Played every version of CS since beta 1.0, no questions, just wanted to say thanks and you are awesome. Looking forward to TI.

You're welcome! Ti is already out :)

www.tactical-intervention.com

Maybe this explains why no one plays it ..... NO ONE KNOWS ABOUT IT!! IT's out get it while it's hot :)

Oddly enough I've been eagerly awaiting being able to play TI but somehow completely missed the launch. I just now found out it's live. Don't know how that happened but I know what I'm doing when I get home from work!

YES!! I just got ourselves 1 new player.. MUHAHA my job here is done.

• Browsed www.tactical-intervention.com
• Downloaded and installed OGPlanet
• Tried to download TI to play, apparently Australia isn't supported
• Uninstalled OGPlanet
• Wrote about it here.

damn :( seems we disappointed a lot of Aussies today :(

Hello, testing.. is this working

CS Voice "Affirmative"

cS Voice: "Roger That"

CS Voice: "Storm the Front!"

CS Voice: "Now you're just making shit up" :)

[deleted]

CS Voice: "Requesting a shipment of raw slabs of meat."

HAHAHA! Me and Cliffe had a running joke about raw slabs of meat.. I told him I'd add it as a weapon to CS one day but i never got around to it...

What are your opinions on the new Counter Strike GO?

I think it needs to stop being so damn popular so I can get some players to play TI.

At this point you are essentially competing for players with your two babies

Damnit, I knew I should have worn a condom..

What about gamemods that branched off of your mod, like Surfing or KZ?

I think those are great as they cater to a crowd that I originally didn't even know existed when I invented CS.

ok, Hi guys, thanks for coming out, before I begin I just wanted to give a shout out to some great friends of mine who've been hard at work on their own games. Blade Symphony: http://www.blade-symphony.com/ A great skill based sword fighting game that is heavily influenced by light sabre combat from Jedi Knight Outcast.

Son of Nor: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/stillalivestudios/son-of-nor-the-world-is-your-weapon?ref=category A really innovative new game involving really cool abilities such as land terraforming, telekinisis, and other forms of magic.

Please check them out!

So without further ado, let's answer these questions....

Oh man! I loved JK:O and JK:A!

Will definitely check those out!

YES!! I just got them 1 new player.. woohoo. I get 5 cents for every new recruit. TELL YOUR FRIENDS!! Tell your mother!!

Are you trying to get T.I. onto Steam? That would really help drive players to use it.

Thanks for the great game...only game I have played since 1999. Changed many lives, including mine. Thank you.

Steam integration would require a fair amount of work and it's something I'm not qualified to answer adequately.

You're welcome. I'm happy to hear about your happiness...

Gooseman! Fun fact, fy_pool_day and I met eachother over counter-strike and have been friends ever since! So thank you!!!

awesome man! Always great to see how CS can build relationships like this. It always nice to hear about these things instead of hearing about news about players stabbing or killing each in real life because of CS.

If TI were on Steam I'd have bought it within 10 minutes of learning of this AMA.

Thanks for CounterStrike and all the fun over the years.

You're welcome and shame we missed out on the Steam boat :(

Interesting fact, I never knew what an AMA stood for until OGPlanet asked me to do one. I thought to myself, "Why the hell would I want to attend the Amish Music Awards?"

If you could undo one change that valve made to CS what would it be and why?

Is Gaben really the beloved teddy bear that he appears to be or are their secret valve gulags?

PS. Could you please tell daybreak that Govenor Cuomo is comming to take his guns.

I'd prolly undo the amount of AWP whoring in CS. I'm not a huge fan of the way the matches would evolve into a snipe fest. I feel sniping is something that needs to be kept in check or else it will restrict the flow of the firefights.

Gabe is a great thinker and someone who's not afraid to take chances. I really fortunate that I was able to work under him. Yes, he's a very amicable person in real life in spite of the fact that he has a room full of knives...

hah, ok, I'll tell Daybreak that...

How do you feel counter-strike changed competitive E-Sports for the better?

Edit: And what do you think its negative effects on E-Sports were?

To be honest, I never really got into the E-Sports scene that much. My time with counter-strike was mainly spent playing on public servers with some of my mates. Having seen the E-Sports community evolve around CS is really amazing though when I set out to design CS, it was never the goal to make it an E-Sports game. I guess it evolved naturally through the hard work of others who saw the potential to make it an E-sport game.

AFAIK, as the negative aspects of E-Sports. I find designing games to strictly cater to E-sports limits some of the design decisions you can make. For example, making assymetrical gameplay is a big no-no in E-Sports.

did you do all the modeling/animation in the old CS beta days? how did you learn to do that stuff? What did you use? Milkshape?

Yea, I did all the modeling/ animation/ coding for CS up until CS Beta 7

I used 3dsmax for the modeling/animation Photoshop for the texture work.

Never got into milkshape as I was so used to 3dsmax workflow.. The first modeling program I used was Quark Army Knife. That thing was soooo archaic. I had to plot each vertice 1 by 1. It took me 2 months to model an M-16

oh have times have changed...

I played Counter-Strike from beta 1 upward throughout highschool, and Half-Life/CS got me interested in making models/animations for games. I must say that I was always very impressed with your animations, especially the first-person gun animations. I used to stare at the model viewer, studying how you crafted those models and anims so that I could try to replicate them. I even made some custom death animations for the characters in CS (before restrictions were put on that sort of thing due to cheaters).

If you see this, did you teach yourself modeling/animation?

Thanks, I love doing animations as that was probably my favourite part of content creation. I taught myself animation as there wasn't any animation schools back then that taught game animation. I used 3dsmax + Character studios for all the player/weapon animations for CS.

For TI, I'm using Softimage XSI for the animations.

I'm at work right now and don't have a question, but I've been sitting here waiting for your AMA to come up just to say thanks for making my confusing, angsty teenage years more bearable by letting me 1 deag random people on the internet to my heart's desire. The time I played (1.1 up until 2006) was some of my favorite times ever.

But seriously, thanks. My favorite game of all time by far.

edit: Actually, I do have a question. What do you think of CSGO?

You're welcome! It's always a great motivation to hear about people who have had so much enjoyment out of CS. In fact, a lot of the guys that are working with me on Tactical Intervention joined in part because of CS. Tony Sergi is one of our programers who I met through HL Coders and contacted me because of CS. Andrew Ritchie who is responsible for all of our backend code and making various bits and bobs that I don't really understand came to us because he played a lot of CS as well. Also, our mappers such as Ben Kleber, and Til Sichel are also former CS players.

Sorry, I got side tracked there, getting back to your question of what I think of CS:GO. I think it's really well polished and wonderfully balanced levels. I envy the amount of man power they have to deliver such a polished product..

What is your favorite Counter-Strike map (in any version)? Do you prefer cs or de maps?

I liked cs_facility as my favourite.. hard choice as there were sooo many good ones.

I have no preference towards cs or de I enjoyed maps from both mission modes... in fact, assasination maps were great fun for me as as_oilrig was a major source of entertainment when I was playing.

Thoughts on cs_siege? I always felt as though it was the perfect map in any game like this. Even better than de_dust.

yea, I loved cs_siege. It had some wonderful firefights. There's not much I would change to it aside from moving the hostages a little closer out as it was quite a long way to escort them from their capture point to the CT rescue zone..

I miss the days when full rotation was played instead of Dust2/Office/Italy. Oil rig was amazing fun, nothing more suspenseful than being the vip with good players. And Siege was amazing, can't have it anymore though, AWPs and all that.

T.I was a bit faced paced for me during the open beta, maybe ill look into it again.

Yea, I think we need to design better maps in the future. The current maps in TI are a bit too chaotic and can be a bit of a frantic mess for some players. This is something I'll try to address in our future maps.

Hey Gooseman, not a question but more of a thanks. Without Counter-Strike, there never would have been a CS-Nation. Without CS-Nation, I never would have gotten a start there posting news about the game many years ago.

And without that, I never would have become the Community Manager for the site and subsequently the CM for the network that acquired CSN a few years back.

So, thank you (and Cliffe) for creating a game that helped me to discover a new enjoyable hobby (writing for a community).

Wow, so glad it had such a positive impact on your life. Now please send a royalty cheque to....

haha, just kidding.. Glad to hear about your success story and hopefully one day, you'll write about TI :)

Haha, well I've gotten a few news pieces up for TI already. I still plan on doing a video preview/review at some point once I find the time.

Thanks and take care!

thanks for the exposure man! If you want to do any interviews, just hit me up on my twitter

GoosemanTI

I seem to recall you also working on Action Quake 2, my all-time favourite game of like, ever. Which gave more satisfaction, CS or AQ2?

I LOVED working with the Action Quake Team on AQ2. They were a great bunch of guys and we were all on the same page in terms of what direction the game would go. I had some great memories from that time, unfortunately, I have not kept in touch with any of them :(

It's a close call but I got more satisfaction out of working on CS. I had pretty much full reign over how the game was developed and my relationship with Cliffe was really symbiotic. We each had our own roles and he was able to leverage the community so well and was a big reason why we had such a strong community

I absolutely loved Action Quake. Strafe jumping on Urban...those were the good days.

hah, memories.. my favbourite AQ2 map was "Lock n Load"

Did you mean for surfing to be a legitimate function within the game?

which game? CS or TI?

I'm not aware of this "surfing" of which you speak of ..

surfing is a mod combine a few physics engine mechanics in CS

oh, interesting.. I've never heard of it until now. I stopped playing CS after CS 1.0

I've been playing Counter-Strike since version 0.6, and I still go back and play it 14 years later. Thanks for making one of my favorite games.

You're welcome! thanks for your support

This just made my entire week! Thanks!

Wow, lemme say how exhausting it is to make a week.. So glad, God decided to make Sunday so I can sleep in..

Ever played with PODBots? PODBots were the best!

Yes, I did... until I threw a flash...

Throw a flash and game over.

high five

[deleted]

Editing films in the porn industry.

Why not edit the porn stars as hostages in T.I? Best of both worlds!

Wicked suggestion.. Shall do some research now

What was the first game you ever played that got you into gaming in the first place? Was it Carmen Sandiego or Oregon Trail?

It was neither of these.. It was an old Vic-20 game.... whose name escapes me. It involved a boat going down a river shooting at Vietnamese people..

I had no idea they were vietnamese at the time because it's hard to discern nationality with 16 pixels.

That game sounds epic - was it this? http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/ea/River_Rescue-screenshot.png

Yes, you have just discovered a gem from my past.... and I hope you dont find it epic because it involves shooting Vietnamese people... or maybe it was the wholeboat going down river` that sold you :)

Hey, goose! 1- You've stated that, at some point the CS community was reluctant to some sudden changes that were made (1.5 to 1.6 for example), and that a lot of backlash was given because of it. Did you feel disappointed that you couldn't follow your direction because the community had gain its own voice, or were you happy/surprised that the game was shifting to become something bigger?

2- Because of this backlash, were there any items/weapons/features etc that never made the cut to the final game?

3- Why Tactical FPS' and not another genre?

Cheers.

Hi Scypher, I was actually not involved in CS after 1.0. So I can't really comment on the changes that occurred after 1.0 as I was busy working on other stuff at Valve. TBH, I felt the game had reached its course in terms of features and functionality after CS 1.5 and I wasn't really keen on stirring the pot. I was too busy trying to R&D a new CS project that would have new features and gameplay that I didn't get the chance to add to CS 1.0

Oops. forgot to answe the rest. 2- Not that I can recall. I believe all the guns that we planned on adding were in fact added. I think the one item that did get nixed was the shield.. because of balance issues.

3- With TI, I felt there was some room for innovation in the Tactical FPS genre. I really wanted to explore new game mechanics and try to see if there's things we could to do encourage more team play in a round based scenario.

Are you happy you finally got K9's into T.I. so that you could make MutatedJellyFish finally shutup?

HAHAH.. Yes, But I still need to add 90000 guns to make MTG shut up..

Can I get a "Special Thanks" in the credits? ;)

I shall make it so...

What made you choose OGPlanet as the company you wanted to work with?

Actually, the decision was made by my CEO, so I can't really answer this with any amount of accuracy.

Cool, how do you feel about OGP so far? Do you like them as a company and how they're running T.I. or do you think major improvements need to be made?

I think they're doing a fine job of running TI and servicing the community up to this point. I have no issues with them whatsoever..

Hello, been playing CS since beta! AK user forever, that distinctive sound... makes me so wet every time.

Congrats on the launch of TI!

How did you capture the sounds for both CS and TI?

Also: CS has always been about "fine-tuning" your gameplay: you need to be INTIMATELY aware of your gun and its recoil. You can (and often do) die in encounters lasting >10secs. Quick, fast, round-based action. As such, it seems to be very suitable for e-sports.

How will TI, with its attack dogs, rappeling, and other gameplay features add to e-sports potential? Will these features take the potential away, or add to it?

Thanks for stopping by... appreciate your comments. In future, I'm not terribly interested in what gets you wet, but thank you for letting me know..

Capturing the sounds for CS involved a fair bit of mixing.. I'll be brutally honest, I "borrowed" sounds from other games and combined them into some Frankenstein sound effect. Most of the gun sounds were done this way...

I think TI is still in its early stages of E-Sports potential. I feel the dogs with the way they are now add a predictable element to the gameplay and I'm hopeful they can find their way into E-Sports matches.. The same can be said for the other things such as grenades, rappelling..I feel these elements are all very predictable and not overly abused. If they are, then we can tweak them...

First off a big thank you! If it wasnt for counter strike it wouldnt have started my interest in computers way back 12 years ago.

Now to my question, Im currently developing my own mod called Breaking Point off of the Arma 2 engine. Over the past month the mod has really taken off and gained huge amount of popularity.

Do you have any advice for a first time modder with a game that's rapidly expanding in popularity?

Wow, congratulations on your mod's success!

I suggest you to keep engaged with your playerbase as much as you can. It will be difficult at times listening to people constantly complain about your game but in time, you will learn to filter out what is important and what is purely subjective suggestions.

The key point is to let your community know that they're a part of the development and they do have a voice. It will you build a stronger community.

Also, if you can get your community involved in the content creation process (whether through making models or maps), you will save A LOT of time and it will help your game grow even faster.

I would recommend finding a dedicated community liason person to handle gathering community feedback and relaying information from the dev team to the community. Having someone who specializes in just doing this will allow you to focus on making the game, while still giving your player base an efficient way to communicate with you.

Best of luck !

Thank you for CS! What was your reaction to the massive success of the game?

I was really happy about it and it gave me confidence that I could work on another project. To be fair though, most of the success of CS was attributed to the community. All the levels were done by the community and I feel good levels play a fundamental role in the success of your game. Being able to harness the creativity of such a large group of talent paid huge dividends in the success of CS.

Are you planning to launch T.I for europeans? If so, when?

We're shooting for a late summer release. I believe there's plans to make an appearance at GamesCon in Cologne.

This is all tentative but these are things I can say with a reasonable amount of accuracy.

Did you feel any pressure when developing T.I.? I mean, C.S. must be one of the most popular games in the whole world, did you feel any pressure in fulfilling people's expectations?

Not tooo much. Prolly not as much pressure as I felt at Valve trying to come up with CS2. I left the CS franchise so I could explore new game mechanics a bit easier without having to restrict myself to the CS fan base. I think as the CS community matured they grew accustomed to certain game mechanics and as the leagues formed, it was hard to introduce new changes to CS. When I worked on TI, I didn't have that environment so it was a bit more relaxed in terms of what I could experiment with gameplay wise.

I've been playing CS since Beta and I was instantly hooked!

Who did the voices for the radio commands? Go go go!

That was done by Jesse Cliffe.. He did all the voice acting for CS. The voice commands, the hostages, the dying sounds, etc..

Funny story, Cliffe was in college at the time and every time he recorded the dying sounds, it sounded like he was climaxing. I think he was embarassed by it but I told him I needed them, so please record 100 more variations...

What other roles did Jesse Cliffe play in Counter-Strike?

He played the role of desperate house wife looking to make a quick buck only to find out the mean streets of Philadelphia aren't such a good place to sell your body.

Actually, Cliffe was the community liason and handled all interaction between the CS team and the mappers/players. He also developed our website..

I always wondered about that too - those were the voices that were stuck in my head during highschool.

Oh man, that explains your high school life.... haha "GO GO GO!!" rushing to your next class..

"Fire in the hole!!" In chemistry class...

deagle. genius. thank you goosemanII

what's your favourite weapon from the original CS?

thanks.. It does have a certain sex appeal... My fave gun in CS was the MP5.

I'm still kinda bummed they didn't include it in CS:GO ...

I Don't have a question just wanted to say thank you for making my childhood awesome. I was very sick when I was younger and had to stay home a lot of the time and Counter-strike really helped me pass the time and distract me from the pain of the things I was physically going through.

So pretty much just a long thank you!

wow, that's awesome man! I'm glad I was somewhat responsible for easing your pain..

I hope if you're in pain in the future, you can turn to TI.. It's known to have a very effective pain relieving side effect..

It's also known to induce fits of rage but, hey.. life's a box of chocolates and you gotta pick the right ones, or a sharks gonna come out of the alley and bite your face off.

Many fans of the original Counter-Strike have received the newer Counter-Strike games with very little enthusiasm at best and outright hostility at worst. If you were still involved in Counter-Strike development, what - if anything - would you do to mitigate the concerns of these players? Also, do you feel their rejection of the newer versions is the proper response if they wish to have a new Counter-Strike that plays like the original?

I think Valve are in a very difficult position in trying to please the old school CS players while also trying to innovate and push the CS franchise forward. It's not something I really have an answer to nor do I feel I could do it any better. If anything, I'd prolly be a bit more polarizing in my game design decisions.

While I was working at Valve, I remember the reaction I had when CS:Source was released. A lot of us were anticipating all the CS 1.6 players would migrate over to CS:Source but what happened was very surprising to me. I wasn't expecting CS 1.6 players to be so picky about the slight changes that in CS:Source.

TBH, I really don't know how Valve can better tackle the problem of pushing the CS franchise forward without abandoning some of the old school CS 1.6 players..

[deleted]

You're welcome :)

First off all, a big thank you is appropriate here as your creation changed, and became my life, playing Counter-Strike professionally for almost 10 years.

I would like to ask a few questions if that's okay: 1) Did you ever follow competitive Counter-Strike to recent date, and if so: did the teams' and players' performances ever suprise you in any way, did you have favourite teams and players?

2) Maps have always interested me as a tactitian, and I would argue that Nuke and Train were the best maps in Counter-Strike as they allowed a great diversity of styles and openings. What was your favorite map all-time, and how much were you involved in the map development?

3) Do you think the plant/defuse max-rounds format is the ultimate format for team-based FPS? Were you ever surprised how the community failed to appreciate the escape and assassination modes?

4) Riot shield, really? The APC on cs_siege was a better idea! :)

Good luck with T.I. - and I truly wish you still had the rights to the CS trademark.

1). I didn't follow the competitive scene much at all.. It really is a full time job developing a game and finding time to even play it is a challenge. Keeping up with the competitive scene can be a full time job in and of itself.

2) I wasn't involved in the map development of CS at all. If I rememer correctly, the most I ever did was tell David Johnston (the guy behind de_dust) that his map was too yellow.. thank god he ignored my suggestion. I liked cs_siege / cs_facility / cs_assault / de_dust / cs_747

3) Yea, I think de_ modes are definitely the most conducive to team play as they naturally encouraged team cohesion. I think Escape scenario failed because it encouraged teams to avoid getting in a firefight. Assasination was fun and I think with better maps and a bit more tweaking of the game mode, It could be more succesful.

4) I've found a great use for the riot shield in TI. It has a very specific purpose that allows for new tactics to form.

Hi Minh,

Do you still keep in contact with your colleagues at Valve? If so, what's their feedback so far on your latest venture?

Thanks!

I do keep in touch with Cliffe and some of the others at Valve. They've been really supportive and have gone above and beyond to help me get TI to where it is. They've always given me special treatment with regards to tech support and that sort of stuff. I'm fortunate to have their backing..

I haven't really heard much about their thoughts on TI. TBH, I haven't really asked anyone at Valve on their thoughts on TI.

What kind of car do you drive?

How good are you at CS?

Right now, I'm driving my parents '97 Toyota Camry. It's a gas guzzler since it's a V6 but it's great when I need to merge into lanes as it has a fair amount of spunk.

I used to be pretty good at CS back in the day. I would generally get in the top 3 Kills/Death Ratio whenever I played on public servers. I played with my mates though so that helped a lot. CS is one of those games that reward teamwork.

You checked out, definitely Vietnamese. Toyota Camry. Yupe.

runs on Pho instead of gasoline.. YUP

license plate with the number 8 YUP..

4 digit cs user here (was wonID of-course)

What is your favorite cs map?

Also - Where can I buy your new game?

Thank you for creating CS, I've wasted 2340 hours playing it over the past 14 years (according to steam?)

CS_facility was my fave.

www.tactical-intervention.com It's a free2play game. I hope you like it :)

You're welcome ! and damn... that's a lot of time... I can't help but wonder if that time could have been better put to flipping burgers or filling people's cars with gasoline.... nah, CS time trumps that... rock on :)

How do you think the beta testing of T.I. went? I still play it and it was pretty awesome. You should definitely slide some astros my way :D for future updates and all. And are you the one to talk to about suggestions? Oh and how is it working with OGP?

The BETA Testing for TI went as well as I could hope for it to go considering the length of it. I'm glad you're enjoying it and we're continually working on new updates for it. Right now, I'm working on a new map and my co-workers are doing likewise. We also plan on polishing and streamlining a lot of other things that we feel are a bit rough around the edges.

I wish I could slide astros your way, but unfortunately my astro sliding abilities are about as non-existant as my Egyptian Belly Dancing skills.

Yes, please feel free to suggest TI on our Facebook page.. or my twitter account #TIGooseman

It's been great working with OGP. They're doing the best they can to promote TI and working with the community to see what changes need to be made to make the game have lasting appeal.

Just thank you man, thank you for greatness what is Counter Strike, especially CS 1.6. Always in my heart <3

CS 1.6 is not recommended to be in your heart. It is known to cause heartbeat irregularities. Please remove the CS 1.6 box from your heart.

Signed, Your surgeon.

Counter-Strike Beta 6.8, complete with APC's, was a work of art that brought joy beyond words to my gaming "career" in first-person shooters.

Thank you for your contribution to the gaming world. Once I have my Franken-PC up, I'll definitely invest some time into Tactical Intervention.

HOSTAGE DOWN!

haha.. yes, thanks for bringing that up.. As buggy as they were, those vehicles brought tears to my eyes in a good way...

I remember people would try to drive that damn thing through the mine shafts only to reach the elevator and realize they couldn't take it up the elevator!!!

Actually, one of my colleagues Adrian Finoil told me the best time he had in it was when he and some teammates got in the back of the APC, and the driver drove the APC to the Terrorists parking lot and backed it up against a wall so Adrian and his teammates were trapped... the driver got out and ran away... LOLZ

I've been playing T.I. since the first beta...And let me tell you I LOVE THAT GAME! ESPECIALLY HIGHWAY! <3 Great Job.. You should see if you could advertise T.I. on the counter strike website/steam :3 So your CS players can play your newly made game!

Ign: Complex

awesome ! Thanks for the words of encouragement. It's players like you that motivate us to keep improving the game. We have plans for more maps like highway and I can tell you that there's already a couple of them in the works right now.

I think that's a good idea to post on CS forums.. I'll pass that along to OGP.

Well guys, It's midnight here so I should get some sleep. I want to thank everyone for coming out and asking me questions. I now feel more prepared the next time the FBI decide to interrogate me.

Much love to all those who came out to make this event possible. I want to thank all the players who are giving out our new game Tactical Intervention a try. www.tactical-intervention.com I hope you guys find some enjoyment out of it. We're constantly improving the game so please check back often to make sure none of us have died..

Please check out our Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/tacticalintervention?fref=ts for all the latest news on TI. Or you can follow me on Twitter at #GoosemanTI

All the best everyone!

Did selling of CS make you reasonable financially comfortable? I mean, there isn't ma[n]y people out there who can claim he created a popular game and sale it to Valve. Is it comparable to the effort you put into creating the game? I'm asking b/c somewhere in here you stated you are driving your parents '97 Cambry? :) It's not a bad car.. my dad drives one too .. haha

I made a fair amount of money from my time working on CS. A lot of it came through ad revenues from our website.

It's hard to put a number on the value of a game, especially a game that was so young at the time.

All I can say is, I'm happy with how things occurred with Valve, they treated me with a lot of respect and without their involvement, CS would never reach the heights it's reached.

Yea, the 97 camry aint bad... I've always had a thing for Hondas / Toyotas.. Reliable as hell..

If you were to play one of the original CS maps all day, which one would it be and why?

wow, tough one.. there were sooo many.. but if I had to choose ONE... geez.. REALLy hard to choose but I'd say... cs_facility. For some reason, that map resonated with me..

cs_siege de_dust

a close 2nd/3rd

Are you ever recognized on the street as a celebrity of sorts? Or do you still have anonymity in your daily life?

How did the acquisition of Counter-Strike game and rights go down? (Or is that part of an NDA?)

What games were your big inspiration? What games are your favorites to play now?

No, never. I keep a low profile and I think only once in my life did I get recognized "on the street". I was shopping at a Club Monaco and one of the sales people recognized me from an interview I did on tv. That was 10 years ago and my face has changed a lot so I doubt it'll happen again unless I murder someone and end up on CNN.

The acquisition for CS was extremely hazardous and involved meeting Gabe Newell and his krew underneath a bridge at midnight. We both drove our own vans and I instructed Gabe to pull up closer and park his van underneath the bridge. As his van slowly approached the designated spot, I got out and walked towards it. As I got within 50 ft. The van suddenly accelerated and a bunch of midgets wearing TF2 hats jumped out from the back. A 30 second melee encounter ensued which resulted in me being knocked unconscious. I woke up in a dimly lit rim with nothing but a table and a bag of M&Ms in the corner. As I rose to my feet. I heard a voice booming out of a loud speaker, "Sign the contract and the M&Ms will be yours..." I thought to myself, The M&Ms are already.. they're sitting right there in the corner.. That's a terrible deal.. I just grabbed the M&Ms and started munching down cuz I was tired and hungry, as I'm about to pop the first M&M in my mouth, thoes damn midgets come out of nowhere and proceed to attack me.. I eventually surrended the M&Ms and signed the damn contract cuz I had enough of getting beat by midgets for one lifetime...

I've been playing games since The Commodore 64 games so I've had a lot of games under my belt. Some of my favourite ones are: -Ultima 7 -Fallout -Wizardry series -Doom / Quake series -Duke Nukem ( loved the co-op ) ! -Battlefield 1942 -Deus Ex -Deus Ex: Human Revolution

The past 5 years, I've not had much time to play much of anything so I'm missing out a lot on the newer stuff. It's hard to find time to play games with the amount of work I have to do for TI :(

Sir you deserve a trophy .

Sir, you are in charge of producing a trophy for me.

What is one of your most interesting experiences while working on TI and CS.

CS: hmm.. Nothing really sticks out as being super interesting... I know there were moments of great joy and happiness.. Oh wait, here's an interesting thing. Back in the early 2000s, there was a huge amount of money being thrown around the internet and more specifically towards internet advertising. Our CS website was getting a huge amount of traffic and was generating a considerable amount of money each month just through ad revenues. I remember looking at the cheques each month and thinking, "Should we be getting this much!?!? I feel like I'm mugging an old lady... stealing from a baby...". I felt a bit ashamed and dirty making that much money just through ad revenues... but I was able to comfort myself by buying gold jewelery and driving around town in my suped up Honda Civic.

TI: interesting experiences..hmmm.. god, too many to list.. Let's just say, when I'm done working on TI, I could easily qualify working at a mental institution.

I have no idea who you are before today and have never played CS (I don't really play any game though the kids do), but you sound like such a cool guy. I hope TI will go well and best wishes.

BTW, my wife, all 5'1 and 90lbs of her, works as a social worker in a mental hospital. I want her to quit. Not recommended!

thanks! I'm gonna take your advice and stay away from mental people.. It's something only the stout of heart and mind can deal with.

1.6 was one of the greatest esports of all time, what do you think GO needs to do to reach that level?

I think CSGO needs to add a link in their game that will take players to www.tactical-intervention.com

I think Valve are doing a fine job of paying attention to the E-Sports community and I'm sure they'll reach the level of success that 1.6 has with CSGO..

Your thoughts on the whole ESEA Bitcoin Mining situation?

I just read about it just now and it's very interesting. I can't really comment too much on it as I'm not really familiar with ESEA or Bitcoin Mining.

I will say that I've met a lot of people in this industry who won't given a second thought to do such morally corrupt things such as this. It doesn't surprise me that someone decided to abuse their power for their own financial gain. It's easy to do such things when you don't see the faces of your victims or the consequences of your actions.

HUGE fan of CS! Spent so many countless hours with friends with this game. Truly a bonding experience. That being said would you be interested in coming on my podcast and nerding out about video games and entertainment? It would truly be an honor.

Yes, It would be my pleasure. Please contact me at twitter

TIGooseman

Let us NERD OUT LIKE there is no tomorrow!! I'll bring the polka dot teddy bears!!!! $@!%@

CS or Terrorist?

GIGN all the way.

Please no more attack dogs, it was the worst thing in COD:WAW

I'll look into balancing them out a bit.. like toning down their damage/ health but I think they add a pretty useful element to the game play and I'm interested to see how players will form new tactics based on the dogs.

did you expect success when you released CS? are you now satisfied with the way that CS has continued on? (I mean, what´s your opinion about CSS and now about CSGO?)

No expectations for CS. It was just a mod that started out as something I felt like I wanted to do after working on similar mods in the past. I'm really happy with how CS has evolved and all of that is due to how Valve has taken it. They're a really great company that makes smart business decisions that appeal to the target audience.

I think CSS and CSGO are an indication of that smart decision making.

thank you for your answer, really appreciate it :) don't you have some early CS versions executables? I mean 1.0 or something like these, I have nostalgic feeling right now and I want to play so badly.. :(

hah, funny you should ask.. My co-worker keeps all the versions of CS.. He also buys all the copies of HL from different regions. I think therès a medical condition to describe his behaviour... :)

What do you think made CS so successful?

The #1 reason CS became what it is: The community involvement. Also a big reason why MineCraft is so popular.. IMO

Who made walls on de_nuke so thin for bullets? :)

A ghost?

Actually, I have a hard time recalling the name of the mapper. We've had soooo many mappers submit maps during the development of CS. The only ones that really stick our are David Johnston ( de_dust) Chris Auty ( de_aztec ) N0Thing ( cs_siege ) 3D_Mike ( de_747 )

Hi! Thank you for Counter Strike!

Why i can't play TI in Poland?

Hi you're welcome! And we're aiming to bring TI to Europe very soon....

Were bugs like "scroll duck" left on purpose? I heard, that when ID Software realize strafe jumping is becoming popular they didn't fix it - did something similar happen to you guys? And BTW: have you played CS 1.6 after latest updates? What do you think?

haha, yea.. certain bugs were in fact left because people got so used to them and were forming tactics around them. It's kind of embarassing from a developer standpoint but I guess whatever keeps the masses happy is a good thing.

I stopped playing CS after CS 1.0

Hey Gooseman,

Wanted to just say thanks. I spent far more time in college playing CS than, y'know, attending class or things like that. I had a good routine of sleeping till noon, playing CS, going to dinner, going to my girlfriend's (she would have been next after class to go if I needed more time), hanging out with my friends till 1am, then playing more CS until 3 or 5. Life was good, thanks to the work of you and Cliffe. I really appreciate that.

Also: I was active on the messageboard and suggested adding the knife to stop all the staring at each other we did when we ran out of ammo. It was a big discussion. I'm sure you already were planning it, but I take credit for it. No need to compensate me.

Also 2: Add War Torn Retirement Home to TI and I'm in! I think I was the only real big fan of that map, but it was a blast.

Thanks man! glad it gave you some positivity in your life.

Knife: haha.. really? sorry.. I realllly don't remember what motivated us to add the knife... If it was you, then I thank you for showing us the light..

cs_tire: haha.. If that's what it'll take to bring in a new player, then we'll have to consider it. What was it about rescuing old people that got you so excited? :)

Any tips on how to make games? Or to become as famous as you?

Yes, make sure you do what you do for the love of doing it. Don't think about the end goal. Think about the happiness it brings you on a day to day basis. If you really love making games, you need not care about where it will take you. Try to focus on delivering a product that will make yourself happy first.. and chances are, you'll make someone else happy with that product.

If you want to get started in making games, it's not an easy road as there's sooo much information out there and it's hard to decide where to look. I do recommend game schools as they're a very focus place where you can hone your skills in a very efficient manner. If you're really daring you can pick up a book from your bookstore and try some of the tutorials in those books.

The important part is to take it step by step and find enjoyment in the smaller accomplishments you make. It took me 2 months to make my first model and that was the stepping stone to making my first mod (which eventually took another 2 years). I never would have made it that far if I wasn't so thrilled about the process of making models and making those models come to life through programming.

Do you plan on getting TI off OGPLANET and possibly trying to get on Steam or something? I was in the TI beta about a year ago but just found it frustrating to have to use OG.

Sorry, I can't say that's in the plans. I hope you can get around to using OG again, We have big plans for improving the TI experience. Would be a shame if people missed out on it because it's not on Steam :(

people WILL miss out if its not on steam.

/me starts boiling water...

Steam!! HERE WE COME...

How do you feel about the project CSPromod? It's a project that aims at replicating your CS 1.6's gameplay mechanics, but in the source engine, in order to make it the next big FPS-esport, as FPS's has faded away from the esports scene after the competitive death of 1.6 last year. =/

http://cspromod.com/

I've been in contact with the creator of CSProMod and I wish him all the best. I think it's very noble that people would rally behind things that they believe in so strongly and I hope much success to them.

The game look fun, but the game look like it was half-baked. Will there me more content latter on in the game? Will there be a clan group for in-game? Why can't we have some premium items (EX: Character's skins and the P90 from the SMG crate) a permanent? There is some F2P game that allow to keep your character, your weapon, or whatever. Did one of your FIX Korea team mentioned that you could play a certain map in the dark?

Sorry for that. My baking skills are about as non-existent as my Egyptian Belly Dancing skills... Fear not, we're continually trying to polish it up and I can assure you it will get better from here on out. Truth be told, we're horribly undersized team and it was really do or die time in terms of getting the game out. Character skins are permanent. With regards to having permanent guns. That's a decision that needs to be made by OGP and our development team at FixKorea. I can say, that this is something we're currently evaluating and maybe in future, we can do perm guns.. I can't say for sure right now.

Playing a map in the dark? What you talking about Willis?

Gooseman congrats on everything and I wish you much success with TI, being a father and with personal responsibility in life, I have not yet tested or played TI (I have been meaning to). I do however play CSGO once a week or so... mainly because of what you started :) For that, I thank you.

My question to you is: What are you most proud of in regards to CS and what was one thing you wish original CS had that it didn't? Regarding features or network, or anything like that.

Thanks man! I'm most proud of the community that CS has spawned.. The players, the people making levels, mods, guns, and all that. I've met so many of them and they've offered to help me out (but never offering what I really need which IS MONEY!!!!) hahaha no really.. It's great to be involved in CS and see it spawn so much creativity in the world.

The one thing I wanted in CS so bad was to make the vehicles work... Oddly enough though, some of my most fun times were had when the vehicles DIDNT work....

Proud to say Hi and I've been a fan of CS since the early beta years and running around on a 56k modem, Great team and social game and to think it was a free mod. http://counterstrike.wikia.com/wiki/Counter-Strike_Beta SO many great maps, shame they are lost now.

Hi back! Proud to have affected you in a postive way.

Do you still keep in touch with John "Rizzuh" Jensen. If so, how is he doing?

haha, funny you should ask. I was just thinking about him. The last time I saw Rze was about 7 years ago. I was still working at Valve and he came by the office to say hi. He was enrolled at Digipen at the time and was gonna start a career in the game industry. I haven't spoken to him since then so I can't really pass on any messages. I hope he's doing well though. Him and Cliffe are two guys that I remember the most from my CS days.

Not a question, just wanted to say thanks for all the fun times and the adrenaline rushes :D

You're welcome but maybe you should be thanking that can of Red Bull for all your adrenaline rushes.

Would you ever consider going to Quakecon this year and have a booth for T.I and sign my copy of Half-Life?

If you contact me on Twitter #GoosemanTI

I can send you a signed copy of CS. I think I have some sitting around my house...

Wow, how does it feel to know you're the reason I've flunked a number of classes ever since I was a kid? I've spent 1/3rd of my life mindlessly playing Counter Strike away and still play for up to an hour or so to this day. I have nothing but respect for you. Thank you for being the most influential person of my life. Godspeed!

haha, thanks man.. I get that a lot. People telling me they flunked because of CS.. It's kinda embarassing though. I don't want to be the cause of such a decline in the education system.

But, I'm sure you've turned out well and aren't selling drugs on the streets, so I'm cool with the fact that you flunked a few courses. They were prolly useless ones like "Home Management" or some stuff like that where you make a pillow..

What was your favorite version of CS? I started with beta 6.5 but I can't remember which update nerfed knifing. Do you feel as though you ultimately improved with every version or do you wish some things stayed the same (ie m4 zoom etc.)?

PS - Thank you for the great teen years of drinking far too much Mt. Dew.

I liked CS Beta 7 the most. It had my funny animations and player models in it still.

I think in general, each BETA improved on the last.. We were never afraid to change things that we broke in a previous version so it was always a case of going forward..

You're welcome! My co-worker drinks a lot of Mt. Dew as well.. I prefer Pepsi myself...

So I am a big fan of TI and I would like to say thank you for everything you've done for the FPS genre. My question to you is this. I feel like some of the features of TI could use a lot of work on things such as loadouts, kill/death cams, the UI, lack of matchmaking, customizable weapons, etc.

What do you think are the biggest improvements that TI needs to be able to keep up and compete with the other popular FPS games out today?

I think you bring up some good points and those areas that you mention could definitely use some room for improvement.

I'm confident we can address those issues over the next few months and bring TI to a state of polish that other games have.

I think the biggest improvement that can be made is the maps in TI right now are prolly not the best designed. They're too cramped and don't allow for a lot of player movement. I hope to address that in future maps.

I also wanted to thank you for everything that you have done. You have made a huge impact in my life by bringing to life Counter Strike. I still play to this day and am looking forward to buying TI.

My question is, having you played any other HL mods like Day of Defeat, and if so, what's your opinion of them? Any rivalries in the modding community? Thanks again for your gift of CS.

You can check out TI for free right now www.tactical-intervention.com

Hope you like it!

I have not had the chance to play any other HL mods. I was waaay too busy working on CS and playing CS.

I did however work on Day of Defeat: Source while I was at Valve. I made most of the weapon animations for DoD:Source I also made some models.. like the bag of potatoes you see in one of the levels.. and a frying pan..

Without these models, I'm not sure the game would be the same...

Are there any regrets from selling the rights of CS to Valve? I was always curious about that... It would be so hard to determine what it's worth at that stage.

Also I just want to say thank you for all the good times...CS is one of my favorites.

No regrets whatsoever. Valve did A LOT to bring CS to where it is. They took a fairly rough game and polished it up and put in the marketing and promotion to make it a household name. No way in hell could CS become what it is today without their strength.

I have great memories of working at Valve and they gave me a great opportunity which I wasn't able to fully utilize.

Do you think there is still a beautiful future in competitive FPS or is MOBA the path to follow?

I think the industry ebbs and flows... I think there's a bit of tiredness with FPS and we may be seeing a tail end of it's popularity. Unfortunate timing for TI but I'm hopeful there's still some real hardcore people out there that like blowing peoples heads off instead of running around in colorful costumes casting spells on each other...

I just tried to play Tactical Intervention. By the time the 3rd program was being installed on my computer I peaced. Too much bloatware man, sorry I really wanted to try your new game.

damn! sorry to hear that :( I'll see what we can do about simplifying the process...

Ah man I feel bad, I'll elaborate a little. I was okay with installing OGP... it asked me where I wanted to download the launcher for TI. I selected a folder on a drive that wasn't my Windows installation drive, and the installer downloaded and ran from there.

The TI installer started installing some program that started with a P (already uninstalled) into my windows installation drive without asking me if that was okay or asking where I wanted to place it. I have Windows installed on an SSD with very little space remaining so I can't install programs there.

So perhaps more transparency with what's being installed/ability to select where to install it? If the process gets a little simpler I will definitely play TI!

Thanks, I'll pass this on to OGP! Sometimes we don't know what is scaring off players from trying TI so it's great to get feedback like this..

I don't really have a question, but I do want to say thank you! By far the fondest memories of my teenage years was playing hours of CS with friends, and making new friends on the servers. Counter-Strike was and still is the only game I can play without getting bored.

you're welcome!

Would you rather fight a hundred goose sized men or 1 man sized goose

hey, interesting spin on the duck/horse question..

I still rather fight a hundred goose sized men.. They'd make nice squishy noises when I stepped on them

I can't believe I missed this. I played CS all the way back when it was .5 or .6 beta. The Colt was always silenced and had a scope, and you could carry 200 bullets. I single handedly destroyed my GPA playing this game against everyone in my dorms, and I single handedly slayed everyone. It was such a glorious game. It still is, however I don't dare play it. You probably won't see this, but thank you so much.

I see EVERYTHING... you're welcome man! Great to hear about the fond memories you had.

TBH, I don't even remember WHY I removed the scope from the colt.. Oh wait, I think I nerfed it because people weren't buying the semi-auto G3 sniper after I gave the M4 a scope..

First off, thank you! Second, are there any stories behind the original sprays?

You're welcome.. And tbh, I honestly don't remember what the original sprays even looked like...do you have an image of them?

Just wanted to say thanks for all the work you've done!

Question: If you could go back to 1999, what would you change?

You're welcome! I'd prolly change the fashion.. I remember MC Hammer pants were en vogue back then and they tried to make a comeback recently (which thankfully didn't last).

With regards to the game industry, I wouldn't really change anything. I actually enjoyed that time period more than what the industry is now. It was much simpler to make a game and get attention. These days, the industry has matured to such a point that, it's impossible to get any attention without putting in a lot of money to promote your game. Plus the fact that games these days are so polished and people have such high expectations that it's easy for people to pass on your game if the graphics and polish is not AAA.