{"id":14694,"date":"2026-03-10T14:16:55","date_gmt":"2026-03-10T14:16:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thunderpick.gl\/blog\/?p=14694"},"modified":"2026-03-10T14:45:29","modified_gmt":"2026-03-10T14:45:29","slug":"exclusive-interview-with-minh-le-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thunderpick.gl\/blog\/exclusive-interview-with-minh-le-part-2","title":{"rendered":"Exclusive interview with Minh Le \u2013 part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In this 2nd part of an exclusive interview with Thunderpick<\/a>, Minh Le, Counter-Strike’s legendary co-creator talks about how teams have exceeded the game’s strategies and gunplay more than initially intended, and how that needs to be looked at as a developer. He talks about the future of the esports industry with CS, and his favorite teams to watch.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Team Vitality, are they playing perfect Counter-Strike or are they just dialled into the meta with their use of utility?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Minh Le: <\/em>Strategy-wise, they\u2019ve really got that aspect of the game really nailed down.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I designed the game, I never really intended for people to throw grenades in such a way. Honestly, when I played the game, we never did that. That\u2019s something the esports scene has figured out, and they\u2019ve really pushed the boundaries in terms of utility.\u00a0In the early days, we never used our grenades very effectively. To be honest, the number one way that we would use the flashbang is that the entire team would throw all of their flashbangs in the first 10 seconds and it would just be like this 4th of July fireworks. That was really the main strategy and no one really knew how to use them effectively.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Seeing how these tier 1 teams are able to push the limits in how they strategize the use of utility, it’s really great, it’s really cool, and it adds to that extra element to Counter-Strike. When I watch Vitality<\/a> play, I’m not good enough to recognise what they’re doing is so much different than what a team like Spirit is doing but for me, it just seems like they’re able to have those individuals rise to the occasion when it’s needed.\u00a0 It seems like their entire team is full of A-tier players, whereas some teams might have a B tier player so they just have the right makeup at this time. I think for someone to really take them off their mantle, I would say Falcons<\/a> are pretty close. If donk joined Falcons, that might really put them over the top<\/em><\/strong>.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would say that they’re probably the closest in my opinion and Furia are pretty close as well but I just think individually Falcons already have a lot of heavy hitters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is seeing the pro players make use of things like utility in ways you never expected the most enjoyable part of seeing the growth of Counter-Strike, with all these emergent ideas and tactics in play you\u2019d have never predicted when you first created it?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Minh Le: <\/em>Definitely. Just seeing them push the limits of the game mechanics, from a game designer standpoint, that really helps us because we’re never able to recognize those edge cases.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When we have players come back to us and tell us, \u2018hey, this guy, he’s abusing certain systems,\u2019 that’s really helpful for us because we can never imagine all the different possibilities of how a map can be played. It’s very helpful to be able to see players really push the boundaries. And for the most part, we’re kind of hands off even though we never intended that to happen, we feel like as long as it’s not too advantageous for one team we<\/a> just kind of let it go. For the most part Valve are very hands-off about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Falcons are throwing big money around at certain players. Does it make you just kind of sit back and take pride in seeing how far Counter-Strike has come?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s nice to see. To be honest, I’m very happy that people can really make a living out of it. That for me is the most fulfilling part, that there are communities out there that can really make a decent living and just take something out of the game that’s not just about having fun. They can really entertain people while at the same time do well financially. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’m happy about that. I’m happy for them. The fact that it works out for both parties, Falcons are hopefully able to win a tournament sometime. It’s really good. I’m proud of that. That’s really something that really makes me happy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What will the Esports Nations Cup 2026 tournament bring to Counter-Strike with teams based on nationality rather than orgs?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Minh Le: <\/em>That would be fascinating to watch because I personally thought that would be really cool because you’re going to have certain countries just dominate, but I’d be curious to see how that works out because you’d have to have a governing body for each country.\u00a0Who’s picking the teams for the country? That kind of thing. I imagine that there’s a lot of logistics to sort out. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

From a fan standpoint, I personally would love to see that. It’s something very interesting and even though I kind of know what the outcome would be, it would just be really cool to see different regions and see how they can fare against other regions. I can\u2019t imagine the challenges of organising a team for each country because each country would need their own representation and their own players, and right now there are no national organisations. In Canada, we don\u2019t have a national organisation. It will be interesting to see how it plays out, even if the organisers are the ones who pick the players. Right now, there\u2019s no such federation that exists for each country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What was your intention with the AWP and designing such a powerful weapon that could be so effective in the hands of a dominant player?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Minh Le: <\/em>I wanted to create a game that captured the feeling of being in a counter-terrorist unit so we had to have a sniper rifle so when we first introduced the AWP<\/a>, it was really unbalanced.\u00a0People were taking out entire teams with it and so it did go through a lot of iterations to try to tone it down to reduce its effectiveness, but at the end of the day, we realised that there’s only so much we can do before it just becomes useless.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So we had to just accept the fact that, okay, there is this gun, this god gun, and so people are gonna buy it, and so that’s kind of why we had the buy system for the guns. We wanted to make certain guns less available and that’s the exact reason why I introduced an economy system to the game. I knew that some guns, we just could not balance them. If somebody’s got an M4 and somebody’s got an MP5 then obviously there’s no reason why you wouldn’t choose the M4. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was one thing I did consider doing but this isn\u2019t so much a problem right now in the pro scenes but back when I was playing there were moments where an entire team would have five or six AWPs, which just made it impossible to get close to them. What I wanted to do in those scenarios was a system where if a team bought like two AWPs then they couldn’t buy any more. That was something I mulled about adding to Counter-Strike.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I watch these tier 1 games play out, you never really see these opportunities anyways. Even when one team can afford to buy five AWPs, they don’t really do that. It’s not a viable tactic, so I think the game kind of balances itself so that having five AWPs isn’t really something that occurs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think the AWP is a very special weapon that needs to be used in a particular scenario. It’s not a magic wand that people can just win the round with. I think it’s reached a perfect balance of usability, I would say.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What do you see as the line when it comes to cheating, as in when does a clever exploit become cheating? We still see some pros making the most out of pixel walks even in 2026.<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Minh Le: <\/em>When we were developing Counter-Strike, we looked at it and if both teams could do something, then it\u2019s okay. There was no hard and fast rule. It was very subjective.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There were certain things that we felt that even though both teams could exploit it, it wasn\u2019t something we wanted in our game. For example, bunnyhopping, wall strafing, where players would move really fast across the walls. The reason we removed those was that we felt that it wasn’t really in the spirit of what we wanted Counter-Strike to become. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We didn’t want it to become a game like an arena shooter, with this really fast, crazy movement. We wanted it to be a bit more grounded, so that was the reason why we removed that. But if someone’s throwing a grenade in a certain area, we kind of look at it to ask ourselves, is this something that’s too over-balanced? And it’s very subjective. There’s really no set guidelines that we have that defines how we remove certain exploits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What\u2019s your hope for your next title, Alpha Response?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Minh Le: <\/em>With Alpha Response, I’m just trying to make a game that finds its audience.\u00a0I feel that the audience that I’m targeting with Alpha Response is players who play Payday, people who enjoy that kind of experience or even Left 4 Dead. The experience that we’re trying to focus on with Alpha Response is a game where the action is very fast-paced. It’s very, very intense. People kind of look at it and say, \u2018hey, is this game like Ready Or Not? Is this game like SWAT?\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would say it\u2019s more similar to Payday than Ready Or Not, or even Left 4 Dead, because the pacing and the moments in our game where the action can get really intense, you\u2019re fighting maybe five or six different enemies, and we\u2019ve tried to capture that frenetic feel of a Hollywood movie.\u00a0That\u2019s the audience we\u2019re trying to reach and we were really inspired by games we played on the arcades when we were young like Virtual Cop, Time Crisis, these kinds of fast-paced shooting games, that\u2019s something we are trying to embed into Alpha Response.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The hope is that if we can find our audience then we would love to do more DLCs for it because right now the game is based in a city in Portugal called Porto. We tried to pick a location that hasn’t been done before, and we really like the architecture of that city. So people have really enjoyed playing a game that takes place somewhere that they’ve never seen before. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If it does well, we’d like to do different cities for sure. That’s our hope. We’ll hopefully see how we can do in terms of getting that player base.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Former Counter-Strike pro dupreeh is working on his own arena shooter now called Skyward Masters. What would be your one big tip on how he and his team can succeed?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Minh Le: <\/em>PvP is a really difficult and challenging arena to enter so what can I tell him?\u00a0 The thing we learned with Counter-Strike was to release the game, be prepared for a lot of criticism and a lot of feedback, especially in this day and age where players expect so much.\u00a0 The first release is always going to be poor. You might have trouble gaining traction but if you kind of stick to it and listen to some feedback, you can potentially turn it around and really shape the game into something that’s more appealing to an audience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When you’re designing a PvP game by yourself internally in a closed environment and no one’s ever played it, you can’t really predict how the audience will react to it. So it’s really important to release it and get as much feedback as you can and not expect the game to skyrocket right away because it\u2019s going to be slow growth but you have to be prepared for that growth. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

You have to be prepared to make those changes and address early feedback because the first release is always going to be the roughest and if you can grow from there, that’s really the chance for success really.\u00a0 You look at other games, for example VALORANT. I think when VALORANT was first released, there was a lot of criticism. People said, this is not going to succeed. There were specific problems that they mentioned about VALORANT. They said \u2018okay, the map design is too this and too that. There’s too many things I have to worry about, like shooting and then the magic and that kind of thing.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But they were able to take that feedback, and polish the game and address it and that’s something that you can only do in a large environment where everybody is playing the game. It’s something that you cannot do internally so that’s why I feel like they have to be prepared for a rough ride in the public play test.\u00a0 When they do an open beta, it might not be like a huge hit right off the ground. You look at games like Highguard <\/em>or Concord<\/em>. I think these types of games, they kind of rely on like a huge hit right away. That’s really tough to expect from a PvP game.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I mean, you look at Deadlock<\/a><\/em>. Deadlock is another good example. It went through a lot of criticisms. Valve have just been able to consistently keep at it, and that’s the challenge, to be able to give yourself that runway, to be able to say, okay, we have enough resources to be able to just ride this out and eventually find that game that we’re trying to create. That’s what Valve have been able to do with Deadlock but the thing about Valve is they\u2019re such a unicorn. It’s hard to emulate their development style.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But that’s the level of difficulty that you need to be prepared for if you’re making a free to play game. There’s gonna be some moments where people don’t play your game, you know. But you can turn it around, and I think that’s the promising thing. Even though the game might be bad at a certain point, there’s an opportunity to address player feedback and get them back and find your player base through that method.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Can you settle a bit of an age-old debate on which resolution you use? Is it 60 by 9 or 4 by 3?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Minh Le: <\/em>Oh! When I was playing Counter-Strike it was always just 4:3 because that was the monitor I had. These days when I play games it’s 16:9.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In this 2nd part of an exclusive interview with Thunderpick, Minh Le, Counter-Strike’s legendary co-creator talks about how teams have exceeded the game’s strategies and gunplay more than initially intended, and how that needs to be looked at as a developer. He talks about the future of the esports industry with CS, and his favorite […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14696,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"set","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[102,95,56,52,112,53,75,54,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-counter-strike-teams","category-cs2","category-csgo","category-esports","category-interviews","category-news","category-promotions","category-platform","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderpick.gl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14694","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderpick.gl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderpick.gl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderpick.gl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderpick.gl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14694"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thunderpick.gl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14694\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14701,"href":"https:\/\/thunderpick.gl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14694\/revisions\/14701"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderpick.gl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderpick.gl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderpick.gl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderpick.gl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}