Minh Le is a Canadian computer game designer and developer, known for co-creating Counter-Strike with Jess Cliffe in 1999. He served as the project leader, programmer and modeller on the title.
His alias, "Gooseman", originates from the character Shane Gooseman from Robert Mandell's The Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers.[1]
Biography[]
Minh Le was born in Canada to Vietnamese parents, who relocated to Canada to flee the Vietnam War.[2] Minh Le picked up the Quake SDK when in his first year at university and set out to design what would become his first released mod, Navy SEALs.[3] He was drawn into the development of mods because of the freedom it offered to create something tailored to his personal taste.[4] While he didn't think Navy SEALs was anything special, it was during its development that Le became increasingly interested in developing games.[3]
Minh Le started working on a Navy SEALs type of mod for the Quake 2 engine but he lost interest during its development.[5] As he had already completed models for the mod, he decided to give them to A-Team, the Action Quake 2 developers, after trying an early version of the mod. The A-Team liked the models so much that they made Le part of the team.[5] It was during this time that he became acquainted with Jess Cliffe.[6] Le eventually decided to leave the A-Team because he felt he had lost what had initially drawn him into mod development: the freedom to tailor the game design according to his wishes.[7]
Thus he set out to design what would become Counter-Strike. He casually approached Jess Cliffe about his intentions to create a mod during an IRC chat, and they decided to team up for the creation of the mod.[6] Le was the project leader and would be responsible for most of the programming and modeling for the game.[8]
Once the popularity of Counter-Strike blew up around the releases of Beta 5 and Beta 6,[3] Valve Software decided to approach the Counter-Strike Team about acquiring the rights for the title in 2000.[9] They initially casually approached only Minh Le as he was living much closer to the Valve headquarters to touch base.[9] Shortly after the meeting, Valve contacted both Le and Cliffe by email about purchasing the right to the title, which both of them agreed upon.[9] They were both also offered jobs and Le would soon start working at Valve remotely from home.[9]
At Valve, Le would work on future patches for the original Counter-Strike. He was never directly involved in the development of Counter-Strike: Condition Zero and kept an advisory role on the title as his main project was Counter-Strike 2.[10][11] However, development on the title never really got off the ground and the title was cancelled.[11] In 2006 Minh Le and Valve parted ways.[11]
After leaving Valve, Minh started development on his own project.[11] However, he quickly ran out of funding and in 2008 he moved to South Korea to enable further development on the title, named Tactical Intervention.[11] While Le had hoped he could develop the game he had wanted, various management issues lead to a serious shortage of manpower and the game was eventually released to very mediocre reviews in 2013.[12][13]
He relocated back to Canada and started working as a 3D animator for Facepunch Studios on the title Rust in 2014.[12][14]
Trivia[]
- In Dust2 of Counter-Strike, there is graffiti that bears his nickname, Goose, at bombsite A.
- The achievement from Counter-Strike: Source, "Wild Gooseman Chase", is obviously a reference to Minh Le.
- In expert mode, there is bot named "Minh" who uses the P90.
- Minh Le and Jess Cliffe, the Counter-Strike creators, share the same birthday.[15]
- Le is left-handed, and originally animated the Counter-Strike weapons with left-handed operation as that is more natural for him.[16]
References
- ↑ VentureBeat | Counter-Strike’s co-creator likes keeping out of the limelight
- ↑ Dyer-Witheford, N. & de Peuter, G. (2009). Games of Empire: Global Capitalism and Video Games, p. 25. University of Minnesota Press. ISBN: 0-8166-6611-3
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Gamasutra - Interview with Minh Le
- ↑ STOMPED - Counter-Strike Interview, Part I. Archived from the original on 2001-06-05.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 Actor's Guild - Developer Area - Gooseman: The Man, The Mystery...The Modeler. Archived from the original on 2001-06-28.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 CS-Nation - Counter-Strike: Year 1. Archived from the original on 2000-08-15.
- ↑ Ministry of Development - Article - Interview with Gooseman of Counter Strike. Archived from the original on 1999-10-01.
- ↑ Counter-Strike: www.counter-strike.net - [The CS Team]. Archived from the original on 2000-06-13.
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.3 PCGamesN | The making of: Counter-Strike
- ↑ Intelgamer.com - Counter-Strike: Condition Zero Interview. Archived from the original on 2002-01-27.
- ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 11.3 11.4 IGN - The Next Counterstrike
- ↑ 12.0 12.1 [RGN]. (2014). Minh "Gooseman" Le Interview - The Creator of Counter-Strike. [video] Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGAP9iygk00.
- ↑ Metacritic - Tactical Intervention for PC Reviews
- ↑ LinkedIn | Minh Le
- ↑ CS-Nation - news - birthday boys. Archived from the original on 2003-10-05.
- ↑ Counter-Strike: www.counter-strike.net - News Archive - Older News. Archived from the original on 2001-06-10.