Valve Employee Handbook

Interesting read:

http://dl.pcgamer.com/Valve_Handbook_LowRes.pdf

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Posting And You

Wow, thats actually so interesting

Totally awesome. Good find!

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Blog: www.playingarchitecture.net
LinkedIn: Eric Lancon
Twitter:@Riven202

hah this looks like something I'm not supposed to see...

I stopped reading at the timeline of events, where they ignored/chose to not include the release of HL2DM. Whether or not anybody considers it a worthwhile game is irrelevant; they charged money for it ( initially ) and failed to support it properly. I guess they don't want new staff to know this? And the $100k boondoggle FIOS contest, sweep it under the carpet, sure.

Meh, could be I'm just jaded

haymaker said:
I stopped reading at the timeline of events, where they ignored/chose to not include the release of HL2DM.

It was generally accepted that counter strike 2 was the multiplayer version of the game - for good reason, it was 100 times more popular then DM.

haymaker said:
they charged money for it ( initially )

Uhhhh no they didn't - If you owned HL2 single player then you got it for free. Later they offered the game for like 5$ if you didn't have HL2 single player. I can't think of any other entitlement I should feel towards HL2DM - valve put out a great single player game, with a decent multi-player aspect, and the very open SDK to allow people to create their own Mods, the "official" DM was just an added benefit I thought.

haymaker said:
and failed to support it properly.

Yeah that part was poor on their part. But they supported it for 2 years before they focused their support on better games - TF2 comes to mind...

haymaker said:
I guess they don't want new staff to know this? And the $100k boondoggle FIOS contest, sweep it under the carpet, sure.

I don't think it was intentionally left out for any reason. HL2DM was a free release, 5$ if you really wanted it. I agree though - after the DM contest DM was swept under the rug, and after the subsequent updates to the source engine DM is partly broken, but Valve then game us: portal, TF2 (which is by far their most popular multiplayer game to date, more then DM, more then CS), L4D (and 2), and they introduced the steam distribution platform. I'm willing to overlook that.

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Posting And You

Still, it's a decent title that would easily reestablish a flurrying community again, if properly updated and supported.

They treat it like it's a back catalog game, but could easily implement a few more features to make it more user friendly, like TF2. But who knows how much more work is really involved to do that.

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Blog: www.playingarchitecture.net
LinkedIn: Eric Lancon
Twitter:@Riven202

The fact that they have a handbook like this and no one has done it yet, means it's likely very complicated.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

Whoa that's great!

Haymaker what would you have done differently with HL2DM?

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Aaron's Stuff

"Le Chief" said:
Whoa that's great!

Haymaker what would you have done differently with HL2DM?

You mean in terms of development and support? I can't answer that here, that'll be hijacking. It has been discussed many times on dedictaed DM sites. In terms of the handbook, Riven and Omegaslayer kinda said it already; I'm just personally peeved @ Valve for their corporate attitude towards product, that's why I'm bitchy. For the cost of whoever cleans the crowbar for a month in Bellevue, they could have one of the last true DM games out there.

Hence my unwillingness to read further.

What do you mean you cant answer that here, if not here, then where?

I imagine he's saying it'd need to be done in a different thread (By all means, if it's something you want to discuss please do so)

The impression the handbook gives is that the work community is entirely self driven on projects they want to do. So, it really just means that there isn't a strong desire in the staff to maintain HL2DM.

I think the corporate front of the studio is merely a facade to protect their employees more than anything else. And that most people should probably give Valve the benefit of the doubt here.

After all, they could operate much more like other developers and just ignore fans implicitly.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

You mean in terms of development and support? I can't answer that here, that'll be hijacking.

First off: never worry about hijacking a thread when you may have an intelectual debate. I've hijacked many "HL1 is more detailed then HL2" rose colored glasses threads simply because the logic in them is completely wrong.

For the cost of whoever cleans the crowbar for a month in Bellevue, they could have one of the last true DM games out there.

I can't say whether you work on the software industry or not, but the cost they probably pay the cleaning crew for their entire office for a month probably wouldn't match the cost incurred to "revamp" DM - A year is debatable I suppose, but I know that where I work as a systems engineer, the cost of developer and QA time vastly outweighs the cost of keeping the place clean.

Some things off the top of my head that you may not realize from developer's perspective: porting the game to the latest version of source, the countless bug fixes and patches they would have to work out because of that port, new content/art alone isn't cheap - and that takes a long time its own right, code/branch re-integration alone can take months before something is stable enough for QA, implementing new features is also a very long process (implement, test, debug, QA, redesign) , and the months of QA testing/tweaking to get it just right as a releasable product. Most certainly the cost difference is in entirely two different ball parks.

I think crono said it better:

The impression the handbook gives is that the work community is entirely self driven on projects they want to do. So, it really just means that there isn't a strong desire in the staff to maintain HL2DM.

Hit it on the head right there - if someone at Valve who had a really strong desire to re-work the game, then it would be going right now (if it isn't already). If you truly feel strongly about getting DM, then write Gabe an email, you never know if you'll get hired on a whim, Gabe hired the team that did Nebacular Drop (Portal as a student project BEFORE it was Portal) right out of school.

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Posting And You

Wow, amazing article about my favourite games company!

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Just Kidding

Just Kidding

The impression the handbook gives is that the work community is entirely self driven on projects they want to do. So, it really just means that there isn't a strong desire in the staff to maintain HL2DM.

Hit it on the head right there - if someone at Valve who had a really strong desire to re-work the game, then it would be going right now (if it isn't already). If you truly feel strongly about getting DM, then write Gabe an email, you never know if you'll get hired on a whim,...

Again, hesitant to fuel an off-topic discussion but seeing as it is Valve after all...

Firstly, i have to take exception to that excerpt above, regarding self-driven projects. I call bullshit, in the end. I think what that probably means is that you can have an opinion, as long as it's Valve's. They are a corporation, and by mandate and definition, this entity must do anything and everything possible to show profit, or be legally liable to shareholders. Having a nursery-school facade may help their image, but I doubt much of the rhetoric seen in this publication is valid.

Again that's just me, and my doubters-gonna-doubt ways. I have no experience at all in software dev but my line of work is project-driven, so there must be more than a few parallels.

As for budgetary concerns, it has been stated many times ( on Steampowered forums, steam group petitions, and elsewhere ) that the player base of HL2DM would gladly pay for a reduced-bug official version. No response has ever been forthcoming. Adding that to information on sales figures such as this

http://uk.pc.gamespy.com/articles/113/1136646p1.html

makes me doubt money is a huge issue. Hell, somebody already did an independent port to the OB engine and addressed most of the issues! One guy! He has even offered to make his code available for official consideration, I believe.

Anyway, like I say, there is no end of ranting on the 'net regarding the sad status of this title; suffice it to say that I distrust Valve's corporate entity enough to rescind my financial contributions. I find most other games fucking boring in comparison anyway.

Rawr.

Valve employee's work in cabals on certain projects. It's somewhat of a misnomer that they work on whatever they want to. They do have free rein to do what they want within that cabal on the project, everything is laid out before the game is developed in storyboard but the content is up for interpretation and Valve does not use a predetermined or structerd layout for making games. The cabal has the ability to rework changes into the game on their own. That's the main reason for so much creativity in their games.
They do have the freedom to work on other stuff also, they are not totally tied to their project so in some sense self driven is true. They can work on other games and projects if they have an idea to add to it.
As regards HL2DM asking them to divert resources to a game as old as that and spend that kind of money to fix bugs I doubt it would would make sense from a profitability standpoint. Besides that's what the gaming community is for, Valve has given them all the tools and ability to fix them themselves and let them run with it.
I would just play the game as is and have fun.

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Light is faster than sound:That is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.

Your riches in life are family and friends, everything else is just a distraction.

sgtfly said:
I would just play the game as is and have fun.

Truly, wise words.

I was never really impressed with HL2DM either but for reasons few others seemed to share. I just couldn't deal with each frag being reduced to who could toss whatever the most.
IMO, that was the only real defect in the play times. When you could convince others to play without tossing everything around, it was truly enjoyable.

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The best things in life, aren't things.

haymaker said:
but I doubt much of the rhetoric seen in this publication is valid.

This is true, we can never know if this publication speaks the truth or not, and by no means is it the sole base to formulate an opinion off of. The only experience/knowledge that I have is from first hand. When I worked on Eternal-Silence Valve had the team fly up to meet with them and give feed back on our mod.

note: I'm not in the picture, but I am in this next one, when we went to the GDC, where valve employees/devs came by and showed a legitimate interest in our community work

Now granted this was well over 3-4 years now, things can change in that time, but I can tell you that the "corporate big wigs" vibe didn't exist at all. Now you can look at EA's ME3 day one DLC, or the fact that EA only recently lifted offline content bans on their own service (even the fact that an offline ban existed in the first place was idiotic). As compared to valve who is releasing more community tools, or even give indie developers a means of distributing their games to a wide audience. Personally I find this Q/A pretty thought provoking:

1. Does Steam only accept games from major publishers, or will you take a game from an indie developer?
Your game doesn't have to come from a big name studio, as long as it's fun we'd love to see it.

Valve is driving inovation in the dev community, as well as the gaming community in general. Saying that they are only interested in the money bottom line is where I call BS. Sure anyone will focus on the dollar to stay in business, but they're not the corporate fat cats you think they are.

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Posting And You

haymaker said:
They are a corporation, and by mandate and definition, this entity must do anything and everything possible to show profit, or be legally liable to shareholders.

I thought Valve was still privately owned..?

I think I remember reading somewhere that Gabe Newell still owns more than 50% of the company (though maybe my memory is deceiving me).

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http://maze5.net

I happen to know alot of people who work there and have met Gabe Newell.
Not blowing my horn and stuff, but I can tell you that until you've been to the Valve studio and spent the time hanging around there (as I have) you can't begin to imagine what it's like.
The atmosphere is very laid back and relaxed, but I can tell you the people there GET things done. Having an environment like that is amazing. I could only dream of working in that kind of place. From what I'v seen Gabe acts just like one of guys, though we all know he's the boss at some level.
As far as the handbook goes I think it's pretty spot on. Look at the way it's written and put together also. It gives you a understandable view of how the company is run but also has fun doing it. That's what I'v seen there. It just works for them, and I applaud them for being able to do so. It comes from having the best people in the right place at the right time.
And I'm pretty sure too that Valve is privately owned, if not it would be totally differnet there I'm sure.

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Light is faster than sound:That is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.

Your riches in life are family and friends, everything else is just a distraction.

Yes, I stand corrected on Valve's status as a private corporation. Still a corporation nonetheless, and sooner or later ther will be rumours of going public, no?

Don't get me wrong, i don't have a hate on for Valve; they have proven themselves far more innovative and relevant than most other developers/distributors...it's just that there is this peculiar lack of anything at all in terms of feedback to do with this dead-horse game I refuse to quit flogging. Not just recently, either, this goes back many years. It's not even mentioned in the manual. It's like DM is the bastard stepchild, locked in the basement and left to consume itself. Which it has done; and being one of the last of truly challenging games, with an unbelievable skill ceiling, endless nuances, and long, steep learning curve, I find it sad and somewhat damning of multiplayer games as a whole.

But enough fanboy whining. I would bother them about it, but it's been attempted many times in the past. Bring on the next CS clone