Jess A. Cliffe (born June 27, 1981) is a

video game designer Video game design is the process of designing the content and rules of video games in the pre-production stage and designing the gameplay, environment, storyline and characters in the production stage. Some common video game design subdiscipline ...

who co-created the ''

Half-Life Half-life (symbol ) is the time required for a quantity (of substance) to reduce to half of its initial value. The term is commonly used in nuclear physics to describe how quickly unstable atoms undergo radioactive decay or how long stable ato ...

mod Mod, MOD or mods may refer to: Places * Modesto City–County Airport, Stanislaus County, California, US Arts, entertainment, and media Music * Mods (band), a Norwegian rock band * M.O.D. (Method of Destruction), a band from New York City, US ...

Counter-Strike ''Counter-Strike'' (''CS'') is a series of multiplayer tactical first-person shooter video games in which teams of terrorists battle to perpetrate an act of terror (bombing, hostage-taking, assassination) while counter-terrorists try to preven ...

'' with

Minh Le Minh Le (Vietnamese: Lê Minh), also known by his online nickname Gooseman, is a Vietnamese Canadian video game programmer who co-created the ''Half-Life'' mod ''Counter-Strike'' with Jess Cliffe in 1999 and started the ''Counter-Strike'' seri ...

and started the ''Counter-Strike'' series. He is also the "voice of ''Counter-Strike''" via the radio commands, the voiceline "Counter-Terrorists Win!" and

sound effect A sound effect (or audio effect) is an artificially created or enhanced sound, or sound process used to emphasize artistic or other content of films, television shows, live performance, animation, video games, music, or other media. Traditi ...

s. He has worked on maps for '' Half-Life: Deathmatch''.

Education

He attended

Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University Virginia Tech (formally the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and informally VT, or VPI) is a public land-grant research university with its main campus in Blacksburg, Virginia. It also has educational facilities in six regi ...

from 1999 to 2003.

Career

Before getting involved with the original ''

'', Jess Cliffe was a very active gaming website designer. The earliest known gaming website he founded was ''Jedi Knight Multiplayer Addon Group'' (JKMAG) which he founded in December 1997. After around a year of maintaining the website, he moved on to start the website ''Action Quake2 Map Depot''. It was during the time he was involved with this site that he got to know Marcelo Dilay and Minh Le as Dilay and Le were part of the team developing ''

Action Quake 2 ''Action Quake 2'' is a mod for the video game ''Quake II'' created by The A-Team. ''Action Quake 2'' was developed to recreate the look and feel of an action movie, having a fast pace and a semi-realistic damage system. It features many maps recr ...

''. Around January 1999, Cliffe also founded the website ''Silo X'' devoted to ''Half-Life'' maps. After graduating Cliffe took a job with Valve, where he was employed as a game designer, 3D artist and level designer. However, he was suspended from Valve in early 2018 due to being arrested.

Legal history

Arrest for sexual exploitation, investigation

On February 2, 2018, at 1:17 a.m. PST, Cliffe was arrested on allegations of "sexual exploitation of a minor" in the Southwest Precinct of Seattle. Cliffe allegedly met a girl online via an adult website, and paid her for a date which became sexual. Cliffe maintained that he thought he was paying a "matchmaking fee" on a dating website for adults. In the encounter, the girl claimed that Cliffe videotaped their encounter "against her will" but that she also "refrained from saying anything." Cliffe denied that he videotaped the encounter. The girl, then 16, told investigators she communicated with Cliffe via text message. According to police, Cliffe told officers he believed the girl was 23 years old, and the teenager also said she wasn't sure he knew she was 16. To make an account on the website, you must enter that you are at least 18 or older in your profile. The case started in May 2017 when the King County Sheriff's Office received a Child Protective Services referral.

Statement from Cliffe

On March 6, 2019, and edited in April 2019, Cliffe wrote on Reddit that he "never recorded this person at all" and passed a polygraph test on this subject. He stated that he was not charged with making a recording, and that he had allowed the police to review the contents of his phone in order to show that no recording had been made. He indicated that he entered into an

Alford plea In United States law, an Alford plea, also called a Kennedy plea in West Virginia, an Alford guilty plea, and the Alford doctrine, is a guilty plea in criminal court, whereby a defendant in a criminal case does not admit to the criminal act and ...

to a reduced charge of second degree assault, through which he continued to assert his innocence. He stated that he was offered "work release" as part of his plea deal instead of jail but since he was suspended by Valve had to instead spend "57 days (less than 2 months) in a minimum security facility in Kent, WA" (the Maleng Regional Justice Center) where he helped out unsupervised around the facility. Cliffe also wrote that "despite a good faith effort on my end to do due diligence, I still got catfished—on a dating website for adults where you have to state that you are over 18." He said the evidence showed "that there was never a sexual quid pro quo, and it pointed to me looking for a long term relationship." In addition, he summarized the situation as "very unfortunate" and warned others to "be very careful with people you meet over the internet, always ask for an ID no matter what, trust but verify, watch out for scammers."

References

Bibliography

*Vargas, Jose Antonio (2005). "Big Games Hunter." ''

The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...

''. October 25. *Wallis, Alistair (2007). "Is Modding Useful?" ''Game Developer''. July 1. {{DEFAULTSORT:Cliffe, Jess 1981 births Living people American video game designers Valve Corporation people Virginia Tech alumni People from Hunterdon County, New Jersey People charged with sex crimes American people convicted of assault