Introduction

The Goose is loose

A year and a half ago, Counter-Strike started out as a simple modification for Half-Life. Under the watchful eyes of developers Gooseman and Cliffe, Counter-Strike has grown to become the most popular online FPS game, easily surpassing both Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament. According to GameSpy, right at this moment (10:23 PM PST) there are 15611 people playing Counter-Strike. In comparison, there are only 2931 people playing Quake 3 (3307 people if you include Team Arena), 2774 people playing UT, and 1503 people playing Tribes. The next closest Half-Life mod, Team Fortress Classic, has 3272 people.

We love playing Counter-Strike here in the FS offices. Fortunately, Gooseman was gracious enough to grant us an interview. (We would have interviewed Cliffe too, but we heard about what he does with Wonderbread, and, frankly, it scared us.) As always, our questions are in bold and Gooseman's answers are in normal font.

Counter-terrorists in the mist

Go Go Go!

FiringSquad: For our readers who are new to the Counter-Strike scene, could you please give us your name and share a little something about yourself (age, school, favorite food, pet peeves, plans for world domination, etc).

Gooseman: My real name is Minh Le, and I'm a 23 year-old living in Vancouver. There isn't really anything interesting about me.. I just recently graduated from SFU, my favourite food is Chinese dim sum, My pet peeves are tailgaters, people who try to control your life, and people who smell really bad. Oh, and my favourite type of music is Trance music!! I LOVE listening to trance music while I work.. Can't get enough of Trance!! My favourite artists are DJ Tiesto, Armin van Buuren, Ferry Corsten, and Airscape!!!

Sniping... Mmmmm..

I feel sorry for the CT who walks out that door.

FiringSquad: Can you tell us a little about your gaming background? What were your favorite games when you were growing up?

I've been a gamer since I was 8'ish.. I started out playing on a VIC-20, then moved on to a Commodore 64, Commodore 128, XT, 286, 386, 486, Pentium, Celeron, and now finally my Athlon 600 (which is showing its age). I played LOTS of games when I was young.. It's hard to single out any favourites but some of the titles that stick out in my mind are: - Green Beret, Beach Head for the Commodore 64 - Betrayal at Krondor, Ultima 7 (I *LOVED* killing people in their sleep.. muhahah), Duke Nukem 3d, Doom 1/2, Quake1/2 (sadly, didn't have much time to get into Quake3 that much). I'm probably forgetting some .. but those are the ones that were easiest to remember.

Careful! There's a sniper out there.

You're right!

FiringSquad: When did you start developing Counter-Strike? What were you doing (for a living) at the time?

I started about 2 years ago. I was in the middle of my 4th year at SFU. Things were pretty hectic at the time since I was taking a full course load. I spent more time on Counter-Strike though.. I still managed to get decent grades during that time though.. (ahhh.. the power of cramming). I actually managed to work Counter-Strike into one of my school projects so that was pretty convenient.