Erik Wolpaw, a writer on the likes of Half-Life 2, Portal, Portal 2, Half-Life: Alyx and more thinks Valve really should just go ahead and make Portal 3 already.
Wolpaw recently spoke on the KIWI TALKZ podcast on various topics, and had some pretty firm words to give to Valve on getting moving making games again. Some of what Wolpaw said during it included: "I would love to work on Portal 3 in a second, but I can't do it unfortunately by myself. […] The problem is with 300 employees and I don't know exactly the breakdown, like how many of them are on the production side versus Steam business side versus legal versus whatever, there's a lot of opportunity cost taking 75 people and trying to get a game made.". The conversation goes on to point out employees are always doing something, so they would be pulled from something else of course.
In the end, Wolpaw mentions "We gotta start Portal 3, that's my message to whoever, anything you can do let's just do it, let's just make it happen. I am not getting any younger, we are reaching the point where it's crazy to think literally gonna be too old to work on Portal 3. So we should just do it and Desk Job is fun, if you liked Desk Job send mail to Gabe and tell him you want some Portal 3.".
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I like that pushing from Erik.
Yet, that also means Portal 3 is not in development.
Unless, they're playing with our little hearts.
Yet, that also means Portal 3 is not in development.
Unless, they're playing with our little hearts.
9 Likes, Who?
I'd like the opportunity to by a native Valve game on the first day of release. Especially if it's Portal 3. With Half Life Alyx there was no opportunity to buy it and the Linux version wasn't there on the first day either.
2 Likes, Who?
I can understand frustration there. Imagine you were a software developer working for a cool company with some of the coolest franchises out there - and you're not allowed to work on them, for years, for decades maybe...
2 Likes, Who?
Imagine sitting on a *guaranteed* multi million seller game franchise and choose NOT to release a sequel.
And they even have several of those. They're livin' the good life over there at Valve.
Last edited by Beamboom on 19 Apr 2022 at 11:00 am UTC
And they even have several of those. They're livin' the good life over there at Valve.
Last edited by Beamboom on 19 Apr 2022 at 11:00 am UTC
6 Likes, Who?
Mountain Man 19 Apr 2022
I can understand frustration there. Imagine you were a software developer working for a cool company with some of the coolest franchises out there - and you're not allowed to work on them, for years, for decades maybe...As I understand Valve's corporate structure, it's the employees who more or less decide the direction of the company. So it's not like there are a bunch of people champing at the bit to make new games but the bosses won't let them. If enough people got together and decided they wanted to make Half-Life 3, or Portal 3, or whatever, Gabe wouldn't stop them. The real question is why there's no momentum internally to get those projects rolling.
Last edited by Mountain Man on 19 Apr 2022 at 11:54 am UTC
6 Likes, Who?
I can understand frustration there. Imagine you were a software developer working for a cool company with some of the coolest franchises out there - and you're not allowed to work on them, for years, for decades maybe...As I understand Valve's corporate structure, it's the employees who more or less decide the direction of the company. So it's not like there are a bunch of people champing at the bit to make new games but the bosses won't let them. If enough people got together and decided they wanted to make Half-Life 3, or Portal 3, or whatever, Gabe wouldn't stop them. The real question is why there's no momentum internally to get those projects rolling.
There is the infamous Valve employee handbook.
1 Likes, Who?
Imagine sitting on a *guaranteed* multi million seller game franchise and choose NOT to release a sequel.
And they even have several of those. They're livin' the good life over there at Valve.
Well, I guess we're easy to overlook the numbers.
While it seems to be big money, it's actually significantly less compared to Steam sales
and putting all your resources in there.
The estimates for Valve's annual revenue is like 7-10 billion USD.
Compare that to the total of sold Half Life copies (~ 9 million) over many, many years -
even if you assume they were all sold at max price (they weren't).
In particular, if you consider how much pressure it must be for Valve always trying to keep
or surpass their standards for their games (I can only imagine). So there is a risk for reputation loss.
Don't get me wrong. I'd love to see Valve getting back to their franchises.
And there IS room for hope. And I'd also claim there is way more value for Valve having those franchises alive
with recent high-class releases than "just" what they directly earn from them.
I just hope they see this.
Last edited by sub on 19 Apr 2022 at 12:38 pm UTC
4 Likes, Who?
I'm glad that Erik Wolpaw is excited to write for Portal again, but there's a lot of considerations that most people aren't thinking about, like: does he actually have a pitch for a new story? Does Valve have new mechanics to explore in a new game (a new story and levels aren't enough to sustain a new title)? Portal 2 ended very neatly Chell story arch; where can we go with the story now? Portal 2 shares the same world with Half-Life, so additions to its lore could have deep implications to their other franchise, so they have to be somewhat mindful when expanding its universe and not even Erik Wolpaw knows how Portal's timeline fits with the outside world.
Portal is a beloved franchise and it would carry some heavy expectations with a new main title, so everyone needs to be convinced that they have at least a new and engaging mechanic to expand upon to be later complemented with and equally engaging story. If they don't have new ideas to explore, the excitement alone of a single individual won't make a difference, since Valve doesn't have the pressure to constantly ship new games to make money, which can be a good and a bad thing at the same time (few games, but higher quality ones).
Portal is a beloved franchise and it would carry some heavy expectations with a new main title, so everyone needs to be convinced that they have at least a new and engaging mechanic to expand upon to be later complemented with and equally engaging story. If they don't have new ideas to explore, the excitement alone of a single individual won't make a difference, since Valve doesn't have the pressure to constantly ship new games to make money, which can be a good and a bad thing at the same time (few games, but higher quality ones).
4 Likes, Who?
I never understood the people that are under the impression that Valve has stopped developing games. Valve employees artists, level designers, game designers and the like. What do they imagine these people do if not work on games?
1 Likes, Who?
The real question is why there's no momentum internally to get those projects rolling.Shipping a game is really, really hard. Having an idea and knocking a prototype together is pretty straightforward in the grand scheme of things, but getting to a polished, tested, finished product that works and that you can sell takes orders of magnitude more sustained and dedicated work that isn't especially fun. On the bright side, Valve have said that shipping Alyx gave them a nice buzz, so they realised that they'd like to do it again.
1 Likes, Who?
Well, I guess we're easy to overlook the numbers.The figures from the Epic-Apple case suggested that Valve makes about the same amount of money from Steam and from sales of their own stuff.
While it seems to be big money, it's actually significantly less compared to Steam sales
and putting all your resources in there.
0 Likes
I never understood the people that are under the impression that Valve has stopped developing games. Valve employees artists, level designers, game designers and the like. What do they imagine these people do if not work on games?
Dunno.
But if you look at the list of their games, there's large gaps.
Dota 2 in 2013, fine. Never heard of Counter-Strike Online 2, Counter-Strike Nexon: Zombies, Left 4 Dead: Survivors (an expansion, I guess?) or The Lab (water testing for VR it seems). Than there's infamous Artifact in 2018. Of course, Dota e.g. needs work during its life. But I'm not overwhelmed, to be honest. What do you imagine these people were working on?
Last edited by Eike on 19 Apr 2022 at 2:01 pm UTC
0 Likes
I'm glad that Erik Wolpaw is excited to write for Portal again, but there's a lot of considerations that most people aren't thinking about, like: does he actually have a pitch for a new story? Does Valve have new mechanics to explore in a new game (a new story and levels aren't enough to sustain a new title)?
They should hire the guy that did Portal Reloaded. That game brought a whole new dimension (literally) to the franchise.
1 Likes, Who?
Imagine sitting on a *guaranteed* multi million seller game franchise and choose NOT to release a sequel.
And they even have several of those. They're livin' the good life over there at Valve.
Well, I guess we're easy to overlook the numbers.
While it seems to be big money, it's actually significantly less compared to Steam sales
and putting all your resources in there.
The estimates for Valve's annual revenue is like 7-10 billion USD.
Compare that to the total of sold Half Life copies (~ 9 million) over many, many years -
even if you assume they were all sold at max price (they weren't).
In particular, if you consider how much pressure it must be for Valve always trying to keep
or surpass their standards for their games (I can only imagine). So there is a risk for reputation loss.
Don't get me wrong. I'd love to see Valve getting back to their franchises.
And there IS room for hope. And I'd also claim there is way more value for Valve having those franchises alive
with recent high-class releases than "just" what they directly earn from them.
I just hope they see this.
Yes - but if they weren't developing games anymore, why employ them? They earn good money at Valve and they aren't doing nothing.
1 Likes, Who?
I can understand frustration there. Imagine you were a software developer working for a cool company with some of the coolest franchises out there - and you're not allowed to work on them, for years, for decades maybe...As I understand Valve's corporate structure, it's the employees who more or less decide the direction of the company. So it's not like there are a bunch of people champing at the bit to make new games but the bosses won't let them. If enough people got together and decided they wanted to make Half-Life 3, or Portal 3, or whatever, Gabe wouldn't stop them. The real question is why there's no momentum internally to get those projects rolling.
There is the infamous Valve employee handbook.
Total PR stunt btw. No such document existed before or after and is just a recruiting tool. Valve's problems is it's rockstar developers lead the charge on everything and juniors who don't fall in line risk termination.
0 Likes
Mountain Man 19 Apr 2022
Imagine sitting on a *guaranteed* multi million seller game franchise and choose NOT to release a sequel.
And they even have several of those. They're livin' the good life over there at Valve.
Well, I guess we're easy to overlook the numbers.
While it seems to be big money, it's actually significantly less compared to Steam sales
and putting all your resources in there.
The estimates for Valve's annual revenue is like 7-10 billion USD.
Compare that to the total of sold Half Life copies (~ 9 million) over many, many years -
even if you assume they were all sold at max price (they weren't).
In particular, if you consider how much pressure it must be for Valve always trying to keep
or surpass their standards for their games (I can only imagine). So there is a risk for reputation loss.
Don't get me wrong. I'd love to see Valve getting back to their franchises.
And there IS room for hope. And I'd also claim there is way more value for Valve having those franchises alive
with recent high-class releases than "just" what they directly earn from them.
I just hope they see this.
Yes - but if they weren't developing games anymore, why employ them? They earn good money at Valve and they aren't doing nothing.
Positions are not as clearly defined at Valve as you might expect, and employees can freely move from one project and position to another depending on their interests. So just because someone might have the job title "level designer" doesn't necessarily mean he spends 40 hours a week designing levels for games.
Point is, you can't look at job titles at Valve and get any idea of what is happening inside the company.
Last edited by Mountain Man on 19 Apr 2022 at 3:58 pm UTC
2 Likes, Who?
Imagine sitting on a *guaranteed* multi million seller game franchise and choose NOT to release a sequel.
And they even have several of those. They're livin' the good life over there at Valve.
Well, I guess we're easy to overlook the numbers.
While it seems to be big money, it's actually significantly less compared to Steam sales
and putting all your resources in there.
The estimates for Valve's annual revenue is like 7-10 billion USD.
Compare that to the total of sold Half Life copies (~ 9 million) over many, many years -
even if you assume they were all sold at max price (they weren't).
In particular, if you consider how much pressure it must be for Valve always trying to keep
or surpass their standards for their games (I can only imagine). So there is a risk for reputation loss.
Don't get me wrong. I'd love to see Valve getting back to their franchises.
And there IS room for hope. And I'd also claim there is way more value for Valve having those franchises alive
with recent high-class releases than "just" what they directly earn from them.
I just hope they see this.
Yes - but if they weren't developing games anymore, why employ them? They earn good money at Valve and they aren't doing nothing.
Positions are not as clearly defined at Valve as you might expect, and employees can freely move from one project and position to another depending on their interests. So just because someone might have the job title "level designer" doesn't necessarily mean he spends 40 hours a week designing levels for games.
Point is, you can't look at job titles at Valve and get any idea of what is happening inside the company.
I know, but there are still like 300 people at Valve and you don't need that many to run Steam.
0 Likes
Mountain Man 19 Apr 2022
I can understand frustration there. Imagine you were a software developer working for a cool company with some of the coolest franchises out there - and you're not allowed to work on them, for years, for decades maybe...As I understand Valve's corporate structure, it's the employees who more or less decide the direction of the company. So it's not like there are a bunch of people champing at the bit to make new games but the bosses won't let them. If enough people got together and decided they wanted to make Half-Life 3, or Portal 3, or whatever, Gabe wouldn't stop them. The real question is why there's no momentum internally to get those projects rolling.
There is the infamous Valve employee handbook.
Total PR stunt btw. No such document existed before or after and is just a recruiting tool. Valve's problems is it's rockstar developers lead the charge on everything and juniors who don't fall in line risk termination.
At least one former Valve employee has gone on record to say that the handbook is real. However, she does agree with you that there are people within the company who have managed to acquire quite a lot of internal influence which rather defeats the purpose of a flat management structure.
https://www.wired.com/2013/07/wireduk-valve-jeri-ellsworth/
3 Likes, Who?
Mountain Man 19 Apr 2022
Imagine sitting on a *guaranteed* multi million seller game franchise and choose NOT to release a sequel.
And they even have several of those. They're livin' the good life over there at Valve.
Well, I guess we're easy to overlook the numbers.
While it seems to be big money, it's actually significantly less compared to Steam sales
and putting all your resources in there.
The estimates for Valve's annual revenue is like 7-10 billion USD.
Compare that to the total of sold Half Life copies (~ 9 million) over many, many years -
even if you assume they were all sold at max price (they weren't).
In particular, if you consider how much pressure it must be for Valve always trying to keep
or surpass their standards for their games (I can only imagine). So there is a risk for reputation loss.
Don't get me wrong. I'd love to see Valve getting back to their franchises.
And there IS room for hope. And I'd also claim there is way more value for Valve having those franchises alive
with recent high-class releases than "just" what they directly earn from them.
I just hope they see this.
Yes - but if they weren't developing games anymore, why employ them? They earn good money at Valve and they aren't doing nothing.
Positions are not as clearly defined at Valve as you might expect, and employees can freely move from one project and position to another depending on their interests. So just because someone might have the job title "level designer" doesn't necessarily mean he spends 40 hours a week designing levels for games.
Point is, you can't look at job titles at Valve and get any idea of what is happening inside the company.
I know, but there are still like 300 people at Valve and you don't need that many to run Steam.
Valve is more than just Steam (which is a massive project in and of itself). There are also people working on hardware development and manufacturing, game maintenance which includes not just patches but multiplayer servers, PR and marketing, research and planning for future projects, not to mention basic staff for the internal bureaucracy to keep a company of that size running.
There's plenty going on at Valve to keep 300 full time employees busy.
Last edited by Mountain Man on 19 Apr 2022 at 5:10 pm UTC
7 Likes, Who?
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