Jason Blum is a level designer for Counter-Strike. He is most known for the map Arabstreets.
At the time he was designing maps for Counter-Strike he was working as a paramedic,[1] which is likely from where he took his alias.
Biography[]
Jason Blum has always enjoyed game design as he sees it as a way of expressing artistic creativity.[2] He initially tried programming games, but due to lack of time and patience he picked up a piece of game creation software called the Adventure Construction Set which introduced him to the concept of creating games with ready made templates.[1][2] Blum thought advancing to level design was the next logical step, since it allowed the creation of game content with limited time, skill and patience.[1]
His first levels were designed for Doom, from where he moved on to Duke Nukem 3D and Quake II.[3] When Jason Blum discovered Counter-Strike he got hooked and played the game nearly everyday,[4] eventually leading to him picking up level design for the game around the time Beta 4 had been released.[2] He personally liked maps with hard to breach areas (such as in Assault) and did not mind if maps were not completely balanced as he thought victory was more satisfying when the odds were stacked against the team.[5]
The first map Blum finished for Counter-Strike was Lawfirm which was only released as a custom map.[2] He rushed to finish his second map, Arabstreets, on time for Beta 7 to have a chance to get it included.[6] The effort paid off and it was included as an official map in the release, though Blum wasn't even informed of its inclusion until the day of the release.[2] He would also have another map, Jeepathon2k, included in the release though he personally considered its inclusion a fluke.[1]
Following the inclusion of Arabstreets, Jason worked on an update for the map and a new map called Chinatown in hopes of getting these included in a future release of Counter-Strike.[3] However, his map Chinatown was never made official. Also, some miscommunication between Blum, Jess Cliffe and Valve Software resulted in Arabstreets getting excluded from the retail edition and lead Blum to believe that the map would have been cut altogether,[2][6][7] thus the updated version was not put into circulation. Arabstreets was also removed from the mod edition in Counter-Strike 1.1. Jason Blum eventually retired from level design.
Professionally, Jason Blum worked as a paramedic until August 2013 when he launched a photography business.[8]
List of maps[]
Official maps[]
| Map name | Game(s) | Responsibilities | Year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Arabstreets |  (cut)
|
Level designer, texture artist | 2000 |
| Jeepathon2k | 
|
Level designer, texture artist | 2000 |
Custom maps[]
| Map name | Game(s) | Responsibilities | Year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chinatown (de) |
|
Level designer | 2000 |
| Godfather (cs) |
|
Level designer | 2001 |
| Lawfirm (cs) |
|
Level designer | 2000 |
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 CS-Nation - Paramedic911 Interview. Archived from the original on 2001-04-12.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 STOMPED - Counter-Strike Map Interviews, Part 2: Jason "Medic911" Blum. Archived from the original on 2001-04-17.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Counter-Strike.de - Interview with the mapper behind cs_arabstreets and de_jeepathon. Archived from the original on 2000-12-15.
- ↑ Jason Vanstry | Where it all Began
- ↑ Counter-Strike.ch - Interview with Medic911. Archived from the original on 2001-11-15.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 Los Matadores CS-Portal - Interview mit Medic911. Archived from the original on 2001-04-06.
- ↑ CS-Nation - news - cs_arabstreets. Archived from the original on 2003-03-29.
- ↑ Jason Vanstry | Tip for Those Starting a Photography Business…