Introduction

Hello,

My name is Byron Challoner, and I've been playing the game of Counter-Strike 1.6 for over 12 years.  The alias I have used most of this time is "CowOnCrack", although I've changed it for fun to break the monotony from time to time. The game was released in June of 1999, and I started playing it a few days after it came out.  The next year I would be a freshman in high school.  I was a part of organized team play from the very beginning of the game, leading up to around 2009.  I've competed on teams participating in many famous leagues, such as the old USA league CAL-invite, CEVO-P, and most recently in CEVO-Main and ESEA-Main.  I've also attended two CPL (Cyber-Athlete Professional League) events, which used to be one of the largest international CS tournament venues before the company went under.

More recently in my CS career, a teammate and friend of mine from the ESEA/CEVO-Main team Teknicality, alias "Peyote[lp]", showed me an entirely different side of the game called "KZ".  I first started playing this game towards the end of 2008 and the beginning of 2009.  KZ is short for "Kreedz" which is the alias of the player who made the very first maps with a climbing theme.  The concept of the game was pretty simple.  Not unlike a real rock climb, you have to reach the top of something (sometimes maps were literally mountains, or trees, or things much more creative) and there are a series of steps and obstacles getting there.  The focus then is entirely on the movement part of the game, which turns out to be an incredibly deep challenge on its own.

You can create save points along the way so that you can return to them if you fall, sort of like a real climber who sets ropes and anchors, but of course the ultimate challenge is to beat the map with no save points, so that the slightest misstep can send you to the bottom.  There is a real life analog to this, which is the incredible and insane sport of free soloing, which means climbing a peak with no gear at all.  Similarly, it is usually pretty futile to attempt a long difficult climb without save points in KZ unless you thoroughly know the jumps and the route.  In real life, attempting a climb without gear without thoroughly knowing the route and what you are doing is rather suicidal.  Apparently Kreedz himself is an avid rock climber, and his maps can give you a sense of vertigo and fear as well as a feeling of great accomplishment when you reach the top.

I immediately took a strong liking to this game, and was amazed at how deep of a game it was considering it merely focused on one aspect of another game.  It also clearly wasn't the intent of the developers for the players to only focus on movement, which makes it all the more surprising that so many tricks and techniques were discovered.  Many of the techniques in KZ are merely by-products of glitches in the engine, or tricks performed by unusual combinations of movements. Yet, intriguingly, these aspects give the game layer after layer of challenge and difficulty.  It seems that just as a new technique is discovered and assimilated by the best players, another one is soon on the horizon.

Although KZ has always been primarily a competition with yourself and your limits, the website www.xtreme-jumps.eu holds the best recorded times for the hundreds of official maps, while cosy-climbing holds the best records for over a thousand unofficial maps.  Their formats are similar, but Cosy is more accommodating about which maps it allows records for, and doesn't have a section for distance jumps, also known as longjumps.  Completing some maps is certainly a challenge, but doing so quickly and without errors presents a whole new set of difficulties for the player.

So what is the purpose of this blog?  Well, at the end of my CS career, I found myself discouraged to learn that CS as a game is very likely to disappear in a few years, and all of the time I put in the game and all of the knowledge I acquired could not be put to use.  Obviously, I didn't expect to become a professor of CS when I was playing this game - the game itself was worth playing on its own.  But one the greatest things I've enjoyed about this game is helping other players discover the game, as well as trying to understand the mechanisms behind how the game works.  This includes the game mechanics, what the best methods and practices are, and most importantly, why they work.  This sense of curiosity extends to my other hobbies and my life in general, and I know I'm not alone.

In particular, KZ holds a fascination for me because I have extensive knowledge about Counter-Strike 1.6 as a whole, yet there is much about KZ I do not know.  In particular, the feats and abilities of some players in KZ seem almost unreal from my stand point as a (relative) newcomer of only around 4 years.  KZ for me is somehow both a familiar and new challenge at the same time, and I hope to one day understand the whys and hows of this discipline of CS that was seemingly invented from thin air.

It may be true that the knowledge of how to be good at this particular video game is knowledge that will have very little value in the future.  However, in the process of analyzing and breaking down a video game or anything else, you learn a lot about learning itself.  You come see the similarities between the various different hobbies you enjoy or even what you are pursuing in school or learning on the job.  This kind of knowledge is valuable, especially in a world where one can't rely as much on a "stock" of knowledge that has value and will secure their future for the rest of their life. Quickly learning new things is an important part of the environment we find ourselves in.

Most people don't aim to put this kind of time and energy into a video game, and I don't blame them.  Not everyone takes video games so seriously, or gets excited about the idea of analyzing them in depth.  It is a hobby unto itself, and if you find it "nerdy" then I would agree with you!  It definitely is, but there you have it.  Each person has his or her own way, and if this isn't your cup of tea then feel free to pass on it!

This is my first blog, so this will be yet another exciting learning experience for me.  In the future I will begin adding posts covering various topics about learning and also specifics about CS and KZ, but for now this lengthy introduction will suffice.

-CoC