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Valve – Handbook for New Employees (2012) [pdf]

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Re: Valve – Handbook for New Employees (2012) [pdf]

#191

Post by quickdraw46 »

Keyframe wrote: post #151
AimHere wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's your point? Valve put out multiple AAA games in the same timeframe too, and did a lot of other stuff besides. Sure, GTA5 is a big-ass game, but Valve's games - games plural - haven't exactly been small projects either.

DCC of assets for something like GTA is magnitudes larger than anything Valve does. Rockstar has an army of artists working on those assets for that game. Valve is a multidisciplinary house where they dabble in a lot of stuff, split in smaller groups, but their primary vehicle is Steam and a couple of (successful) games where each project does not need as many people. It's comparing apples to oranges. What Rockstar d…

Most game development studios (including Valve) outsource most of the art related work. So they can definitely maintain their strength and build a product with scope similar to GTAV

Re: Valve – Handbook for New Employees (2012) [pdf]

#192

Post by 9point6 »

ahel wrote: post #72
MIKarlsen wrote: post #37

I find the whole "You are a person who spend every waking hour optimizing yourself to become the best YOU you can be"-frame of mind very intimidating. Maybe it's because I'm not american, but even though I like to work with complex issues, I also like a 9-17 job with a decent income, and the ability to go home and relax when I'm not working. And by relax, I don't mean working on side projects, doing volunteer work or…

Slightly off-topic but: why is 9-17? Here I've always seen people working 9-18 with one hour off for lunch. Is this an Italian peculiarity?

9 to 5/5.30 (inclusive of an hour lunch) seems pretty common in the UK. It's also common to have flexible time, so I work 10am to 6pm most days.

Re: Valve – Handbook for New Employees (2012) [pdf]

#193

Post by Karunamon »

Kurtz79 wrote: post #129
AimHere wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's your point? Valve put out multiple AAA games in the same timeframe too, and did a lot of other stuff besides. Sure, GTA5 is a big-ass game, but Valve's games - games plural - haven't exactly been small projects either.

His point is that probably just GTA5 has sold more copies in 5 years than all Valve games combined (a quick check of the most popular ones, HL 1/2, L4D 1/2, Portal 1/2 reaches about 30 mils), so that number of employees is justified. Also: http://www.gamespot.com/articles/gta-5s-online-mode-has-gene... There is no denying Valve does great with the number of people it has, but of all the badly managed companies they c…

Most of the stuff Valve is selling nowadays are addons to already existing games.

Interesting thought experiment: Break the sales for DOTA and TF2 into ~$50 increments and compare that number against total sales for the last two GTA's put together. I suspect Valve will beat them at least twice over.

Re: Valve – Handbook for New Employees (2012) [pdf]

#194

Post by jhogger »

xigency wrote: post #52
ebbv wrote: post #18

This is quite old, and paints an overly rosy picture. After this was published a lot of the SteamBox project people got canned and were less impressed with the reality of Valve: http://www.wired.com/2013/07/wireduk-valve-jeri-ellsworth/

"We were having a difficult time recruiting folks. We would interview very talented people but they would be rejected by the old timers at Valve as not fitting the culture." This sounds like a terrible environment to develop in.

totally.

what happens if i'm really talented AND come from totally different culture?

Re: Valve – Handbook for New Employees (2012) [pdf]

#195

Post by pikzen »

debaserab2 wrote: post #165
aoeuasdf1 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dota 2 isn't going anywhere. The current tournament has an $18+ million prize pool (and rising) - meaning Valve was paid about $72 million in compendium sales. This is for a tournament that runs every year and is growing in popularity and size.

I think you're right but I also can't help but think how the very existence of Dota 2 underscores Valve's lack of innovation in the past half decade or so. They literally took a game built on the back of their biggest competitor and basically recoded it on their own gaming engine (Yes, I know there's plenty of quality of life upgrades they brought to the series, but it was nothing that wasn't too obvious or already i…

>They literally took a game built on the back of their biggest competitor

What.

DotA is older than League of Legends, Icefrog was even screwed over by Pendragon (Riot Games cofounder) and Pendragon replaced the DotA-Allstars website with a LoL ad. Riot are also known to have taken many ideas from WIP heroes from DotA. If anything, Riot themselves surfed on the popularity of DotA and innovated very lightly.

I'm not saying Valve innovated by picking up Icefrog and making Dota2, but it's laughable to think that it was built on the back of LoL.

Re: Valve – Handbook for New Employees (2012) [pdf]

#196

Post by baby »

debaserab2 wrote: post #172
baby wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what? They bought Counter strike from Gooseman, they outsourced half life blue shift and opposing force, they bought the team behind team fortress, they bought the team behind left 4 dead, they bought the team behind dota, ... I think everyone that plays dota is actually happy about that.

That comparison isn't completely fair: CS and TF were in their infancy when Valve got involved and Valve took big risks developing those games. Valve taking over DotA after DotA had existed for nearly a decade felt more like them trying to play catch up to LoL in a genre (market) of games that they had nothing in. Agreed, great for DotA players - but it didn't strike me as being a particularly impressive or interesti…

I think it's pretty fair, CS was already popular (and played in tournaments), DotA was also just a mod for warcraft 3, far from being a real game, just maps you could play on.

I think your point of view is biased by the fact that you do not play dota, or do not like this genre, etc... It was a pretty big revolution in the dota genre.

Re: Valve – Handbook for New Employees (2012) [pdf]

#197

Post by debaserab2 »

baby wrote: post #196
debaserab2 wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That comparison isn't completely fair: CS and TF were in their infancy when Valve got involved and Valve took big risks developing those games. Valve taking over DotA after DotA had existed for nearly a decade felt more like them trying to play catch up to LoL in a genre (market) of games that they had nothing in. Agreed, great for DotA players - but it didn't strike me as being a particularly impressive or interesti…

I think it's pretty fair, CS was already popular (and played in tournaments), DotA was also just a mod for warcraft 3, far from being a real game, just maps you could play on. I think your point of view is biased by the fact that you do not play dota, or do not like this genre, etc... It was a pretty big revolution in the dota genre.

No, that's incorrect - counter strike was first made in 1999 and purchased just one year later by Valve. Whatever tournaments there were they didn't look anything like the esports scene of today.

That's nothing like the DotA acquisition - DotA was more popular as a custom game than WC3 was itself and had been for nearly a decade. DotA is pretty much the genesis of the entire MOBA genre. There's no way you can discount that just because it ran on top of another game.

I played DotA for many years and am a huge fan of MOBA's. I don't disagree with you that it was a big revolution in the DotA genre, but if that's as high as Valve was aiming with the game, it's very disappointing given Valve's history of doing so much more than that. That's my point.

It was a boring, uninspired safe bet by a company that can do a lot better.

Re: Valve – Handbook for New Employees (2012) [pdf]

#198

Post by sliverstorm »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #146
sliverstorm wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is, tangentially, my objection to my friend's dream of anarchy. Maybe the world would be better off without government- but the power vacuum will always be filled, so it's almost certainly better to fill it deliberately.

Another way to look at anarchism is just favoring the smallest possible power structures. So maybe there is someone who runs the oven, and everyone knows they're in charge. But you don't have someone in an office 1000 miles away making decisions about 1000 ovens. Another way of thinking about it is that any and all power structures are allowed, they just have to be opt-in. If you want to be a 4th tier worker in a 6 t…

The power vacuum which is filled by government today is, I think, fundamentally not a power structure you can opt out of. Aside from moving, which is already how it works today.

Re: Valve – Handbook for New Employees (2012) [pdf]

#199

Post by zerooneinfinity »

Det_Jacobian wrote: post #176
mmanfrin wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eventually the market will figure out that they don't need to pay Steam 30% of sales to host files on a server That's overly negative and pretty disingenuous. App developers for Android can sell their APKs directly and save 30%, but they don't because of the convenience of the market. Similarly, I rarely buy games outside of Steam (or GOG) except in the cases of very indie developers who provide a steam key when I bu…

Yeah you're right, Steam does offer a lot more than just file hosting. They also do DRM, friends lists, games promotions, and modding marketplaces, although each of these things certainly also have cheaper/decentralized solutions. The 30% number is one that they might start to get pressure on with competition. GOG now pulls something like 10% of steam sales on the games they curate (citation needed) and I believe the…

The greatest thing they offer is a guaranteed number of views for your game.

Re: Valve – Handbook for New Employees (2012) [pdf]

#200

Post by tapoxi »

pikzen wrote: post #195
debaserab2 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're right but I also can't help but think how the very existence of Dota 2 underscores Valve's lack of innovation in the past half decade or so. They literally took a game built on the back of their biggest competitor and basically recoded it on their own gaming engine (Yes, I know there's plenty of quality of life upgrades they brought to the series, but it was nothing that wasn't too obvious or already i…

>They literally took a game built on the back of their biggest competitor What. DotA is older than League of Legends, Icefrog was even screwed over by Pendragon (Riot Games cofounder) and Pendragon replaced the DotA-Allstars website with a LoL ad. Riot are also known to have taken many ideas from WIP heroes from DotA. If anything, Riot themselves surfed on the popularity of DotA and innovated very lightly. I'm not sa…

I think OP is referring to DotA being a custom map for Warcraft III.
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