GDC 2019 - Counter-Strike's creator says not standing up to players over game changes has led to lack of series innovation

pcgamesinsider.biz:

The creator of the original Counter-Strike Minh 'Gooseman' Le has said that he wishes he had stood up to the game's community over changes the development team wanted to make.

Asked by PCGamesInsider.biz what lessons he had learnt from Counter-Strike's development, the game maker said that he wishes he had stuck to his guns with changes he wanted to make to online shooter.

"Counter-Strike reached a point where there were so many players playing it that we were afraid to change things," he told PCGamesInsider.biz.

"We were afraid of doing anything different. We were afraid of annoying the player base. When it reached Counter-Strike 1.0, the players became so familiar with the play style and mechanics that it was really difficult for it was hard to change or introduce new things. We tried to introduce shields. At one point we tried to change the economy - the way people would buy guns. We made it so that the more a certain gun was bought, the more the price would go up, sort of like inflation. I thought that was a cool system, that it'd be great because it'd make these guns that were constantly purchased harder to be acquired.

"That was met with such a huge resistance that we immediately said: 'Okay, fine, we won't do it'. We pulled back so quickly. We were so scared of pissing off the community. It made it really difficult to innovate and evolve the game. At that point - at Counter-Strike 1.0 - the game was set in stone. We were too afraid to touch it. Even to this day, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) in its essence is just Counter-Strike 1.0 but really pretty. It really hasn't changed much since 1.0 when I look at CS:GO today. The buying the system is the same, the prices are all the same. Even when Valve makes