Counter-Strike recently celebrated its 25th anniversary and is more popular than ever, after Valve hired co-creators Minh “Gooseman” Le and Jesse “Cliffe” Cliffe to develop the original Half-Life mod into a standalone title and has since grown to become the most popular competitive FPS on the planet, with over 30 million players per month.

This is a feat of incredible longevity, and on this momentous occasion, we were able to conduct a rare interview with Minh Le, who first started this project around the time he was graduating from college. By that time, Jesse Cliffe had joined the project to work on other elements, including maps. [According to Norwegian site Spillhistorie.no, the initial concept for the game was born about a year before he started working on the mod. 'I came up with the idea for Counter-Strike back in 1998,' he said. 'It was inspired by a lot of arcade games I used to play, like Virtua Cop and Time Crisis. I was also heavily influenced by Hong Kong action movies (John Woo) and Hollywood movies (Heat, Ronin, Air Force One, Tom Clancy movies of the 90s, etc.).

Le credits some of the elements that make Counter-Strike special to the mods he has worked on in the past. The idea of round-based gameplay was actually borrowed from a game I used to work on called Action Quake 2,” he said. I found that not being able to respawn forced you to play differently and encouraged team play.” This balanced design of features and maps is the main reason why CS is a game focused on team play”

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The creators' favorite maps were CS_Siege and CS_Facility, but of course DE_Dust “surprised us all. When we first playtested it, we didn't think it was that special, but we were pleasantly surprised to see it become a standard Counter-Strike map... The mapper who created DE_Dust was very intelligent, and he spent a lot of time making DE_Dust's design fun and balanced. A lot of time was spent on it.

As for regrets, Le is going after my favorite weapon in the game. 'I regret not balancing some of the weapons, like the AWP. I think it's been overused and has become a bit of a meta-gun. I think it has become a bit of a meta-gun, because the AWP is great,” he said.

Valve bought the rights to Counter-Strike and hired Le and Cliffe when the mod's popularity was becoming apparent. I got to work with some of the best game developers in the industry, and they taught me skills that I would never have learned outside of Valve.”

As for selling the rights to Valve, Le has nothing but praise for the studio, keeping in mind that this is now one of the biggest games in the world. As for selling the IP to Valve, “I'm happy with how things turned out,” he said. They've done a great job of keeping the CS legacy alive.”

As for the Easter eggs in the original game, “We were busy fixing bugs and adding features. We didn't have time to add Easter eggs. .......”

Le seems down to earth about the game and its subsequent success, and is humble about his large role in what Valve calls “your favorite first-person shooter's favorite first-person shooter.” This is because, while Counter-Strike has in some respects emerged fully formed, it would not be what it is today without Valve's work on the game over the past 20 years.

The latest Counter-Strike, despite being the fifth mainline entry in the series, is also its first direct sequel: CS2. Launched late last year to replace CS:GO, the game seems to have succeeded in transitioning the player base with minimal problems, carrying over everything that players valued from the previous game. The updates so far have focused on minor but impactful improvements (as Valve occasionally says in an amusingly exasperated tone) with no enormous changes, but that's to be expected in this series. You can read all about it in our interview with the development team.