Like most big successes,turned out to be a much bigger phenomenon than Minh "Gooseman" Le could have ever expected.While in college, Le co-created the humblemodwith Jess Cliffe and released the title under Sierra Entertainment in 1999. The initial release spawned a series that has sold millions of units for Valve Software (officially around 10 million at the end of 2008), which bought the series in 2000. It's still easy to find activeservers.But for Le, who worked for Valve for a period of time,is the past. For the past six years, he has been working on, a new team-based FPS from Le and FIX Korea. It's based on Valve's Source engine and is expected for a 2010 launch.With's closed beta due in the coming weeks, we spoke with Le about his work with Valve on, the shelved sequel, whyhas taken so long to create and what's wrong with team-based shooters today.Minh Le: I started working at Valve immediately afterbeta 5. I worked mostly on-related projects and I was doing a lot of preparation work for. A lot of my time was spent just learning the new Source Engine. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to come up with a clear game design on what I wantedto be, so the senior executives at Valve and myself came to the conclusion that I was better off working on my own without the burden of having to develop a product that would surpassI really enjoyed working at Valve, as they gave me a great deal of creative freedom and they really had faith in me to develop something worthwhile, so I'm disappointed I couldn't do that while I was there. I felt more relaxed when I left because I was able to just start from scratch and not have to deal with pleasing the ferventcrowd. When I started, I initially planned on it being a small indie project that would take me less than three years to complete. I guess I really overshot that estimate.It was always a full-time job for me throughout the six-plus years. It started out as just me for the first year but I soon added a few artists that helped me create some of the art assets. Embarrassingly enough, the first four years was mostly spent doing all the art assets. Things like 3D models, animations, textures and levels were extremely time-consuming for our small team.In retrospect, I think my biggest mistake was not looking hard enough for extra developers to help out on the project. I think a lot of that had to do with my poor planning and not realizing it was going to take four years to produce the content. I had my head buried so deep in the content development that I lost track of the big picture. Another reason was because I'm a bit of a control freak and I enjoyed all aspects of content development.After four years in North America, I ran out of money and a friend of mine encouraged me to come to Korea as he told me there would be many opportunities to market my game there and fund development. I spent the next two-plus years working in Korea with some really experienced programmers and some local Korean artists. The language barrier was terrible to overcome and it's still quite challenging but we make do. Lots of screaming and chair-throwing really smooths the process out.I can't really say for sure whynever really came about. I think a big part of it had to do with my inability to come up with a strong game design. I was more of an artist and I spent most of my time developing content that was going to be used for, but as the project never came to fruition, those art assets never got used. And yes, I did leave Valve because I wanted to developYeah, it's funny. I think I haven't really changed that much. During one of our tests for, someone mentioned, "This feels just like" -- I wanted to punch that guy in the face. This was a really early test though, it happened like four years ago.The game has really evolved since then. There are a lot of elements in it that manyplayers will recognize -- thankfully, left-handed gunsone of them -- but I think there are a lot of new features inthat will really challenge our players (all 20 of them).There are also a lot of things inthat I always wanted to do inbut never really executed them properly. The biggest addition tothat I had wanted inwas vehicles. Part of the challenge with adding vehicles to a game that doesn't have respawning is designing a scenario that would be fun for the entire team without being too drawn out.From a technical standpoint, it was adifficult feature to add to the Source Engine as vehicles were never properly implemented in a multiplayer environment on the Source Engine but I'm really happy with the way our vehicles inturned out. Mad props to our programmers involved in that.I think one of my biggest gripes with playing FPS today is that unless I play with friends, I have a hard time working together as a team on games likeor. I usually just end up playing "team" deathmatch, as it's just a free-for-all adrenaline rush.I think a lot of that has to do with the lack of trust that occurs when you play with strangers. Strangers are less likely to stick with you and more inclined to play as a lone wolf. That's why you see a lot of maps that just funnel the players into the same zones so as to localize the firefights. With, we added features and incentives that will hopefully promote more team play amongst strangers.With regards to, I lament on the fact that the levels inare really static and never change from round to round. The firefights become very predictable and I wanted to add a more dynamic environment to. I think with our hostages and interactive props, the players will be challenged in a waycan never do.No, it's a surprise. I think it just came out at the right time, and the community grew to such a proportion that it became hard for old school players to switch over to another game because they have so many ties to the community. I imagine it might be difficult for old schoolplayers to switch over tobecause of the radical changes in gameplay but I'm hopeful they are willing to take on a new challenge.The lobby design allows us to hold more than 500 players at a time so that in a sense is a MMO. But to be more specific it would just be an online FPS or plain FPS.Yeah, it will be challenging to attract players in today's crowded FPS market but I still think there's a niche market for FPS games like. To be honest though, most of the playtests that we've had, the testers didn't really notice the fact that our graphics weren't on par with games likeand theseries. They seemed to be really enjoying the gameplay mechanics thatoffers.We're probably not going to attract a large following right off the bat, but I believe if we continue to develop the game and polish it over time, and work closely with the community to fine-tune the gameplay, we can achieve some semblance of success.I played a lot of team deathmatch for. I never really got too much intobecause I found it required a bit too much patience. Or perhaps I wasn't playing it properly. These days, I have very little time to play games so when I do play games, it has to be a game that provides me a quick fix. That's why I enjoy 60-minute team deathmatch sessions ofWith regards to the best team-based FPS, I actually really enjoyed playing [Tripwire Interactive's]. It's one of the few games where I actually worked with strangers in an effective manner. I think a lot of that had to do with the players who playare on average much more mature than the players who playor, from my experience. I find being able to play with people that understand logic and reasoning is really conducive to team play.I think the new features inwill appeal in the same way to any player, regardless of whether he or she has played. You're either gonna digor not. Yourbackground will have little effect on your ability or inability to enjoyHaving said that though, I thinkis quite a bit more complex thanas it offers players a lot more freedom to interact with the world as well as freedom of movement. I'm not sure how casual players will deal with that. We've done a lot to make it intuitive though, with regards to the UI. Hopefully players will give it a chance and experience the fun moments thathas to offer.