What is Valve working on these days?
- Thread starter fluffydelusions
- Start date
That's an interesting thing.
If/when HL3 happens, what's to say it will conclude the series? Obviously EP2 doesn't end in a very satisfying way for an end of a story, but HL1 and 2 kind of do similar things. They suspend Gordon's life, but they don't conclude anything relating to the world really.
Even though I think if there is a HL3, it'll be the last one, I don't know that I'd expect an actual conclusion to the series.
Valve are weird. They've released a bunch of games, however they only have one original series created by them which is Half Life.
Everything else they have made was originally created by someone else who was then bought by Valve or Valve bought the rights.
They're a very odd company.
Everything else they have made was originally created by someone else who was then bought by Valve or Valve bought the rights.
They're a very odd company.
Pure speculation on my part but I'd say that the industry has left Valve in the dust by and large, both in terms of production talent and project management. After all, as you point out, the majority of their post-HL2 releases have been through acquisitions, rather than internal development. At the same time, the emergence of the free-to-play and mobile markets have offered them a shot to thrive as a "single-A" developer, likely with better margins than they've enjoyed in years past.
It's a sound strategy, but if the F2P/digital-distributor merry-go-round ever stops, what will they do? Be acquired by Microsoft, EA, or Activision?
Yes, steam stats leak.
That is not true.
They made Portal, I can't be bothered to research all of their games like Ricochet, but no, you're mistaken.
I'm surprised no one posted this yet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0d6yBHDvKUw
Sure I would like HL3, especially because of how Ep. 2 ended, but I'd rather have them be pleased about it instead of churning out a mediocre successor for the sake of having a sequel. If they think they can't deliver that, then so be it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0d6yBHDvKUw
Sure I would like HL3, especially because of how Ep. 2 ended, but I'd rather have them be pleased about it instead of churning out a mediocre successor for the sake of having a sequel. If they think they can't deliver that, then so be it.
Even Portal was essentially a fleshed out version of Narbacular Drop made by the same team from DigiPen.
Forsythia
Member
I'm guessing we'll see L4D3 next. I want that, too, but in the end there is only 1 game I really want from Valve, and that is of course Half-Life 3. Maybe when I'm in a retirement home I'll see it.
I'm also hoping they're working on a Steam overhaul. The client is bloated and slow, and there is almost no way to manage your library. I'm not going to manually arrange 1000+ games in catagories, thank you very much.
I'm also hoping they're working on a Steam overhaul. The client is bloated and slow, and there is almost no way to manage your library. I'm not going to manually arrange 1000+ games in catagories, thank you very much.
Nope.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_games_developed_by_Valve
They developed most of it whilst at Valve however they had already started development before joining Valve.
Absurd, that's like saying HL wasn't a new game because it was within an established genre that staff at Valve had already worked on.
No, that doesn't say that at all. It was made by ex-digipen students, yes, employed by Valve.
Purple Haze
Member
More skins.
No, the point I was making is that Portal wasn't an original IP developed entirely by Valve. They hired a bunch of people who had started work on Portal and then helped them make/finish it.
Portal only started development after the team had been hired as far as I know, and your link does not say otherwise.
sacrificengineer
Member
This, unfortunately.
That doesn't say Portal started development before Valve hired the team.
nkarafo
Member
This is so true. Portal 2 is still the best looking game for me so far. It just pleases my eyes in a way that "next gen" realistic visuals don't.
It shows they'd already started working on the basic game mechanics though.
Anyway, I just find it a bit odd that such a huge dev who has been around for so long and has released so many games has only created one game which was entirely originally conceived inside the company.
.
I suppose my point is, whether its IceFrog, Turtle Rock, or a group of DigiPen students hired to commercialize a senior project, the inception of these franchises did not occur within Valve.
That quote is addressing ND. Which, while very similar to Portal, isn't Portal. They did the same thing with Portal 2 too. They bought the team that made a digipen game called Tag: The Power of Paint, which was the basis for all the new stuff in Portal 2.
I'm not sure how this is different than hiring anyone based on their showreel though, the only difference really is that Valve have hired entire teams, but even that's not so strange, it happens quite a lot actually, although often they're proven teams and they're bought to work on an IP they're already connected to in some way.
Nintendo do something very similar. They've bought game concepts, and applied their own IPs (new and existing) to them. Mario Galaxy being one prominent example. The only difference is most publishers don't choose to surface these things.
The point I'm trying to make is that the idea and game mechanics for Portal originated from outside of Valve. Valve saw a game, hired the devs and said build us another game based off of your previous one. The game wasn't something which was originally conceived inside of Valve.
Btw, I'm not trying to say any of this as a negative. I'm just saying I find it kinda odd.
Sure, but how is that different to every studio that has ever made a game that has precedence?
The only reason it seems different with Portal is that they hired the team, they could have just made a Narbacular Drop clone themselves. Think of how many studios made Doom clones, they didn't buy id to do it, sure, but they still took an existing game design, and put their own IP on it essentially, which is what Portal is, Portal just happened to be made by the team that made the original game Portal was an iteration of.
Hiring and retaining talent is at the core of all great companies. Valve could have ripped off ND, but why bother when they can just hire the staff, so if they were to have an idea as good later, they'd have that too.
Rebel Leader
THE POWER OF BUTTERSCOTCH BOTTOMS
Due to budget reason, the number 3 has been removed from all the keyboards in valve's office
Byron Bluth
Banned
What we know for sure:
-Source 2 is real and developers have attended workshops
-Left4Dead levels have been recreated in Source 2 (maybe a L4D 3?)
-Half life 3 and Left4Dead 3 lines of code and work details have been found in patch updates for current games and Valve work schedules
-Hats
-Source 2 is real and developers have attended workshops
-Left4Dead levels have been recreated in Source 2 (maybe a L4D 3?)
-Half life 3 and Left4Dead 3 lines of code and work details have been found in patch updates for current games and Valve work schedules
-Hats
It does say something about Valve's brainstorming and production process I think. In the case of Portal, L4D, and DOTA2, what we've seen is that Valve was able to identify interesting ideas developed externally very early, and instead of just being inspired and making their own concept based on that, they would rather partner with that talent and try to make them part of the Valve family. Those games resulted from these partnerships, and we've seen in the case of Portal and L4D that some of those talents would leave Valve and create new products on their own.
Meanwhile Valve does a lot of internal R&D and prototyping, but for one reason or another, we haven't seen any original stuff shipped purely from such processes. It's definitely interesting. Even Alien Swarm, another side project which they released for free on Steam, is a remake of an existing mod by the mod creators who were working on it... before joining Valve.
There's a clear pattern that shows that as a company Valve is far more interested in people rather than specific projects, and their commercial products in the last decade have pretty much been a result of talent acquisition rather than from internal development.
I think all three of those games a really different situations though. Valve staff obviously saw something special in Narbacular Drop, it was, as you put it, an interesting idea. Those other two though, Valve's involved in L4D if I remember correctly, came around shortly after The Crossing was canned. Valve already 'had' a very similar game, I think they were excited about this style of game, and wanted to be first out with one, so once their horse died, they grabbed the remaining one. Now we have a few more in that 'genre', Killing Floor, Payday, etc, but it seemed like it could have just as easily been Arkane as it was Turtle Rock.
And Dota 2, that was hardly identified early, DotA had been out for a long time, and LoL was already taking off. I believe they wanted IceFrog (they have Eul too), but with all the DotA clones, I think more than anything, they wanted a sense of authenticity, and they wanted the best possible case for owning the brand when it was inevitably legally challenged.
I think this all comes down to what classifies as being original. This was kind of my point with the Doom clones comment. Practically no one makes anything original. Every time there's a thread about basically any developer, we don't get 'Epic just ripped off Quake, then Kill.Switch' or whatever, because no one really expects originality. But for some reason, Valve is not held to the same standards.
You say it's interesting that we haven't seen anything original from Valve internally, but do we from practically anyone? F-Stop, the game Portal 2 was for its first two years, was apparently an original idea which was shelved. People still ask about it, but it was shelved, it can't have been working that well, or we'd have played it. Maybe Valve aren't great at making original games, but neither are almost any other studio.
I remember an interview from someone at Valve, they were saying the studio was established around the concept that if you have enough time, and enough internal reviewing, you don't need geniuses to make great work. I think if that's accurate or not in terms of the founding ethos of the studio, it's true of the results. Half-Life 2 wasn't as original as say Portal, but it was still a greater genre revolution than 99% of studios will ever hope to achieve.
Doctor_Thomas
Member
Most of their time seems to have been spent getting their games working on OSX and Linux.
MickeyKnox
Member
I'm pretty sure Half Life is the only Valve product that isn't born from absorbing an outside team that was already working on what would eventually become a Valve game.
StuBurns, I don't think you understand what we're saying. It's not about defining what an "original game" is. It's about how the products Valve actually released in the past decade all originated from external parties who were recruited into Valve. It's definitely a very, very interesting trend which is visible to anyone paying attention. It's not a good or bad thing on it's own, just very interesting because no other developer really does this.
I don't agree that it's true.
Portal was not in-development before Valve acquired the Narbacular Drop team as far as I know. The game is very similar to Portal, but that's why defining what 'an original game' means matters. If you are saying Portal isn't an original game because it's like Narbacular Drop, then practically nothing any publisher releases is original either.
You're focusing on the wrong thing here. People are not panning Valve for not making "original" games. In fact no one is panning Valve here. It's an observation about their development environment, where they seem most productive from acquiring fresh talent externally.
I didn't say anyone was panning them, nor was I defending them, I was just disagreeing with the notion that 'they only have one original series created by them'.
Productivity is a difficult thing to gauge. They made L4D2 in one year, but Portal 2 took four years. Valve already had Turtle Rock, and Portal 2 did get fresh talent with the Tag team.
Now, if you're talking about the studio being most original when acquiring fresh talent, that I would agree with, but I imagine that's true anywhere innovation is present. It has a massive advantage to be though. Valve have a couple of hundred people, Valve can look at hundreds of game concepts, with thousands of people working on them, and pick which is original. The larger the pool of talent, the greater the chance of something interesting.
Portal is an original series created by Valve. Team Fortress 2 is so far removed from anything else in the series that it might as well be an original series created by Valve.
Anyway, I'd also like to remind people that they are supposed to ship a game in 2014, though they've been so quiet that it seems unlikely at this point:
http://www.polygon.com/2014/3/5/5458072/portal-board-game-interview-valve-cryptozoic-entertainment
Anyway, I'd also like to remind people that they are supposed to ship a game in 2014, though they've been so quiet that it seems unlikely at this point:
http://www.polygon.com/2014/3/5/5458072/portal-board-game-interview-valve-cryptozoic-entertainment
They released one last year. And another one a year before that. And another one a year before that.
AsfaeksBR
Member
But wasn't Half-Life bought by them from Sierra when it was beginning the development?
At least that what I've hears years before, but I ain't sure it's true.
Valve developed it. Sierra is the publisher
Handy Fake
Member
If they're going to announce anything, it'll be today. Tenth anniversary of HL2.
They wont.
Handy Fake
Member
Dictator93
Member
OP is asking the wrong question. Rather, it should be "What Studio/game idea is Valve looking at purchasing next?"
At this point, they will never be able to meet expectations anyway. Maybe they should never make it.
Handy Fake
Member
To be honest, at this point they can make it as a 480p, retro-pixel game with a soundtrack comprising of Michael Bolton beatboxing into an empty Pringles tube and I'd be happy. I need closure.
krameriffic
Member
The people who post threads like these and support the suppositions made in them are generally the type of people for whom "game I don't want to play" translates to "not a game".
People should also keep in mind that Valve employs only 330 people according to Wikipedia. Meanwhile you look at a studio like Ubisoft who on a quick Google search employs literally over 9000 people. Valve is a completely different beast from these other major developers.