Newell: Specialization in Gaming is "The Enemy of the Future"

[synobal]

"Valve don't make games anymore." - paraphrased

Valve has developed and released a minimum of one game a year since 2004.

That's... kinda irrelevant to my point. The number of games they've put out is meaningless

I'm sorry, but....what?

I'm mean, seriously. What?

Your comments are so contradictory it's a wonder you've a leg to stand on.

According to valves detractors any game put out by valve isn't actually a game unless it is a half life game. I'm not certain how it works but apparently this is the case.

I'll be happy when Half Life 3 comes out myself but I'm hardly begging for it or demanding it like so many people seem to be. Indeed I tend to be more interested in the new stuff valve is working on, they will release a new half life game when they are ready and it will be good, until then I'm more curious about the other stuff they are doing.

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

1. Valve is the industry standard for the whole "lightning in a bottle" idiom. However their major success hasn't been from games they made but rather Steam's platform of ease of use, delivery and mainly SALES. Beyond that, Portal and HL2 are their only major successes with TF2, L4D, and Counter-Strike in my view are the minor leagues.

2. Did anyone else catch the "social multiplayer" comment? I really fear for what that means to a company who made great games that were mainly single-player experiences, TF2 and Counter-Strike don't count, neither does DOTA 2 because they weren't Valve-centric ideas but mods they bought the rights to and monetized.

3. The issue with other publishers is that their leadership/management seems to be extremely out of touch with the developers AND their customer base. By that I mean a publisher NEEDS to be run by someone who actually is a gamer at heart and I don't see that in most of the AAA companies, which is why we see so many soulless carbon copies of other pub/dev's "hit" games and big budget rushed titles with DLC that isn't worth its price-tag. If I were a major stockholder, I would want the person running x-company I own that shit-ton of stock in to have a CEO who is passionate about the products they make, not just surface passion. For all their faults Nintendo is a company run by game enthusiasts. Satoru Iwata loves his games, his hardware choices. While not everyone loves Nintendo, he does love his products and as a Nintendo fan it does show. Granted the gimmick hardware choices are a little bit wonky, but overall I can't say I'm disappointed with 90% of what Nintendo puts out. Thats more than I can say for the likes of EA, ActiBlizz and other publishers.

So what does this all mean? Gabe Newell in my view has tunnel vision. Blind by his success (or maybe diabetes) he doesn't see that his company isn't producing anything of worth beyond the occasional Portal or Half-Life, and his other successes in gaming are due to smart buyouts of popular mods along with STEAM.
Don't get me wrong I don't hate Valve I just think Gabe is right for the wrong reasons by using his company's limited library as the totality of it's success.

 

[Phrozenflame500]

1. Valve is the industry standard for the whole "lightning in a bottle" idiom. However their major success hasn't been from games they made but rather Steam's platform of ease of use, delivery and mainly SALES. Beyond that, Portal and HL2 are their only major successes with TF2, L4D, and Counter-Strike in my view are the minor leagues.

...I'm sorry?

Top 10 games currently being played on Steam. 6/10 are Valve games (one of them being released over 10 years ago) with Garry's Mod using their engine. And all of them being "minor league" with no Portal nor Half Life.

2. Did anyone else catch the "social multiplayer" comment? I really fear for what that means to a company who made great games that were mainly single-player experiences, TF2 and Counter-Strike don't count, neither does DOTA 2 because they weren't Valve-centric ideas but mods they bought the rights to and monetized.

I actually did catch that, Valve's been making most of their recent fame via online multiplayer games so it's not entirely surprising they're shifting their focus. I completely disagree with not attributing both TF2 and Counter-Strike to them as TF2 is completely different from the original Team Fortress mod (it was originally a realistic shooter, look how that changed) and Counter-Strike has gone through multiple iterations with different dev teams. And even DOTA 2 despite hiring the initial devs and funding them they did apply their F2P business model they pioneered from TF2 to it and added it's own inhouse developers to the team. It's disingenuous to entirely ignore their contributions to the franchises they purchased.

I completely agree with 3, this is ironically one of the reasons why Valve is so successful. The reason (they claimed) that set in motion them purchasing DOTA was some of the lead devs sending them fanmail.

So what does this all mean? Gabe Newell in my view has tunnel vision. Blind by his success (or maybe diabetes) he doesn't see that his company isn't producing anything of worth beyond the occasional Portal or Half-Life, and his other successes in gaming are due to smart buyouts of popular mods along with STEAM.

See above, although Steam is still a huge part of their success admittedly.

I kind of agree the big problem of Valve's setup is it leads to really poor community management, the whole Diretide fiasco was born entirely of Valve ignoring the communities demands for information despite having something in the pipeline that would have soothed them. I would say hiring a dedicated PR manager would be a wise investment, although Valve's general sincerity with public affairs (most of the time *cough*L4D2*cough*) is kind of endearing when they aren't being unnecessarily secretive.

EDIT: Also, Valve games by year starting at 2004:

2004: HL2, Counter-Strike Source
2005: Day of Defeat: Source
2006: HL2 Episode 1
2007: HL2 Episode 2, Portal, TF2
2008: Left 4 Dead
2009: Left 4 Dead 2
2010: Alien Swarm, Mac OSX ports (alright I'm kinda pulling out of my ass for this year)
2011: Portal 2
2012: Counter-Strike GO
2013: DOTA 2

Damn, Valve sure doesn't make any games.

 

[Cecilo]

1. Valve is the industry standard for the whole "lightning in a bottle" idiom. However their major success hasn't been from games they made but rather Steam's platform of ease of use, delivery and mainly SALES. Beyond that, Portal and HL2 are their only major successes with TF2, L4D, and Counter-Strike in my view are the minor leagues.

2. Did anyone else catch the "social multiplayer" comment? I really fear for what that means to a company who made great games that were mainly single-player experiences, TF2 and Counter-Strike don't count, neither does DOTA 2 because they weren't Valve-centric ideas but mods they bought the rights to and monetized.

3. The issue with other publishers is that their leadership/management seems to be extremely out of touch with the developers AND their customer base. By that I mean a publisher NEEDS to be run by someone who actually is a gamer at heart and I don't see that in most of the AAA companies, which is why we see so many soulless carbon copies of other pub/dev's "hit" games and big budget rushed titles with DLC that isn't worth its price-tag. If I were a major stockholder, I would want the person running x-company I own that shit-ton of stock in to have a CEO who is passionate about the products they make, not just surface passion. For all their faults Nintendo is a company run by game enthusiasts. Satoru Iwata loves his games, his hardware choices. While not everyone loves Nintendo, he does love his products and as a Nintendo fan it does show. Granted the gimmick hardware choices are a little bit wonky, but overall I can't say I'm disappointed with 90% of what Nintendo puts out. Thats more than I can say for the likes of EA, ActiBlizz and other publishers.

So what does this all mean? Gabe Newell in my view has tunnel vision. Blind by his success (or maybe diabetes) he doesn't see that his company isn't producing anything of worth beyond the occasional Portal or Half-Life, and his other successes in gaming are due to smart buyouts of popular mods along with STEAM.
Don't get me wrong I don't hate Valve I just think Gabe is right for the wrong reasons by using his company's limited library as the totality of it's success.

And? They don't NEED to release a game every bloody year, we bemoan people that release games every year, if the biggest problem Valve has, is that they didn't give people an event they only care about because it game them free items, then I would say Valve is pretty well off.

 

[Agayek]

I'm sorry, but....what?

I'm mean, seriously. What?

Your comments are so contradictory it's a wonder you've a leg to stand on.

Not at all. Both of my posts are trying, albeit apparently not succeeding, to say the same thing:

Valve has more or less stopped focusing on creating games, at least to any level of public scrutiny, and has instead shifted their focus onto other, ancillary aspects of the industry, such as running Steam, putting together the SteamOS, working on an Occulus knock-off, etc. Very little of their core business is about the production of video games anymore. They still do it, certainly, but it's far from central to their business.

My original point was that I'd rather they don't try to spread their corporate structure throughout the industry, because such a shift in focus is inevitable, because it really isn't a structure. The business will shift and move at almost complete random, drawn by the whim of the employees. Valve has made it work fantastically well, through a solid combination of talent, drive, good recruiting practices, and a decent helping of luck, but very few other businesses could handle such a setup and stay in business for long.

 

[infinity_turtles]

A lot of what he says here is good, but it seems directly contradicted by what Valve does in practice. Yeah, they're an industry juggernaut, but that's not because of their games. They barely release any games at all. Valve's less of a game developer and more of a publisher these days, and the bulk of their influence throughout the industry comes from controlling Steam.

Valve has developed and released a minimum of one game a year since 2004. I'm not sure where people get this idea that they barely release games. They're more prolific than pretty much any developer out there right now. Name one other company that can release that many games in the same time frame and have pretty much all of them actually be very good. I can't think of any.

Valve hasn't really developed most of those those games. They find other people who are and then offer them a job at Valve.

 

[Smertnik]

That's... kinda irrelevant to my point. The number of games they've put out is meaningless (though as far as I can remember, they've only put out Left 4 Dead (and the level pack sequel), Portal 2, and DotA 2 since the Orange Box came out in 2007).

"Only"? How many games is Valve supposed to put out to suffice your expectations? One game per year is a very good average for a high tier developer in my books, not even taking into account the amount of post release tweaking and patching.

 

[Agayek]

"Only"? How many games is Valve supposed to put out to suffice your expectations? One game per year is a very good average for a high tier developer in my books, not even taking into account the amount of post release tweaking and patching.

It's one per two years, unless I missed something, which is entirely possible but if there are other games, they sure as hell didn't advertise them any.

But it's also irrelevant to my point.

See:

Not at all. Both of my posts are trying, albeit apparently not succeeding, to say the same thing:

Valve has more or less stopped focusing on creating games, at least to any level of public scrutiny, and has instead shifted their focus onto other, ancillary aspects of the industry, such as running Steam, putting together the SteamOS, working on an Occulus knock-off, etc. Very little of their core business is about the production of video games anymore. They still do it, certainly, but it's far from central to their business.

My original point was that I'd rather they don't try to spread their corporate structure throughout the industry, because such a shift in focus is inevitable, because it really isn't a structure. The business will shift and move at almost complete random, drawn by the whim of the employees. Valve has made it work fantastically well, through a solid combination of talent, drive, good recruiting practices, and a decent helping of luck, but very few other businesses could handle such a setup and stay in business for long.

They've made it fairly clear over the past year or two that they are becoming less and less interested in creating games.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

He's apologizing for Half-Life 3 isn't he?

 

[SecondPrize]

Well, I wouldn't exactly trade the existence of steam for the existence of half life 2 episode 3 and onward but Gaben needs to understand that a reputation for making quality games doesn't give you a lifetime pass for not making them timely, it just eases the wait a bit. Over specialization is one thing, but you do have to decide what it is you want to do and if Valve wants to make games in addition to selling them, then they should get on with making them.
I'd say as well that their corporate structure is a huge part of what success they've had. Not being beholden to stockholders has kept them from putting out shovelware and has also kept the creation of their games in the hands of those for whom it is an avocation rather than putting it into the hands of businessmen. Again though, make fucking games if that's what you want to do.

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

And? They don't NEED to release a game every bloody year, we bemoan people that release games every year, if the biggest problem Valve has, is that they didn't give people an event they only care about because it game them free items, then I would say Valve is pretty well off.

Never said they need to release games every year, nor did I say they aren't well off. My point is their success as a company is largely due to Steam and not their published games. And their top successful games developed by them aren't really their own idea in the first place but rather mods they bought rights to. Again, I have nothing against Valve just that Gave seems to be largely ignoring the things that made his company successful in this news post.

 

[UNHchabo]

For all Gabes flat structure, I bet it doesn't apply the the people who clean the offices but those and such as those who are deemed of high enough skill to be full valve employees.

Most companies that rent office space don't have employees clean up; the building owner contracts the job to a cleaning company. I'm pretty sure Valve leases several floors of a fairly big building. So yes, it's entirely possible that every Valve employee has at least a Bachelor's degree.

 

[Albino Boo]

For all Gabes flat structure, I bet it doesn't apply the the people who clean the offices but those and such as those who are deemed of high enough skill to be full valve employees.

Most companies that rent office space don't have employees clean up; the building owner contracts the job to a cleaning company. I'm pretty sure Valve leases several floors of a fairly big building. So yes, it's entirely possible that every Valve employee has at least a Bachelor's degree.

The public ethos of valve is let people chose what to do and don't specialise, well guess what no one choses to clean up the toilets so they have outsource to a 3rd party. Guess how much choice they get. The whole flat managment thing is artificial because it does not give the cleaners and the ancillary services that Valve need to run a choice. Its not a real flat organisation because it only gives choice to a very narrow part of the business.

 

[Piorn]

I'm still waiting for an un-neutered version of L4D2, thank you very much Gaben.
Whatever happened to verifying your age on Steam and playing "Adult" games, anyways?

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

**snip**

I know how many people play the game. My view on those games are that while they're widely played, their success isn't due to Valve so much as people's interest in the already proven system and their development beyond the already established boundaries wasn't too far from the original source, and Counter-Strike hasn't changed much at all from the original format that I played when it was a mod.. BTW Team Fortress wasn't anywhere near realism when it was a Quake or Half-Life mod, not the versions I played at least. Valve initially banked on the mods popularity which is a smart business move. DOTA 2 for example is successful because MOBAs are already successful games and DOTA was the start for that so its natural that DOTA 2 would be highly played.
Again I didn't say they don't release games, nor that the games aren't good, just that their idea of "innovating" is banking on already successful markets which is entirely different than the picture Gabe is painting here, with the exception of the Portal and Half-Life series which are in themselves the MOST original concepts that Valve has released to date. Its interesting that Gabe is saying one thing while his company seemingly does the exact opposite, banking on the already popular specialized genres like Zombies (L4D), MOBAs and popular team deathmatch mods (TF2, Counter-Strike). Its just weird how h says one thing but his company's track record of success IS specialization in popular things.

 

[GloatingSwine]

Less than 10% the content of a full game[/b]
2007: HL2 Episode 2 Less than 10% the content of a full game, Portal, TF2
2008: Left 4 Dead Not made by Valve
2009: Left 4 Dead 2 Not made by Valve
2010: Alien Swarm, Mac OSX ports (alright I'm kinda pulling out of my ass for this year)
2011: Portal 2
2012: Counter-Strike GO Not made by Valve
2013: DOTA 2

Damn, Valve sure doesn't make any games.

So, y'know, of all the things you've named as "valve make games" since 2004, three were actually not Valve (Turtle Rock Studios made Left 4 Dead, were later bought by Valve, and Hidden Path made CS:GO, also the makers of Portal were partway through making it before Valve hired them) and two of them were episodic content with significant asset reuse that between them barely made up an expansion pack.

 

[Falsename]

Half Life 3!
Herf Lurfe 3!
Ermagerd where is it?

I think Gabe is well aware now that everyone he ever says will come back to that damn game he's never publishing.

Look just.... Just tell us it's not happening. The sooner we know, the sooner we can do a Kickstarter and make it ourselves. Don't leave us hanging. For copyright purposes we'll just call it 'Life Half', or 'The Free Man'.

Gabe... just.... You know? Ok?..... Ok.

 

[black_knight1337]

If those are the biggest problems they have then I'd say they're doing pretty good. People expecting a free holiday event which was never announced

It was launched as an "annual" event. Somehow fans are in the wrong for thinking it would be happening yearly.

or information on a sequel that they may or may not have even been working on this whole time, and have never even come close to officially announcing are pretty mild.

Agreed for Half-Life 3, but it's not true for Episode 3. Which over the years fans have turned it into Half-Life 3. That was talked about a number of times and is even in the developer commentary for Episode 2.

-Snip-

To an extent, sure, but that doesn't make their communication any better. The problem is they dodge any questions they get about Half-Life and just reply with stuff along the lines of "We don't have anything to share right now". At the very least they could confirm/deny that they are working on it. That alone would clear up a lot of the stuff surrounding it.

Damn, Valve sure doesn't make any games.

The key part there was "smart buyouts of popular mods". Of those IPs you listed only 1 started in-house, which is Half-Life. The rest are a combination of modding teams, indie developers and students. Sure you could argue it for the sequels but then it could be argued that Valve wouldn't have even had sequels to make if it wasn't for that.

Spoiler: Here's part of a post I did about that a while ago

Team Fortress started out as a mod for Quake, the team behind it then started work on a stand-alone version. Then Valve offers them a job to firstly port the mod to Source(Team Fortress Classic) and make their stand-alone with Source(Team Fortress 2). Counter-Strike started out as a Half-Life mod, then as it started to gather a bit of momentum Valve stepped in and gave the then developers a bunch of resources. Day of Defeat also started off as a Half-Life mod and the developers, again, joined up with Valve to make a stand-alone happen. Then there's Portal, which is the most interesting story of the lot. This one is a spiritual successor to a student project called Narbacular Drop, after which it's team got hired by Valve to create what is now known as Portal. Left 4 Dead started off at Turtle Rock Studios and was pretty close to completion when Valve hired them and threw together a $10 million marketing campaign. Alien Swarm started off as a mod for Unreal Tournament 2004. After it's success the team set out to remake it on the Source engine after which Valve hired the team. Last but not least is Dota, this one started off as a very popular map for Warcraft 3. IceFrog, the creator of the original DotA, was then hired by Valve to make a sequel.