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Comment by kevinalexbrown | Hacker News Reader

I think the DFW was a little melodramatic here. I don't think the commitment to true excellence necessarily detracts from other possible commitments in the long run. E.g. DFW was a writer of singular ability, and he was, at various points in his life, dedicated to tennis, philosophy, and mathematics.

More to the point, the time spent being great at CS doesn't seem to have limited this guy's future ability to do things like work at a startup. While I'm sure it was an unbalanced life during the period of dedication, suggesting that it's the dedication itself which reduces athletes to "shockingly vapid and primitive comments" goes a little far.

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> I don't think the commitment to true excellence necessarily detracts from other possible commitments in the long run. E.g. DFW was a writer of singular ability, and he was, at various points in his life, dedicated to tennis, philosophy, and mathematics.

DFW is a good example, actually. As far as I know from reading his nonfiction, in tennis he never got beyond 'very promising youth' but dropped out at some point when he realized he would never be truly great; in philosophy, he published an interesting thesis which was well-regarded - but that's not a career in philosophy, much less world-class philosophizing, and then he dropped out of that; and I'm not sure what, if anything, original he ever did in mathematics. What he is remembered for is being a writer (with interest in tennis, philosophy, and math), and being a writer is what he spent most of his short life doing.

Fact is, we don't expect world-class people to have many real interests or sidelines besides dabbling; look at the recent post on Heddy Lamar. 'My god, an actress with a brain for non-acting things, who invented frequency-hopping?' You could hear brain going 'foom' in the distance.

"More to the point, the time spent being great at CS doesn't seem to have limited this guy's future ability to do things like work at a startup."

I agree it has not limited his ability to learn new things, but of course it has limited his ability to work at a startup. Just think of all the things he could be better at, from social interaction to programming, if he had spent less time playing CS.

I'm not saying he should regret it, I just think that we should all face the fact that we all make sacrifices. You can't have it all.

Exactly. And on top of that, CS was only popular for a brief period of time. Had it already been popular when he was a kid, like Tennis, then he would have probably been practicing at a very young age to become world class. And if CS was still as popular, he might be still playing it.

> And if CS was still as popular, he might be still playing it.

As of this posting there are ~52000 players currently playing CS according to Steam, with a peak in the past 24 hours at ~65000. For CS:S, the numbers are 38000 and 50000 respectively.

That's not all that popular for an online game.

There are probably 20-100 times as many people playing Warcraft over time same time frame. It's about at the level of EVE online which is a vary nitch MMO. Distributed Systems Architect Jacky Mallett explained that “we hit a new peak of online usage, 63,170 users online concurrently” on January 23 http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/03/02/eve-online-has-over-360000...

PS: Considering the player base and ongoing subscription costs I would not be surprised if wow peak's at 2,000,000 - 3,000,000 players at the same time.

Comparing MMO online presence to FPSs is comparing apples and oranges. MMOs are designed to keep you playing for hours upon hours; FPSs, though some do the same, are structured in 5-15 min individual games. And all that time is spent playing, unlike MMOs where boring downtime spent chatting can dominate the experience at the upper end and in some games (like EVE).

CS is still the most popular game on Steam[1] if you count both Source and 1.6, and has been for years. It is still played professionally[2], with a major tournament happening right now[3].

[1]: http://store.steampowered.com/stats/

[2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counter-Strike#Legacy

[3]: http://dreamhack.binarybeast.com/#CS16

Thanks. Though, as far as I understand, Source is different enough that the author would loos most of his edge.

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