Valve's Gabe Newell is interviewed by the Washington Post.

cageymaru

cageymaru

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/01/03/gabe-newell-on-what-makes-valve-tick/
This is part one of a two part interview.

More information on Valve's employee hierarchical system, project development choice, problem solving based on customer feedback, why successful mod writers can be more important than Yale graduates, how working as a team is more beneficial than having a title. He expounds upon his previous discussions about how an employee with different skill sets would be made to choose in a conventional working environment, but at Valve you can utilize all facets of your expertise in different ways at your own choosing.

He discusses how to keep female employees from dropping out of the workplace when they have a child by not tracking leave or vacation time. He talks about how to deal with family crisis as everyone will go through it at some point. Everyone gets old and dies; how can we give our employees the time to deal with a family crisis. He seems to marvel at employees that bring their parents to company trips and tells them how he envisions their child being working for at least 5 - 10 years at Valve. Gabe seems like a very down to earth family guy.

Lastly he discusses employee time on the job and how allowing them to choose projects brings great inventions such as Steam and multiplayer within Valve's games. Employees are free to choose what they want to waste their time on. Your time at work is your time to spend on what you deem important. No progress reports are generated for Gabe. The customer feedback is your answer to "Am I doing a good job." They let you know if you made bad design choices. If things aren't balanced and need fixing. Best employees can find and fix issues based on customer feedback by weeding through the forum posts to find the problem.

Many employees thought that Steam was a bad idea in the early stages of development. A really bad idea. So employees could choose to work and incorporate ideas on it if they wanted to or they could work on something else. So the people that ended up working on Steam were the employees that had the most dedication to it, believed in it, and wanted to see it succeed. Seems to have worked. ;)

My cliff notes seem to be as long as the article. Sorry. :)
 
I guess that explains shy there is still no HL3... they just don't have much interest in it. Kinda sad considering the huge amount of talent around the world that would be. Did the people working HL2 just leave or something?
 
So essentially, how do you get fired at Valve? That is such a bunch of horse shit if I ever read one.
 
KickAssCop said:
So essentially, how do you get fired at Valve? That is such a bunch of horse shit if I ever read one.
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By not contributing anything? No where did Newell said you can chose when to work and when to not do anything.

Just because their approach is different from a typical corporate structure it doesn't mean it can't work. You can't be a judge of it until you've actually worked there and see for yourself how it functions.
 
Hornet said:
By not contributing anything? No where did Newell said you can chose when to work and when to not do anything.

Just because their approach is different from a typical corporate structure it doesn't mean it can't work. You can't be a judge of it until you've actually worked there and see for yourself how it functions.
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Yes, and I live in candyland. Pretty sure all their people are doing is dicking around trying to sell more Steam based support to developers so they can publish their games while they charge fees for bandwidth. That doesn't take a genius to do these things once the platform has been set which is the case now. I have yet to see any real contribution from Valve in terms of actual IP. The whole hardware bullshit they are pulling is basically a rebrand of a PC in a small form factor case. Steam OS and the new controller might be something but it doesn't need the army of people that they have (given individuals have been able to run emulation software on PCs for Nintendo etc for ages and Steam already ran on Linux before Valve called it Steam OS).

Also Steam support is the most horrible thing on the planet. So not really sure where is all this talent contributing anything to anything. Its like Steve Jobs claiming that employees are his biggest asset and then treating them like shit for decades lol.
 
KickAssCop said:
Yes, and I live in candyland. Pretty sure all their people are doing is dicking around trying to sell more Steam based support to developers so they can publish their games while they charge fees for bandwidth. That doesn't take a genius to do these things once the platform has been set which is the case now. I have yet to see any real contribution from Valve in terms of actual IP. The whole hardware bullshit they are pulling is basically a rebrand of a PC in a small form factor case. Steam OS and the new controller might be something but it doesn't need the army of people that they have (given individuals have been able to run emulation software on PCs for Nintendo etc for ages and Steam already ran on Linux before Valve called it Steam OS).

Also Steam support is the most horrible thing on the planet. So not really sure where is all this talent contributing anything to anything. Its like Steve Jobs claiming that employees are his biggest asset and then treating them like shit for decades lol.
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Valve has release 8 games since 2007. All while building, maintaining and improving Steam and creating it's own OS and controller for a living room friendly PC. They do this all with less people than what work on an Assassin's Creed game. What are you talking about?
 
-Tetsuo- said:
Valve has release 8 games since 2007. All while building, maintaining and improving Steam and creating it's own OS and controller for a living room friendly PC. They do this all with less people than what work on an Assassin's Creed game. What are you talking about?
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I don't know or care about people that Valve has but with the pockets they have, they should be able to do better than this.

Also the 8 games you count were not exactly original Valve IP, they were modder created content enhanced under a proper development studio and/or sequels.
 
KickAssCop said:
I don't know or care about people that Valve has but with the pockets they have, they should be able to do better than this.

Also the 8 games you count were not exactly original Valve IP, they were modder created content enhanced under a proper development studio and/or sequels.
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Valve doesn't owe you anything.

Next.
 
Jesus man, I dunno if you're having a bad day, or what, but this is getting pretty rant-y.
 
LeninGHOLA said:
Yea, no.
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Go ahead and provide a reasoned response then. Because I'm inclined to agree, and some hand-waving fanboyism doesn't really lend to your credibility.

Valve is almost bereft of intellectual properties. Steam and content delivery is their product, and it's a flawed and frustrated (and frustrating) one based on either outdated or ineptly-utilised architecture - I'm not a C++ programmer so I couldn't say which. It makes them a lot of money because the people in charge of marketing are very creative.

All I ever see when this topic is raised and someone voices a dissenting opinion is glib fanboyism and hand-waving, with comments like "yeah no" and "valve dnt owe u anythign cry more" and similar thick noise.
 
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Gabe is very nice. Best studio ever.
Let's wait another 8 years before they produce something remotely as remarkable as HL. They have less people and less money.

Happy now?

The real contribution from Valve is through Steam which is best thing since sliced bread. In the business of creating games and enjoyable new game specific experiences; their employees aren't doing anything imo. You can continue to maintain your opinion and I will maintain mine.

Also I am no longer sure who is talking to who so I am out of this Gabe praise bullshit because he is like Jobs to me. I have no respect for him but will continue to buy products simply because they were good ideas bought out by the respective giant company (nothing wrong with that also).
 
They aren't doing what I want them to, fuck them, Gabe doesn't know how to run a company.
 
LeninGHOLA said:
They aren't doing what I want them to, fuck them, Gabe doesn't know how to run a company.
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Please provide full context of what I said. He doesn't know how to run a company to produce quality/original games. What he has done for Steam is ground breaking for the industry and deserves a lot of praise. Also not sure where I said he doesn't know how to run a Company as a blanket statement. I explicitly said that the article and his interview is a load of horse shit if I ever read one. Similar to all the horse shit that Jobs used to spew.
 
Jellylesg said:
Go ahead and provide a reasoned response then. Because I'm inclined to agree, and some hand-waving fanboyism doesn't really lend to your credibility.

Valve is almost bereft of intellectual properties. Steam and content delivery is their product, and it's a flawed and frustrated (and frustrating) one based on either outdated or ineptly-utilised architecture - I'm not a C++ programmer so I couldn't say which. It makes them a lot of money because the people in charge of marketing are very creative.

All I ever see when this topic is raised and someone voices a dissenting opinion is glib fanboyism and hand-waving, with comments like "yeah no" and "valve dnt owe u anythign cry more" and similar thick noise.
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Bereft of new or original IP? Is that the metric we are using?

The IP they do own are very popular and successful, and they do release games.
 
Jellylesg said:
Go ahead and provide a reasoned response then. Because I'm inclined to agree, and some hand-waving fanboyism doesn't really lend to your credibility.

Valve is almost bereft of intellectual properties. Steam and content delivery is their product, and it's a flawed and frustrated (and frustrating) one based on either outdated or ineptly-utilised architecture - I'm not a C++ programmer so I couldn't say which. It makes them a lot of money because the people in charge of marketing are very creative.

All I ever see when this topic is raised and someone voices a dissenting opinion is glib fanboyism and hand-waving, with comments like "yeah no" and "valve dnt owe u anythign cry more" and similar thick noise.
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What is the bar you use for digital stores ... Steam and GOG are the primary ones I use on the PC (I have an Origin account but haven't bought any new titles through EA ... I also have an Ubi account but my games were all purchased through Steam) ... I find Steam to be very capable and although I would like to see them expand the capabilities and product offerings I definitely wouldn't classify them as outdated :confused:
 
While he didn't come out and give details, Gabe said there are systems in place for people to turn their work (value created for valve) into dollars. I don't think people make strait salary at Valve. They probably get paid based on what they put in (work logged) into projects. This also would allow people to take as much or as little vacation they want. Unless there's clicks in the system, people are going to know whether or not your pulling your load and not 'gaming the system' as he says.
 
kbrickley said:
What is the bar you use for digital stores ... Steam and GOG are the primary ones I use on the PC (I have an Origin account but haven't bought any new titles through EA ... I also have an Ubi account but my games were all purchased through Steam) ... I find Steam to be very capable and although I would like to see them expand the capabilities and product offerings I definitely wouldn't classify them as outdated :confused:
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Agreed. Steam may have its flaws, but it performs far better than any alternative. No idea why that's an arguement
 
KickAssCop said:
I don't know or care about people that Valve has but with the pockets they have, they should be able to do better than this.

Also the 8 games you count were not exactly original Valve IP, they were modder created content enhanced under a proper development studio and/or sequels.
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Better than what? Output games at a faster rate than almost any single development studio while simultaneously operating and updating the single largest digital store front in gaming? What more do you want them to do, exactly?
 
People get so angry over HL3 or should I say the lack of.
 
-Tetsuo- said:
Better than what? Output games at a faster rate than almost any single development studio while simultaneously operating and updating the single largest digital store front in gaming? What more do you want them to do, exactly?
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Release HL3...haven't you been paying attention?
 
pcjunkie said:
Release HL3...haven't you been paying attention?
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They don't want to make it right now. It sucks but there is no shortage of great games to play. Some of them made by Valve, even. IT is one thing to want them to make HL3. It is another to go at them or Gabe because they choose not to while still doing a whole hell of a lot.
 
Rumors of Valve not being interested in making HL3 are just a diversionary tactic.
 
KickAssCop said:
I don't know or care about people that Valve has but with the pockets they have, they should be able to do better than this.

Also the 8 games you count were not exactly original Valve IP, they were modder created content enhanced under a proper development studio and/or sequels.
Click to expand...

They are dominating the PC digital distribution market. Something that MS, and EA have failed to do. You may not like Steam, but by the measures they care about it's successful, so they don't really need to incorporate what you want at this point.
 
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