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Iikka Keränen is a level designer and texture artist for Counter-Strike.

Biography

Iikka Keränen entered level designing through Doom. He would release several custom levels starting in 1996 and would eventually be voted the best level designer for Doom in 1998.[1] His first commercial level design project was Hacx in 1997, developed by Banjo Software.

In 1998 he moved to the United States to pursue a career in video games. Keränen was employed by ION Storm where he worked on Anachronox. Despite working professionally on video games, he was still active in the community and would release custom maps for both Doom and Quake.

Enter 2001, and he was employed by Valve Corporation.[2] This was also when he would start working on maps for Counter-Strike. He worked at Valve until 2022 and has contributed to numerous games developed by them, including Half-Life 2 and its episodes, Portal and Left 4 Dead series, and Team Fortress 2. He has also worked on Counter-Strike: Condition Zero, Counter-Strike: Source and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, being responsible for the updated versions of some maps.[3]

Iikka Keränen co-founded a game development company called Digital Eel in 2001 which is also in the video game business, though it mostly focuses on smaller titles.

List of maps

Official maps

Map name Game(s) Responsibilities Year
Airstrip Cs t Texture artist 2003
Canals Game icon 730 Level designer 2017
Chateau Css t Environment artist 2004
Cobblestone Game icon 730 Level designer 2013
Italy Css t Environment artist 2004
Piranesi Cs t
Css t
Level designer
Environment artist
2002
2004
Quarry Cscz t (cut)[n 1] Texture artist 2004
Storm Cs t Texture artist 2001
  1. Quarry was originally supposed to be an official map, but it was cut during development and later redesigned and released as a custom map in 2004.

Trivia

  • Iikka Keränen sometimes leaves his signatures in random places on the maps he made, which look like galactic symbols. Such signatures can be seen on Piranesi, Canals, Source version of Chateau, Global Offensive version of Cobblestone.

References

  1. 5 Years of Doom
  2. Valve - People. Archived from the original on 2021-11-28.
  3. Half-Life 2 - Raising the Bar. Archived on valvearchive.com.

External links

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