I think Valve suffers from what Blizzard suffers: they got so insanely profitable with one product that the games they’re known for became a distraction.
It seems counterintuitive: if there’s money to be had, go get it. But there’s a cognitive load and time sink at the senior management levels. Why bother us with this idea for a game that represents 1% of our annual profit if successful?
I feel a possible answer to this is to create a “prestige” studio that is more focused on fortifying your brand rather than profit. And I feel that what’s needed is full autonomy. Blizzard or Valve can wholly own this studio, but there is no cross-resourcing. Hire a passionate team, give them IPs to tenderly care for, and then leave them the ^%#* alone.
Google used to understand that the products were the product and the ads were a necessity to pay people. That the ads would be worthless without people coming back to use their services, and that that should be the primary goal.
That's been proven untrue by the MBAs and the market. Google no longer creates good products, but the ad dollars flow more and more. People still significantly use Google search.
I'm of the belief that that's purely inertia - That Google was so successful at it's products that even though they're losing steam fast, they're still good products for now, but that they're gonna see a steep dive soon and not be able to recover.
> when I use other search engines I have the nagging feeling I’m missing better information on Google.
Are you though?
I've been using DDG for years now as my primary search engine.
When I started, I used !g quite often precisely because of that feeling. These days I have a hard time even remembering to try it when a search is unfruitful.
The reason being that it became less and less useful, and these days even when I do remember trying it, it generally doesn't add anything useful to my results.
DDG has been a non-start for image searches. But for limited scope things like looking up software libraries (basically: I already know what I want) I’ve found it to be fine.
I like your idea of a prestige studio, but I think the reason prestige brands exist in consumer goods is because even the company needs a mental separation between 'them' and 'us'. Audi has to be separate from VW, Acura from Honda, otherwise the high margin/low volume brands and the penny pinchers get confused by each other an fuck everything up.
So it couldn't just be called Valve or Blizzard, it'd have to be called something else.
If they do it right though, some interesting things could come from it. VW's high end is always full of parts that started life on an Audi and they learned to make more cheaply over time.
I think Fox Searchlight would be a better comparison. Are they going to produce mass appeal blockbusters that rake in tons of revenue? Probably not. Are they going to totally dominate the awards scene? Absolutely. That's what Valve needs for its IP.
I interacted with valve ~3 years ago, I was looking for a job and they were looking for C developers (for proton).
I failed the interview, badly imho, I should have brushed up my C more, but even then I wasn't aware of the correct standard for OSS C development . Now I am (thx Vlc for the best 'how to contribute' documentation). Anyway, great experience, didn't feel like a big company, kind enough to explain my mistakes (this show trust imho), I love my current job but I would definitely try to interview again in like 5 years.
Definitely felt like a small company though, where the project leader is actually the recruiter. I'm not sure if the issue is the lack of available devs rather than the structure.
It's kind of more than just the 'flat structure' making it a challenge. The article goes on to stat that Valve is a small company with some very important products that take dedicated focus. Basically, there are other priorities at Valve. I am not sure if there wasn't a flat structure that getting Portal 3 off the ground would be any less difficult?
I might be an outlier, but I'm extremely attached to the Half-Life series and while it's difficult to not get HL3, I'm also not currently disappointed in any game in the series. If the only thing I have to be disappointed in is the release cadence, then I'm probably okay with that?
Someone in a Reddit thread pointed how Valve's structure reduces the fragility of a product by not basing it on one vision and that their games are based on a pretty pure collaborative effort. A writer becomes inherently less influential on the final product, but their individual contribution is more passionate and worked. One could argue for hours about the approach, but I think the results speak for themselves.
There's plenty of other counterexamples of that though – visionaries with a singular vision being able to get a team to help them create something amazing. Not saying one is better than the other, but it'd be a damn shame if amazing stories like Portal don't get more airtime because of collective lethargy. It's too good to let flounder!
I'd suggest checking out "Half-Life 2: Raising the Bar" to learn about their design process. It's fascinating. There can absolutely be visionaries out there... Miyazaki, Kojima, Miyamoto are probably the top three right now. But there's a ton that are kinda went out with a whimper such as Molyneux, Wright, Carmack, Romero, the Housers, Schafer, Sweeney.
I think abstraction is key. There's gotta be a happy medium between absolute control or almost a sense of worship and not allowing a singular person to guide the ship.
The key is not about how many people are guiding the ship, it is about their overall abilities.
A BDFL is great if the dictator is competent. A committee is also great if the committee is competent (overall).
Most people don't have what it takes to be a BDFL. But a few do. And for those people, the answer is to take good notes and get the hell out of their way.
Only anecdotal, but there may be cultural problems stemming from the flat structure at Valve that make organizing around products difficult. This video came out 4 years ago so I don't know if anything's changed since then, but it's one ex-employee's experience of their work culture at the time.
Basically he claims that even though there's a flat corporate structure within Valve, in practice an implicit management structure arose in which those with the most political clout controlled others without it. Plus they used stack ranking at the time.
This happened at a place i used to worked at as well, a supposedly "flat company" without hierarchies.
The implicit hidden hierarchies - based partly on charisma and friendship - increased the effort to do anything, and especially the mental stress of having to keep the double-think alive.
I think for less socially adept people these companies are a nightmare. The entire direction of the company was decided by a cliquie implicit power holders with no accountability, as these could always play on the "flat structure and we all share responsibility and accountability"
Isn't that the whole point? How do you get priority at a company changed to do what you want without ordering or paying your coworkers?
This isn't 1997 were you could make videogames with 20 people.
A huge number of clues point to L4D3 being developed at Valve for many years now. The question is whether that effort is actually still progressing and whether there's a chance to have it finished anytime soon.
I don't buy the excuse about it as a "small company". How big was it again working on HL1 and HL2? Portal 2? The list goes on.
Let's be honest with ourselves: they got bored with it, made more money doing something else, and by the time anyone looked back were heavily intimidated by the expectations on them that doing a sequel to the beloved games was too scary. No matter what they put out, there will be a non-trivial portion of the fan base rabidly upset with it.
The "flat structure" means unless someone is willing to have the guts to push hard enough, there will never be consensus on what is likely regarded as a radioactive topic.
I think Erik Wolpaw is being kind with his words and Gabe Newell isn't pushing the organization to deliver games because he doesn't see much value in working on single-player games anymore. It also just doesn't do anything to their bottom line whatsoever.
This goes for Half-Life, Portal, and really anything else that isn't a potentially large multi-player IP that could seemingly become its own platform, like Counter-Strike or Dota.
There's of course also the problem that you have to rally people to you to work on something, and people suck, frankly. Just because those people work at Valve doesn't mean they suck less in terms of human nature. It just means they also have technical chops.
From everything you can read about Valve in the media to what you can observe from their own releases, they seem to be a victim of their own success and being an individual contributor at Valve seems like you have organization-level and individual-level issues keeping you from being productive. Primarily around compensation.
There will never be a conclusion to the Half-Life series outside of what Marc Laidlaw gave fans. I doubt Erik Wolpaw will make a dent, not because I don't want him to, but because there are probably egos at Valve and pay incentives preventing him and others from delivering sequels that fans want.
I wonder if there is a potential here for a parallel to what we see with flagship cars from major automakers.
What I mean by that is that producing flagship cars is not always driven purely by sales. Often it is driven by something else, like producing a homologation special, competing with another manufacturer, or just sheer excessiveness.
Maybe the economics don't add up, but I would like to see the big players mindset shift from 'make the most money' to 'show up our competitors and have fun'. Movies too, if I'm honest.
I think the comparison to movies is quite apt, actually. There are a few mega brands that pump out mega-budget, mass appeal content, but suffer from the competing pressures to appeal to as many people as possible to maximize profits, versus having a cogent artistic vision appealing greatly to any one group.
Meanwhile, you have smaller, lower-budget productions for whom the only chance of market success is making art that appeals greatly enough to some people that the game or movie expands by word of mouth and critical acclaim.
For specific examples, I'd point out Devolver Digital's catalog in games, and A24's portfolio of films.
Good franchises are good because they know when to quit. Otherwise they turn into Assassins Creed and just keep pumping out one forgettable game after another; any joy they bring just kinda coalesces in with the others.
Why not subcontract to an external game development house? Just license the IP to someone who is interested in developing games instead of just running a game platform.
An external dev house could also side-step any cultural/NIH issues. Valve is basically married to the Source game engine, but it is far, far behind what Unreal Engine is capable of these days. A third party with Unreal experience could whip up a gorgeous-looking Portal or Half Life game, and not have to have arguments with Valve insiders about which game engine is being used.
>it is far, far behind what Unreal Engine is capable of these days
Games aren't popular long-term because of their technical achievements. Valve's games have charm, partially due to the engine.
How does Valve operate when some jobs might be less desirable than others? For instance how do they get anyone to do QA or man the ticket queue? I get that some of this will have to be outsourced but at what point does it happen during a project?
There are so many people who want to work in games that there's a sometimes toxic codependency between management and new employees. People will put up with a lot of shit to work at these places.
That makes it difficult for those of us who mostly work outside of games to draw conclusions and parallels to our own corners of the industry. People just don't feel that way about a lot of other things.
Like another commenter said, many people are willing to put up with a lot just to work in games, even in a low prestige role. Also the bar for support/QA jobs in pay and treatment is very low across pretty much every industry, so paying a decent wage and offering good benefits (plus annual vacation to Hawaii) is a big plus. That said, it’s still not great - the “flat” structure leads to a lot of really toxic power dynamics where those roles always end up at the bottom with no real agency or recognition.
Valve is in a unique position. They created several iconic IPs that they don't even have to milk at this point. They might be saving them for a rainy day or for when hardware has progressed to a point that makes the next installments truly groundbreaking. Whatever the case may be, they're in a great position.
Even if you have story to write. What about other parts? Is there something new or different with new game? Is that enough for the series?
Valve doesn't mass produce games, but always tries to bring some innovation. And if you would be lacking that would it make sense to just make sequel for sake of sequel?
I can imagine that. My personal take is that people who have a good sense of balance can't handle VR when the player moves. Games like Beat Saber get around this by making it feel like the objects are coming at you, rather than you at them, but when you're physically moving around in the world (and especially in non-standard ways like would be the case in a Portal game) people start to feel sick while playing.
Maybe it's just a matter of getting used to it?
I would looove to try moving VR games with an omni-treadmill some time!
Obviously I like the idea of a Portal 3. But I am afraid that they will make it controller-friendly to the detriment of keyboard/mouse controls so they can sell Decks or VR-only so they can sell their Index headsets like they did with Alyx.
Controller-centric UI design usually translates terribly backwards to mouse and keyboard inputs. You have more button inputs on a keyboard but only 1 "analog stick" to manipulate 3d space in the form of the mouse. On top of that because of the limited inputs of the controller menus are extremely terse to navigate. But it must be a cardinal sin at gamedev school to do anything other than the following.
A: Force console users to use a half thought out clunky pc interface
Or
B: Force PC users to go through a labrynth of ini files and menus because "well all the other platforms you can only adjust gamma and contrast so thats all were giving you in the options"
Both suck, its an unsexy problem nobody wants to invest time into fixing, but will have a huge ROI in terms of expierence and potentially a first mover advantage in terms of licensing out a viable pattern to major studios.
Sounds to me like you're comparing apples to oranges. Input method has nothing to do with why console games only allow adjusting gamma and contrast, that's because on a console the game is already optimised for the exact hardware as it only runs on one type of hardware, so you get almost no options because none are needed beyond things like whether or not you prefer motion blur, etc.
But my argument was that in the actual game Portal not many inputs are even needed, which you didn't even respond to...
The one thing that differs in the "analog stick" argument between controller and mouse is that the mouse offers much more flexible movement than the controller. You can only angle the controller at most 30° and that's it, while you can throw your mouse across your desk if you want to. This I could accept does theoretically limit design a little bit if you are aiming for an enjoyable controller experience in a fast-paced game where you're utilising all 3 axes in movement. But Portal is not a fast-paced game so that doesn't really apply...
I guess im talking about ux just as much as gameplay, it isnt that these are the only 2 possibilities its just those are the most common outcomes you see. The gamma and contrast comment was specifically because it hinges on what im pointing to, that limit isnt on pc but the extra graphics options are not available through the in game interfaces because there is little incenive to provide the extra sliders to the crowd that can make sue of them.
Apologies if you feel i misrepresented your argument, or hijacked the orivinal thesis.
Perhaps the term that would be better for what im describing is console-centric game and ux design? Its basically the windows8 problem all over again.
It seems counterintuitive: if there’s money to be had, go get it. But there’s a cognitive load and time sink at the senior management levels. Why bother us with this idea for a game that represents 1% of our annual profit if successful?
I feel a possible answer to this is to create a “prestige” studio that is more focused on fortifying your brand rather than profit. And I feel that what’s needed is full autonomy. Blizzard or Valve can wholly own this studio, but there is no cross-resourcing. Hire a passionate team, give them IPs to tenderly care for, and then leave them the ^%#* alone.