SERVICES: The Counter-Strike Documentary

The original SERVICES poster, 2000

You are about to see what may be one of the most influential documentaries in videogame history... even though it's never been broadcast (until now).

SERVICES: The CounterStrike Documentary. 

(I've uploaded it to The Sand Table, my Youtube gaming channel.)

SERVICES was seen in three places only:

- At its informal premiere at the Toronto Stock Exchange in 2001.

- At Digifest 2003, "Electronic Cities", in Toronto...

- And at Valve, creator of CounterStrike. Valve first saw SERVICES about 2002.

In fact, it was almost broadcast on television, back before Youtube paved the way for game documentaries, but this was blocked because of "flickering screens".

How much has this documentary influenced this history of videogames?

SERVICES: The CounterStrike Documentary

Produced & Directed by Tim Carter

Video Interview by Mike D'Abramo & Tim Carter

Counter-Strike by Valve Software

Special thanks to all the players who participated.

Fire Zone

Fire Zone: 1998: Front Cover Design

20th Century Military Roleplaying & Miniatures
Fire Zone is a tabletop roleplaying-slash-miniatures game I designed and wrote.

I've just uploaded it to Scribd...  Get it there for free.You can see the entire 280-page game manual there. It works well as a sourcebook for a modern military RPG campaign you might be running... I'd say it even works as a read unto itself - as a reference book. So you may find it interesting, though it's probably a bit too complex to be playable.

(Pardon the low-rez scan... It took me an entire day to scan the 1998 draft.)

Fire Zone has a long story. It contains a pretty extensive Design Notes section, in the manuscript - but I want to include some context in this post.

Along the Edges of Zeitgeist
Really, it is the anchorpoint for most of my thinking and design work around modern combat subjects. It begins in 1984, when I began to gamemaster Traveller, the roleplaying game, in a serious way.