Brad Muir joins Valve

TBH Dota 2 is barely a game. It's a port of a mod to another engine.

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I think what Arion is trying to say is that from a game design perspective its essentially the work of one person.
 
so Double Fine hasn't made a game in a decade?

Ha!
: (

And to riff on what Nirolak said, as someone that plays and loves Valve's relevant games nearly every day (CS: GO, Dota 2, TF2), not everyone that shits on Valve is someone that only wants HL3 from them. They're running games-as-services that they make an insane amount of money on and most of the updates they deliver are buggy or mostly consist of community-made content. I'm aware they're small, but it's easy to think, "What the fuck are they doing over there?" without being a trollish drone.
 
I think what Arion is trying to say is that from a game design perspective its essentially the work of one person.

Except it's really not - and that wouldn't make it 'not a game'. Hell, even his definition of all games having to be 'fun' (an entirely subjective idea anyway) is flat out wrong.

Just because you don't like something, doesn't mean it no longer gets to be the thing it is.

DOTA2 is a game - a lot of people find it fun. More people than play most other games actually. And it's also a game with a whole team behind it constantly updating, tweaking and balancing it because it's so Goddamn complex. You know, in the only ways that a game can be - by having dozens of built-in rule sets and mechanics.
 
Not to mention in a city with literally 1/3rd the costs of the Bay Area with much better job security. Seems like a good deal to me.

At Valve? I was under the impression that there isn't much job security because they do things in such a different way that people end of leaving often because they don't mesh well with how Valve works.

Muir can probably pull it off. I wonder if he will be leading any projects there.
 
What I ultimately want from Valve is new exciting IPs like last gen when they made Portal and L4D. Brad Muir might just be the guy to do that. Plus I couldn't care less about HL3.
 
Except it's really not - and that wouldn't make it 'not a game'. Hell, even his definition of all games having to be 'fun' (an entirely subjective idea anyway) is flat out wrong.

Just because you don't like something, doesn't mean it no longer gets to be the thing it is.

DOTA2 is a game - a lot of people find it fun. More people than play most other games actually. And it's also a game with a whole team behind it constantly updating, tweaking and balancing it because it's so Goddamn complex. You know, in the only ways that a game can be - by having dozens of built-in rule sets and mechanics.

Icefrog has been running the show for what, a decade now? Hes probably the best multiplayer game designer in the world. And I'm not necessarily agreeing with that poster - Dota is an awesome game and I've been playing consistently since 2007. But I can't see dozens of people working on game design for dota 2. They release roughly one or two heroes per year and I imagine that Icefrog is deciding the vast majority of balance changes.

Theres tons of creative game design types at valve. So what are they working on? It sure as hell isn't counterstrike and TF2
 
At Valve? I was under the impression that there isn't much job security because they do things in such a different way that people end of leaving often because they don't mesh well with how Valve works.

Muir can probably pull it off. I wonder if he will be leading any projects there.

Valve barely loses employees with high frequency. There have only been two times where people have left Valve in notable numbers. The first was when Valve had a shake up that was actually spoken of in public by Gabe Newell before it actually happened. The second was when Facebook purchased Oculus and several people left to join
 
Icefrog has been running the show for what, a decade now? Hes probably the best multiplayer game designer in the world. And I'm not necessarily agreeing with that poster - Dota is an awesome game and I've been playing consistently since 2007. But I can't see dozens of people working on game design for dota 2. They release roughly one or two heroes per year and I imagine that Icefrog is deciding the vast majority of balance changes.

Theres tons of creative game design types at valve. So what are they working on? It sure as hell isn't counterstrike and TF2

Recently ? Source 2, map overhaul, texture upgrades, bug fixing, new heroes, new features (in and out of the core game), UI improvements, hero remodels, etc.
Most of the work on dota is balancing but there's always small things that go unnoticed in comparison because they're not as impactful.
 
Valve barely loses employees with high frequency. There have only been two times where people have left Valve in notable numbers. The first was when Valve had a shake up that was actually spoken of in public by Gabe Newell before it actually happened. The second was when Facebook purchased Oculus and several people left to join

I didn't mean mass exodus so much as people not lasting long. I thought I remembered reading about it that they hire talented people who have trouble working in the open-ended environment of Vale and will sometimes leave after a few months because not everyone can work that way. It was one of the articles about why Half Life 3 may not come out because no one gets assigned to it, they choose their own projects.

Brad Muir seems about as flexible as a person as you can get though.
 
Recently ? Source 2, map overhaul, texture upgrades, bug fixing, new heroes, new features (in and out of the core game), UI improvements, hero remodels, etc.

Maybe I just have a poor grasp of game design? I generally thought that the people working on level design, game design, etc aren't going to be the people working on UI improvements and porting the engine.
 
Maybe I just have a poor grasp of game design? I generally thought that the people working on level design, game design, etc aren't going to be the people working on UI improvements and porting the engine.

There is no way that IceFrog just makes all the decisions without an approval process and people there to vet the ideas. That's not how a company like Valve would do things. I'm sure he has final say, but there's no way he's the sole game designer there.
 
Maybe I just have a poor grasp of game design? I generally thought that the people working on level design, game design, etc aren't going to be the people working on UI improvements and porting the engine.

I would imagine a lot of their game design talent is messing around with VR projects and L4D3.
 
As is the case with every Valve thread, its pages are filled with a bunch of tired old jokes about how Valve 'makes no games'. I know we're not supposed to backseat mod and if my complaint is out of line I'll accept the consequences but I really have to ask, are the mods ever going to do something about it?

We are not going to "do anything about" people making (maybe unfunny, but basically harmless) jokes about a slightly exaggerated but generally reasonable inference, no.
 
While around 50-75% of the complaining usually stems from posters who are dissatisfied with their lack of singleplayer output, I do imagine the current update rate (and the content of the updates) for their multiplayer service titles is adding notably to the disillusionment.

The bar for service games is pretty high these days.

True, though beside the Reborn engine hiccups, most of the people actually playing Valve's games don't seem to be that disillusioned. I mean if people were really unhappy then Dota 2 and CS:GO wouldn't be as popular as they are, right?

I'm also under the impression that Dota 2 content updates slowed to a crawl due to getting Source 2 out the door (double the work creating events and content for two engines). I'm guessing we'll see more from them once they actually get the thing in a decent state.
 
Maybe I just have a poor grasp of game design? I generally thought that the people working on level design, game design, etc aren't going to be the people working on UI improvements and porting the engine.

Oh yeah my bad, got confused. Yeah, there isn't a need for a lot of game designers I guess, but I'm guessing there's several persons working with icefrog on the matter. Every major update sees one or more heroes reworked somehow, also new features and items, etc.

I'm also under the impression that Dota 2 content updates slowed to a crawl due to getting Source 2 out the door (double the work creating events and content for two engines). I'm guessing we'll see more from them once they actually get the thing in a decent state.
Yep
From september 2014 :
One more thing: we on the Dota 2 team have a number of updates in the works right now that we’re really excited about, some for the rest of this year, and a big update for early next year. But we’re pretty sure we won’t be able to make enough progress on the larger update if we put it down to work on Diretide – so we’ve decided that we’re not going to ship a Diretide event this year. We know that last year we weren’t clear enough in our communication about this, so this year we wanted to be up front about it early. Next year will bring monumental changes to Dota 2, and we’re confident that when you’ve seen what we’ve been working on, you’ll agree it was worth it.
They were talking about source 2 back then. Obviously it had some delay ("early next year"), but it pretty much took priority over other content
 
I didn't mean mass exodus so much as people not lasting long. I thought I remembered reading about it that they hire talented people who have trouble working in the open-ended environment of Vale and will sometimes leave after a few months because not everyone can work that way. It was one of the articles about why Half Life 3 may not come out because no one gets assigned to it, they choose their own projects.

Brad Muir seems about as flexible as a person as you can get though.

That seems like a reference to two different things. That original group of people that were fired, which Gabe talked about at a business school as something they needed to do 2 weeks before it happened. And then the rumour mongering of "the Know" and their HL3 rumour. That rumour is really amusing when you read the email transcript with Laidlaw that pretty much puts it to bed, yet "the know" put out a follow up video that sidelines much of what he says to support their own narrative.
 
There is no way that IceFrog just makes all the decisions without an approval process and people there to vet the ideas. That's not how a company like Valve would do things. I'm sure he has final say, but there's no way he's the sole game designer there.

Why do you say that? Valve hired Icefrog with the sole purpose of running their dota team. He's been balancing the game for years with the solicited feedback of professional players. I don't see why you would even need anyone else working on game balance.

Regardless, I just want to know what all the creative types (game and level design) are doing at valve atm. They must be working on something? Probably VR stuff and L4d as an earlier poster said.

I really fucking hope they aren't all working on L4D lol.
 
You have proof that he is solely doing just Dota, in a company where few people are only allowed to work on one project?

lmao.... get real dude. I thought people are "allowed" to work on whatever the hell they want.

Besides, I think the burden of proof is on you to prove that Icefrog IS working on something else, because it makes zero sense.
 
lmao.... get real dude. I thought people are "allowed" to work on whatever the hell they want.

Besides, I think the burden of proof is on you to prove that Icefrog IS working on something else, because it makes zero sense.

What the hell? My point is that no one knows if he works just on Dota or on other things or isn't even working on Dota right now, if he "runs the Dota team" or not, specifically because there is no evidence to go on that any of these are or are not the case. My point stands
 
I can't wait for the meltdowns that thread will bring.

I'm more excited for the L4D3 thread than I am for L4D3

I would definitely be one of the people crying in that thread, lol.

L4D was definitely a fun game but L4D2 didn't do much for me and I'd much rather they were working on something else
 
True, though beside the Reborn engine hiccups, most of the people actually playing Valve's games don't seem to be that disillusioned. I mean if people were really unhappy then Dota 2 and CS:GO wouldn't be as popular as they are, right?
I don't think these are necessarily mutually exclusive. People can be upset about the state of a service, but still like something enough to keep playing it for quite some time.

It will start manifesting in lots of complaining though. For example, the response to Diretide being missing was quite clear even if their community wasn't going to leave because of it. If there had been all sorts of other updates around that time, I don't think we'd have seen anything like that.

If people simply stopped caring, they wouldn't be in the threads in the first place (though this one might be an exception since it involves someone who was working at another studio).

I'm also under the impression that Dota 2 content updates slowed to a crawl due to getting Source 2 out the door (double the work creating events and content for two engines). I'm guessing we'll see more from them once they actually get the thing in a decent state.
But yes, this is a very easy problem to fix.
 
Brad was honestly the main reason I care about Double Fine. I feel as if I liked Trenched and Massive Chalice far more than pretty much the rest of the entire Internet. Wasn't even expecting much out of MC but it ate my whole weekend when I got around to it.

As for Valve, well, I'm not a DOTA fan anymore. Maybe he can finally convince someone to let him make his Monster Hunter-like.
 
It's not a Valve thread without someone trying to claim games like Dota are not real games or somehow doesn't count.
 
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