Let’s be honest:  first person shooters live on PC.  They might survive as crippled console versions, thumbsticks turning at the same speed and accuracy as the average wheelchair, hooked up to auto-aiming life support to stave off Terminal Lack Of Mouse, but it’s only on real computers that the ability to aim actually means something.

Second honesty: single player is practice.  That’s all.  It might be the most cinematic practice you’ve ever seen, with incredible set pieces and innovative action scenes allowing to you to indulge in every Hollywood fantasy, but as long as the enemies are AI it’s just a glorified Tutorial.  You played through Modern Warfare for the fun, World at War for access to the Zombie servers, but it’s all sort of pointless unless you’re plugging people so that victory means “You’re better than someone”, not “The computer was programmed to let you have that.”  That’s what game servers are for, and that’s why we’re looking at the most popular multiplayer FPSs:

1.  Counter-Strike

If this is news then please, stop wasting time here and get your ass onto a Counter-Strike server right now.  Right now there are more people playing CS than there are holding hands, which might sound like it says something scary about society until you realise romance never killed any terrorists.  Various versions take up the first, second and seventh positions on the most-played list - and that’s not just shooters, that’s in terms of every game Valve has (to say nothing of the thousands of pirate players out there).  Counter-Strike: Source is now outperforming 1.6 servers (despite the complaints of purists), and even the relatively unpopular Condition Zero servers are stuffed with several thousand players at all times.  Or to put it another way: statistically speaking, Counter Strike is more popular than Shakespeare.

2.  Call of Duty 4

Things can get a little hectic

Modern Warfare servers continue to crush even their own sequel, with World at War servers lagging behind because of “Less impressive weapons”, “Not being made by Infinity Ward” and the all-important “Being yet another World War II game even though the reason we were excited before was because Modern Warfare didn’t do that” factor.  Cod4 is the top FPS on X-fire’s total playtime charts ranking only behind World of Warcraft overall - and ranking below WoW in playtime is like ranking below the universe in size.

3.  Team Fortress 2

It’s all about class balance

Valve’s magnum opus of online play, and proof that a decade of development time pays off.  Team Fortress 2 servers rank second only to Counter-Strike on Valve’s charts, and even outperforms Football Manager 2009, the biggest non-shooting-people-in-the-face title on their service.  For some reason.  The constant addition of new maps, fixes and unlocks keeps the population pumped up, although it’s still a factor of four behind even the closest Counter-Strike game.  But then, many religions have less devout followings than CS.

4.  Left 4 Dead

This game is fun

Multiplying the number of players by the average game bodycount, L4D servers shoot through three million zombie corpses an hour.  It seems those protesting the sequel were an extremely vocal minority, with most players far too busy “actually playing the game” and “enjoying themselves” to waste much time on such silliness.  It also means that at this very second there are at least four kilo-Louii running around with machine guns.

5.  Day of Defeat

There’s a slight learning curve

Ruggedly hanging in at number five are the Day of Defeat servers (both Source and old-school) - guilty of being set in the same time period as 90% of all known games, but at least with the excuse of coming from a time before the problem wasn’t quite so bad.  It also shares the status of being a Half Life modification, meaning that the altered adventures of Gordon Freeman literally have the entire FPS table surrounded.

Gamers dressing up as the gamees is a tradition dating back as far as disposable income, but what about the characters themselves? Can they cackle in costumes for all hallows eve? Since we don’t waste opening paragraphs around here, the answer is “Yes”, and we look at seven skins to spice up your servers:

1. The Creepy Counter-Strike Skull

Counter-Strike servers are already stuffed with Skullz and Killaz [sic], usually embedded in usernames between clan tags and half the number row’s symbols. Modder “Laca” enables the anti-terrorists to become even scarier than “someone with an assault rifle out to kill you” by skulling things up under the creepily human eyes.

2. Medal Of Honor: Allied Assault

Those playing on Medal of Honor servers shouldn’t suffer because of the age or authenticity of their game - so “Vdog777” has built an in-character costume, and is far better at 3D modeling than coming up with a name. The French resistance fighter adds another option when you’re dressing to impress (and shoot several times in the head) those fashionable Nazi chappies.

3. Team Fortress Halloween

Halloween costumes are something fun and awesome, so of course Valve are involved. We’re only talking about this because we enjoy it, anyway, as anyone on any TF2 server has already enjoyed the new koth_harvest_event map, exploding pumpkins, brand-new hats (to pile on top of all the other awesome headgear), and the incomparable ghost costume of Zepheniah Mann.

PS We love our Gibuses, though proper grammer sometimes makes for odd pronunciation.

4. The Classic Spy

Just because you’re ten years behind the times doesn’t mean you can’t dress up - though it can mean you wish you were more advanced. That’s the lesson behind the awkwardly-named |WS|*Nikon’s smooth spy skin, disguising a Team Fortress Classic server’s Spy as: a TF2 spy!

5. The Red vs Blue Crysis

In the most insanely complicated meta disguise outside of Major Smith in Where Eagles Dare, “not so l337” lets Crysis commandos disguise themselves as the staff from Red vs Blue, who in turn are played by Spartans, from Halo. It would be impossible to add more layers to a costume without forming a human pyramid or dressing up as a double-decker bus.

6. Day of Metal Gear Defeat

Dr. Cloud understands exactly how to guarantee an Allied success on Day of Defeat servers: staff the side of the angels with an endless army of Solid Snake clones. With the Axis forces represented by far inferior GRU cannon fodder it’s quite likely the sheer psychological pressure will force them to fold (despite their advantage in heavy machine guns).

7. Left 4 Dead

The most popular costumes over the last week come from the Left 4 Dead pre-order exclusive demo, with our four favorite survivors sporting spanking new skins.

Bill: Everyone’s favorite armed uncle-figure swaps Vietnam flashbacks for a love of candy, and an incredibly convincing Coach fatsuit.
Zoey: The apocalypse’s only female pulls an incredible double reverse-Michael-Jackson, both turning from white to black AND staying alive to play Rochelle.
Louis: The hard-working everyman goes even further than Zoey to become Elllis’s engineering Suthan bo-ay.
Francis: Why hate everything at random, when Nick can hate and distrust everything as a scumbag conman?

The best bit? Game servers can be dressed up every day of the year!

Counter-Strike co-creator Minh Le is gearing up to release his sequel, Tactical Intervention, and while that might sound like a thesaurus-based restatement of the original concept it looks like being a very different game.  For one, it doesn’t involve original co-creator Jess Cliffe.  For another, it seems entirely engineered to enrage CS Server players.

Image Credit: IGN.  Graphics Engine Credit: Ten years ago.

Why Minh made a whole new game instead of adopting the insanely attention-grabbing title of “Counter-Strike 2″ is simple: the insane expectations associated with that attention.  Minh used to work with Valve on exactly that project, but hardcore gamers respond to change like vampires react to garlic-flavored sunlight, and CS server experts are to hardcore what the BFG is to a pistol.  It’s hard to express just how obsessive some players are, but when we tell you he’s still getting shit over some of the gun models having cartridge ejection ports in the wrong place a full decade later you might have some idea.

That’s why Minh broke loose and decided to make his own game (while Cliff started seeing Seattle and living with some extremely cute cats), and Tactical Intervention is the result.  A result where every change, good or bad, will inevitably enrage the CS veteran.

The Good Changes

Faster Rounds

The first and most important matter Minh made an issue of was the length of CS server rounds.  He’s concerned with the enjoyment of every player, and waiting in spectator for five minutes while the top-ranked players stalk each other isn’t much fun.  The problem is that kind of mastery is exactly what the expert loves, viewing other players as expendable target practice, so expect world-class-whining about any changes enforcing this.

Weakened Sniping

Minh’s main complaint about his creation, just like most people who’ve played it, is how incredibly overpowered the AWP sniper rifle is.  This single-shotter singlehandedly stalls the whole game as people are either too scared to move or sniped from approximately half a light year away.  This results in an eternity of waiting as dead players spectate, hovering over the ghosts of teammates too terrified to step out into the open.  The thing is, CS masters have spent years perfecting the ability to noscope you AWP-style with the merest mouse-twitch - any change with eliminates that advantage will be opposed.

The Bad Changes

Hostages

Go to any Counter-Strike server and see how often they play cs_office (and how instantly it empties when that cursed place appears).  CS servers make middle-management at Cannibals Incorporated just before lunchtime look like Sesame Street - “ultra-competitive” doesn’t cover it simply because the phrase doesn’t involve enough swearing.  Now remember any game where you lost through no fault of your own, but because some idiot AI escort mission moron didn’t know which end of a gun the bullets came out of.  Now try to combine the two in your head (Warning: may cause rage-splosion).

Attack Dogs

Another addition taking any risk of your results being related to ability is the attack dog.  Because we all know how popular homing missiles are in online games (here’s a fun party game: say “Blue shells are great” to a Mario Karter, just be sure to duck).  Imagine in an online game, and while you’re at it, just thump yourself in the stomach a few times.

The thing is, the complaints of the obsessive aren’t exactly anything someone who plays for fun should worry about.  Minh made one of the most popular games of all time, and when he releases another you can be sure we’ll be on hand to see how those servers stack up.

The best thing about having your own server is that you can take some of the greatest games ever made, and play them exactly how you want. Some scum won’t stop using rifle grenades on CoD4? Kick him! Want to play Well despite nobody in the world liking that map? Go ahead! And thanks to the hard work of modding community FPSBanana, you can redecorate in ways you never thought possible:

1. The Glorious Francis Heavy Skin

In the best cross-over ever (until the Portal gun turns up in Half Life Episode 3), Left4Dead’s Francis can escape the infected - to a TF2 server. This skin retextures everyone’s favorite weapon-wielding Russian into Mr “I Hate Everything” himself. Install it client-side and only you’ll be able to see it, but if you host a TF2 server you can upload the upgrade for everyone to enjoy!

I hate RED!

Just imagine if Francis could take Natascha to fight the Horde - why, he’d be invincible! For about ten seconds. Then he’d run out of ammo and die, but man, it would be so sweet up till then!

2. That’s Not A Knife, THIS Is A Knife!

It’s a fact that Counter-Strike servers are still the most popular around. It’s also a fact that the most popular skins are all insanely detailed knives and weapons, which would be more worrying except the whole point of the game is “Use knives and weapons.” If you’re the kind of CS server master who can run around eliminating enemies with nothing but a knife, you should definitely make it a nice one. The terrifyingly specific “M9 Probis III” knife is the most popular.

I’m the one holding it and this thing terrifies ME.

3. Tuxedo Sleeves

Slick stunt-style shooter The Specialists may not have a Source upgrade, running off the original Half-Life engine, but it still has class. Modder “Jeffysan” certainly thinks so, tweaking the code for nothing more than giving you trendy tuxedo sleeves as you obliterate the opposition.

On one hand this is wasted effort - it doesn’t affect the game, and you barely see it. On the other hand, it makes you feel that tiny bit more like Bond and is therefore absolutely essential.

4. Band of Brothers on the Day of Defeat

Day of Defeat servers get some pop culture love with a TV-upgrade, swapping out one of the skins for Ronald Speirs. If you just asked “Ronald Who?”, you don’t watch Band of Brothers and can move on to the next item. Fans may wish to have a look at this fun skin:

5. Dead4Left

Technically the easiest mod on the list as it only copies the survivor skins over the infected, but come on, that’s pretty fun looking. It’s also a bit of a cheat on our part - the mod is single-player only, so you can’t run it on your L4D server, but we figured it was more than cool enough to let people know. And you just know that the community are working on a full multiplayer infected/survivor switch.

6. The Most Terrifying Mod Ever

Say goodbye to Silent Hill, because this is the most mentally scarring videogame you’ll ever see. That chick from the Ring could get on BitTorrent and come out of every computer in the country, and it’d only be a welcome break from the screaming. Of course it’s for L4D servers, and we warn you: don’t scroll down if you’re eating:

NOOOOOOOOOOOO!

How can the Boomer be made so much more terrifying by putting more clothes ON? What horrible inversion of fashion, flesh and mortal sanity makes a spraypainted thong worse than infected nakedness? We don’t know, but we salute Darksider1972 for advancing the frontiers of Lovecraftian insanity to find out.

Games are awesome.  You’re either agreeing or extremely lost because, in case you haven’t noticed, you’re on a site that rents online game servers (aka “Palaces of Pyro-explosive Joy!”).  But some go above and beyond the simple call of fragging, helping their FPS fantasies escape into the real world WITHOUT - and this is important - going insane and killing us.  Here we salute these brave server-servers and their incredible efforts.

1.  The Sentry Gun PC

The single coolest thing to happen to Team Fortress 2 servers since the game itself, “TiTON“’s Sentry Gun PC is the most beautiful sight outside of a burning Spy.  As well as being an excellent reproduction of the ultimate in BLU team point defense, the tripod-mounted heavy-calibre (fake) machine gun is a decent desktop as well, featuring a GeForce 9600 and a Core 2 Duo processor.

This means you can set up sentries on Team Fortress 2 while playing on a sentry from TF2; so you’re so many levels into an imagination, you have to start setting yourself on fire to make sure you’re not a spy.

2.  Real Life Warthog

Halo servers don’t actually need any promotion, what with the game being connected to approximately every college student dorm in any country, so this real-life Warthog is nothing but luxury.  Awesome, awesome luxury.

It’s even the original Bungie team who get to ride in the recreation of their creation, creating a “Cycle of Awesome” which could be used to drive all coolness on Earth -  except they’re a little too aware of how this is a one-of-a-kind result of weeks of work.  So they drive carefully, apparently unaware that driving carefully in a Warthog is like fasting on the set of Iron Chef.  Luckily there are real Halo servers where you can skid that thing’s beautiful inverse kineamatics right through an opposing soldier’s face.

3.  Real Life Crates!

You’ll see crates on almost every FPS server, with “Time Until You See A Crate” acting as respected review system, but you pay far more attention to the crates on Counter-Strike servers.  Because you normally pay more attention to things that can hide terrorists with machine guns, or if you don’t you need to radically re-evaluate your priorities.  All of which make these real life crates a thousand times more awesome than wooden boxes have any right to be.

Part of the best-named art exhibit ever made, the “de_dust installation,” pixelated packing was placed all over the city, popping up in streets and stations and generally making people try to reload while walking down the street.

4.  CERN Crowbar

The above escaped server-stuff is slick, but none of it ever protected Earth from interdimensional invasion (though we can see that Warthog being significantly awesome in an urban combat environment).  Luckily some cyber-citizens saw that CERN’s screwing around with the stuff of spacetime could lead to a resonance cascade (and a little alliteration) and organized probably the best nerdy thing ever to happen.

They sent CERN a crowbar, a headcrab for practise, and a strategy guide detailing what to do in the event of alien invasion (specifically, a Half-Life strategy guide).  And because some scientists are awesome, the actual factual Gordon Freeman (codename: Sandro Bonacini) came out to demonstrate his readiness.  Even cooler, as if that was even possible, Sandro’s work is in radiation-resistant logic components - so he really couldn’t sound more like a videogame scientist if he was wearing body armor and could run top speed while carrying ten thousand rounds of ammunition.

Video games have come a long way in forty years - the average controller has more buttons than the first computers, and the internet connects you to so many people Nintendo are terrified to let you do anything but press “A”.  But what does the future hold for those of us who live in online game servers?  What do we want from future technology?

1.  A wargame where jumping like a tazed rabbit doesn’t confer a tactical advantage

The Call of Duty series creates an incredibly realistic environment, equips you with authentic weapons, has graphics so advanced that ghillie suits work, and then prances all over that with players leaping like turbo-boosted kangaroos.  The only way a marine could jump that high in full kit is by standing on a claymore, and in real life, a terrorist whose panic reaction to an MP5 is jumping?  He’ll be that soldier’s “funniest confirmed kill I ever had”.

On CoD4 servers you can be killed by expert players who bounce and crouch like fast-forwarded gymnasts.  An amphetamined-Mario couldn’t keep up with them.  You’re pouring machine gun fire right into them, and when they land behind your corpse after a triple inversion somersault you expect them to score 6.0 for Grace, 5.9 Agility, and 0.0 in Realities of War.  Halo servers technically suffer this problem even worse, with ten-tonne armored space marines leaping like they have trampoline-simulators in their futuristic space boots, but the great thing about cyborg soldiers fighting a race of space-mushrooms is that it never claimed to be realistic.

2.  Mice which administer electrical shocks to people who miss five times in a row but still play Sniper

Counter-Strike servers are the most popular places for online action, hosting more players per day than Team Fortress 2, Left 4 Dead and Call of Duty put together.  Now players have created incredible new classes for this classic!

Counter-Strike servers: where the online elite plant bombs, boom headshots, and complain more than a man who caught leprosy from a tax bill.  But in any event you have to choose between winning or whining, so here are the top three Counter-Strike complaints - and how to crush them.

Camping is a useful complaint: it tells you who’s an idiot and can be ignored. Back in the days of DOOM and Quake, flawed level design and unintended side-effects meant camping was a valid issue. People with all the fair play instincts of alligators in a daycare could perch in nigh-unkillable positions, three-hundred pound space marines balancing on one-millimeter ridges over a stairwell and annihilating all who approached. The utter impossibility of aiming above your head in any FPS, ever, meant that even when you knew where the exploiter was the best you could do was avoid him and come second.
Remember the Bad Place? Go through the middle-level door there, go up the stairs and get shot RIGHT in the head.

With over nine million copies of various versions sold since 2000, de_dust has a larger population than Denmark - and the citizens are far more patriotic.  One hundred and seventy thousand players a day mean that more people are trying to kill counter-terrorists than cure cancer.  Such a dedicated and globally connected network is a force to be reckoned with - but can they make any money?

In short: yes.  But not much.  And not you.  There are a few who make their money by playing their way, but the reactions and luck needed to reach this point are so far beyond the regular gamer that you’d be better off deciding to grab winning lottery tickets out of a hurricane.

The major monetary rewards come from competitions.  Huge events with hundreds of (paying) fans in attendance can afford to award impressive prizes.  Last year the Extreme Masters III tournament offered half a million dollars to gamers around the world, with thirty thousand dollars in sweet Counter Strike cash up for grabs.  The hardcore hardware market is often courted as theses clashes, with ubermachine makers and gaming gear peddlers trying to show off to the dedicated fanbase.  These are people who’d throw orphans back into a burning building to make room for their rig in the ambulance, so something slick and shiny can definitely be sold.

The events don’t happen often, however, and the very un-internet-age necessity of “actually dragging your meatframe to the event” prevents many from attending.  Services like CEVO and Tournament.com are working to set up continuous leagues, trying to replicate the team spirit and constant news-generation that such sporting style events bring.  They then have to contend with contentious issues like lag and cheats, and the slight difficulty of convincing people that this actually counts as a sport.  (Tournament.com found this a bit more difficult than expected, and is currently offline - the site says “We are currently re-evaluating our business model”, which means “We have absolutely no idea how to make money doing this.”)

The fact is that playing for cash can only ever work as a bonus - try turning your Counter-Strike server into cash flow and you’ll suck at both.  For one thing:  Friendly teamwork is enough of a miracle on a CS server that you don’t want to risk it - if there’s one thing that Disney’s taught us it’s that money can destroy great friendships.  Even friendships based exclusively on shooting people in the face.

For another:  You are not good enough.  No, you’re not, and you never will be, and playing eighteen hours a day under the excuse of “practise” has a better chance of winning you the “World’s Fattest Delusional” title than any videogame cash.

Some people have found a guaranteed way to turn a profit, but rest assured, if there’s a silicon hell these scum are going to burn there right beside the people behind Bubsy the Bobcat and whoever programs those “Click an iPod and WIN” banners.  Some sites which shall remain linkless offer cheats-for-cash, continually-updated hacks which promise to stay ahead of Valve anti-cheat.  Of course, for that you only have the word of someone who says “I professionally cheat at games now give me your credit card information.”

But even the most VAC-proof hackware won’t defend you from a halfway competent CS server admin.  But even if you win, you lose at life - because everyone else is having fun playing the game, while you’re the guy who’s just acting as chauffeur for a computer that’s playing with itself.