CS remains one of the deepest and most strategic games I've ever played, and a venue that allowed me to mix competition + computers. It's point-and-click distilled in its purest forms, and its 5-on-5 strategy is reminiscent of something like basketball. I met many friends, a few enemies, and even my first girlfriend, through the game, its LAN tournaments, and the forums that surrounded it. At my high school, I started the first computer club (where we mostly played 1.6). I even launched a startup a few years ago[1] which was still tangentially related to gaming and esports.
CS taught me how to lead a team, how to win (more importantly, also how to lose). How to look for qualities that matter in people (which I think made me pretty good at hiring), and how to pursue goals in spite of adversity. At my peak, my team was the top 5 teams in CS:Source in North America and we placed (I think) top 8 at CPL 2005. I'm still way better than the average first person shooter player, but my reaction time, which used to be ~150ms, is now a noticeably worse ~220ms.
I cannot emphasise how much impact Counter-Strike made on my personal life (for better or for worse). The real story is that I also played because we moved a lot, I had few local friends, and it also provided a great escape from the tough life of an immigrant kid in a strange new country. It's a silly, pointless, little game, but, like all games, it's also a metaphor for life. Happy 25th birthday, Counter-Strike!
[1] https://www.pcgamer.com/introducing-gameref-the-anti-cheat-h...
never quite managed to play sponsored, because the guys I was playing with at the time required me to be 18 to travel alone :') so they booted me once they went professional - they became the first cs team of SK iirc.
Like you, it taught me a lot about being in a team, not so much as a leader but a part of it. Playing on eachothers strengths, and compensating for eachothers weaknesses naturally at some point etc. was also a bit of a recluse/distant to ppl locally, not an immigrant, but just a bad place to be outside as a kid :).
Nice to read other people have had similar experience ^^ never really met anyone IRL which was such a CS addict :D
