Minh Le (Vietnamese: Lê Minh, born June 27, 1977), also known by his online nickname Gooseman, is a Vietnamese-Canadian computer game developer who co-created the popular Half-Life mod Counter-Strike with Jess Cliffe in 1999. He was later employed by Valve Software, the developers of Half-Life, and is currently working on the multiplayer first-person shooter Tactical Intervention. In the small-team games that he has worked on, Le has been a programmer, modeler, and designer.
Le first picked up id Software's Quake in 1996 and began playing with its software development kit, and after about a year he completed his first mod (short for "modification") called Navy SEALs, Counter-Strike's spiritual predecessor.[1][2] 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.
Le began work on Counter-Strike as a mod for Half-Life while he was in the middle of his fourth year at Simon Fraser University[2] (he later graduated with a degree in computer science[3]). He spent about 20 hours a week on making the mod, expending more effort on it than he did on his schoolwork,[1] and released the first beta version in June 1999. The "Counter-Strike Team" quickly produced several more beta releases in the following months as the game's popularity skyrocketed.[1]
By the fourth beta version, Valve Software, the developer who created Half-Life, began assisting in the development of Counter-Strike.[4] In 2000, Valve bought the rights to Counter-Strike and hired Le and Cliffe to work with them in Bellevue, Washington, USA where Le continued to work on Counter-Strike and related games. During this time he was developing Counter-Strike 2, however Valve eventually put this project on hold indefinitely.[5]
After Counter-Strike 2 was shelved, Le left Valve to work on a project of his own.[5] After two years working with a small team on this project, he then moved to South Korea in 2008 to work with a business named FIX Korea who provided funding for further development. Le's new game was later revealed to be Tactical Intervention, a game similar in style to Counter-Strike created with a modified version of Valve's Source engine.[6]
In 2003, a GameSpy editorial cited Minh Le as the most important reason Half-Life was still popular five years after it was released.[7] IGN ranked Jess Cliffe and Minh Le as number 14 in their "Top 100 Game Creators of All Time" list.[8]
In a very popular map of the game Counter-Strike, de_dust2, the name "Goose" is sprayed on the wall at bombsite A.