Hacking and “Surfing”

Taking from a slide from lecture 2, the original definition of hacking -“finding an unanticipated, unexpected and potentially unauthorised application for the tech.”. This got me thinking, how often do I come across this form of hacking in video games, where I exploit certain aspects of a game for fun, to play the game in a way not originally intended.

It turns out the answer to that question is a lot, especially in games like Counter Strike, Counter Strike: Source (CSS) and Team Fortress 2 (TF2). When I was a teen my life revolved around Counter Strike, especially “surf” servers. Surfing, in CS is a type of gameplay in which you slide along slanted surfaces or “ramps” (Pic 1), gaining speed at which point you are able to reach higher points of the map or just show off.

(Pic 1, map Surf_ski2)

There are two main types of surf maps out there, linear “skill” maps which are long, linear and often have more and more challenging sets of obstacles to get around as the map goes on. The second type is battle maps which are comprised of a series of ramps in an area in which the players are supposed to battle to the death.

These servers where immensely popular when I started playing them, and still are today. There are still a few solid servers running surf maps in CS and since the release of other Valve FPS games “Surfing” has evolved and moved to these other games, like TF2 and CSS where they have changed slightly to suit the different play style.

Although this form of tweaking certain aspects of a tech can’t really compare to hacking an early analog computer to create the first video game, it still shows how much power gamers have in games they love and how through imagination and messing around with a few things in a game, you can make a totally different type of game. A game that gains a following of people who are just as passionate towards the “hacked” game as others are to the original.