Minh Le - Definition and Overview

Minh Le (in Vietnamese Lê Minh, born 1978), also known by his online nickname Gooseman, is a Vietnamese-Canadian computer game developer who created the popular Half-Life mod Counter-Strike with Jess Cliffe in 1999.

Le first picked up Quake in 1996 and began playing with the SDK. With it he created his first mod, called Navy SEALs. While he was working on the Action Quake 2 mod, he came up with the idea for Counter-Strike and became friends with AQ2's webmaster Jess Cliffe.

Cliffe and Gooseman, known as the "Counter-Strike team", began work on Counter-Strike while Le was in the middle of his fourth year at Simon Fraser University (he later graduated with a degree in computer science). Gooseman handled the modeling and programming while Cliffe did public relations and the website. Le spent about 20 hours a week on making the mod, expending more effort on it than he did on his schoolwork, and beta 1.0 was released in June 1999.

Gooseman and Cliffe joined Valve Software in 2000 where they continue to work on Counter-Strike and related games. In 2003, GameSpy ranked Minh Le as the most important reason Half-Life was still popular five years after it was released. [1] (http://www.gamespy.com/articles/489/489723p4.html)

External links

• Counter-Strike.net: The Counter-Strike Team (http://www.counter-strike.net/csteam.html)
• Eurogamer.net: Minh Le interview (2000) (http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=265)
• Firing Squad: Minh Le interview (2001) (http://www.firingsquad.com/features/gooseint/)