Elon Musk considered calling OpenAI 'Freeman' because 'it reminds me of the scientist protagonist in Half-Life'

Elon Musk strikes a pose in a silly outfit. — (Image credit: Taylor Hill via Getty Images)

The ongoing legal fight between OpenAI co-founders Elon Musk and Sam Altman has seen the release of a treasure-trove of internal documentation from the firm's earliest years. One minor theme has been the presence of Gabe Newell, who gave the company over $20 million and was the sole member of its "informal advisory board" in 2018: he later personally emailed Musk to try and get Hideo Kojima a tour of SpaceX.

The latest batch of documents includes an email exchange from late 2015, in which Musk, Altman, and Greg Brockman are discussing various aspects of how the company will be set up and funded. Another topic is what they're actually going to call it and, whaddya know, Valve turns up in Musk's thought process one more time.

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Close up of classic box art render of Gordon Freeman's face from Half-Life 2. — (Image credit: Valve)

The weird thing about this, of course, is that Gordon Freeman is intentionally more of a cipher than a fleshed-out "awesome character." The Half-Life games have a tonne of memorable story beats and character moments, but they're all being observed by Freeman who, of course, never speaks: other characters even joke about it.

Anyway! The Valve book Raising the Bar, about Half-Life 2's development, contains the story of how Freeman got his name: writer Marc Laidlaw originally named the character Dyson Poincaré after philosopher Freeman Dyson and mathematician Henri Poincaré. Gabe Newell didn't like the name, and came up with Gordon Freeman as an alternative during a car ride. A very early version of the character was also jokingly referred to as Ivan the Space Biker.

The games make great play of the 'Freeman' name at times, and what it says about the character's role in this universe, with the flipside of course being the so-called G-Man, which seems to come from slang for "government man." I suppose we're lucky Musk didn't come up with "AI-man."

Brockman responds to Musk's email about the name with "oof, good catch on Exxon" before suggesting "Cogito" which he and Altman "like a lot" because it has a "nice individualistic feel to it."

So you may not dig the name OpenAI: but rest assured it could've been a lot worse.

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Rich is a games journalist with 15 years' experience, beginning his career on Edge magazine before working for a wide range of outlets, including Ars Technica, Eurogamer, GamesRadar+, Gamespot, the Guardian, IGN, the New Statesman, Polygon, and Vice. He was the editor of Kotaku UK, the UK arm of Kotaku, for three years before joining PC Gamer. He is the author of a Brief History of Video Games, a full history of the medium, which the Midwest Book Review described as "[a] must-read for serious minded game historians and curious video game connoisseurs alike."