Minh Le

Minh Le (nicknamed Gooseman) is a Vietnamese-Canadian computer game developer, known for co-creating Counter-Strike with Jess Cliffe in 1999.

Le first picked up Quake in 1996 and began playing with its SDK (Software development kit), and after about a year he completed his first modification called Navy SEALs, Counter-Strike's spiritual predecessor. 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. He spent about 20 hours a week on making the mod, expending more effort on it than he did on his schoolwork, 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.

By the fourth beta version, Valve Software, the developer who created Half-Life, began assisting in the development of Counter-Strike. In 2000, Valve bought the rights to Counter-Strike and hired Le and Cliffe to work with them in 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.

After Counter-Strike: Source was shelved, Le left Valve to work on a project of his own. 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

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's a sprayer (P90 User) bot named "Minh"