, they just played videogames so the MEDIA actually blamed videogames, they don't appear to have actually changed video games in any particular way except to give it huge media attention (attributed to that moron Clinton claiming how Doom and Mortal kombat (1) were hurting our kids and shouldn't be sold... 5 years after their release. If it wasn't for the media using the story for everything then we wouldn't have gave a shit about two idiots and we wouldn't have even realized they played games, they would just be known as too idiots with guns.

I mean you have a list of influencial gamers, Penny arcade, the hackers on Ms. Pacman, the guys who did Counterstrike, the single most popular mod ever, and yet somehow you diminish them all by putting these two guys who just snapped and tried to kill people. Exactly how does that make them pioneers?

CS Payoff?

[BTWR]

What kind of financial state are Minh "Gooseman" Le and Jess Cliffe in today, after making the most popular internet game of all time? I'm all for Vavle making millions from CS, but I hope these guys got a %, instead of an up-front $10,000 purchase and that was it.

Anyone know?

Lost man hours?

[NexFlamma]

Isn't that kind of a skewed way to look at it?

Sure, people may have been playing that many hours, but that doesn't mean they were doing it to the exclusion of work or school at the time.

Maybe these people actually play CS in their leisure time! *gasp*