Valve Trip Wrap Up
DieHard, Hellchick and The Warthog flew to Seattle to visit Valve Software and see what exactly is going on over there these days. Some very cool things are going down, plus we got lots of needed questions answered. Rock!
— The Warthog
The Golden Crowbar that sits in the main lobby (across from a huge Valve).
Gabe has done collecting of some cool art, but due to DieHard's film problems, we were lucky to get this.
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This article concludes our articles from PlanetFortress' visit to Valve Software. A great time was had
by everyone involved. Going back to the day before the visit, DieHard and I were in the local CompUSA in Kirkland
and we stood before a huge aisle of that consisted of various Half-Life packagings. All we could say was "Wow! Tomorrow
were going to get to meet the guys who made this!"
DieHard bought a copy of the Half-Life: Adrenaline Pack, which includes 3 CD's: Half-Life: Game of the Year, Opposing
Force, & Team Fortress Classic. -- I didn't know TFC had it's own CD, that's pretty cool, I probably would
have bought it myself to get Robin and John to sign.. Oh well, DieHard has his. -- DieHard had the
Half-Life: Game of the Year CD signed by everyone and we will be giving that away in a contest here on
PlanetFortress. We hoped to have it ready to go along with all these articles, but taking care of some of
the legal things put a little damper on that. We'll post on the main page when the contest starts.
I've been talking with various people since they found out we got to visit Valve, the most common question
is, "What was it like?" Any good interviewer knows that's a poor question to ask (it's begging for a one
word answer), but I'll do my best to run with it.
Going to Valve was a great experience because it really felt
like they had a great balance of being "at work," but they know enough never to eliminate any of the fun factor
in doing any projects. The beta test was a perfect example of it, the purpose of the beta test we played in
was to check for any bugs in the models/animations.. However the match intensity was on par with any League
Title match I've played in or followed. The people are there to have fun making games, and they enjoy
playing the games they make, it's very cool. -- Another example is the cool little trick scooters (the latest
fad you'll see in TV Commercials for kids..) they have dozen that people randomly grab and scoot from one room
to another down the hall, it's crazy.
I learned quite a bit about how Valve really regards their customers when it comes to the 50 bucks they've
plunked down for one of Valve's products. Basically, they want everyone to be able to say that they
got their money's worth. The constant updates to Half-Life/TFC/CS are viewed that just like an online RPG,
they need to keep pushing out new content (for free) to keep the gameplay fresh. Robin has stated how they
view any cheats or bugs as bad as anything that prevents all clients from crashing on startup. -- You may
think that they take way to long at times, but they are a professional company, and releasing patches takes
time (no, they don't like it either). All this thinking goes also into the gameplay design, making sure
that everything in game is promoting teamplay, and also fair play. It's really cool seeing all that come
together from these guys. Knowing they are going out with this mindset, I'm craving TF2 even more.
The only question asked more than "What was it like?" was asking about Team Fortress 2. I can't say much
other than Robin is happy with where the development is going (he said that for a few previous months, he
didn't like various things, but just recently, it's coming together). Now, add that to the fact that we
know the commander class, voice communication, new models and animation systems that are being
released into half-life are serving as a way to keep Half-Life fresh and to test out things for TF2.
It's fairly obvious TF2 will not be out until the Voice Communication and Commander Class have been tested thoroughly.. Once
those are out for TFC, how much is left for TF2? That's anybody's guess.
Thanks are in order to the entire Valve team for allowing us to visit, and to be an enjoyable group of
guys to actually go visit. With that I would like to extend an extra thank you to Doug Lombardi who has been
continually helpful in setting up the visit, the actual visit, and communicating afterwards to double
check the articles and get some follow up comments.
Thanks Valve, I really hope to be able to do it again.
New TFC model shots? Interviews with Robin Walker, Erik Johnson, & Doug Lombardi? An update on PowerPlay?
What's coming up for TFC? We have the answers at PlanetFortress' Valve Trip Index.
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