Valve co-founder offers insight on the studio's new development philosophy
Valve has concluded its experiment with episodic game content, the studio’s president has said.
Gabe Newell told Develop that the episodic development philosophy has been replaced wholesale by the ‘games as a service’ model.
“We went through the episodes phase, and now we’re going towards shorter and even shorter cycles,” Newell said in an interview published in Develop magazine issue 116.
The ‘games as a service’ credo is to create games that are platforms in themselves; content that can be rapidly reconstructed through a series of updates.
“For me, ‘entertainment as a service’ is a clear distillation of the episodic content model,” Newell added.
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Likely the most popular example of this newer system is Team Fortress 2, a game that since 2007 has received over 200 updates. New weapons, new customisation options and even a in-game market have been added to the game.
“If you look at Team Fortress 2, that’s what we now think is the best model for what we’ve been doing,” Newell said.
“Our updates and release model on [Team Fortress 2] keeps on getting shorter and shorter.”
Since the five-year Half-Life 2 project finished in 2004, Valve has twice attempted to change the manner in which it creates games.
A major factor in the need for reform was the wellbeing of Valve’s developers, Newell said.
Newell revealed to Develop that, throughout the Half-Life 2 project, he became acutely aware of his responsibility to look after his team.
“I’ve become obsessed with this issue now,” he said.
The episodic game model, he said, was introduced after Half-Life 2 so staff could work on shorter development cycles. This, in theory, meant more frequent breaks between projects and fewer crunch stretches.
But the episodes model itself has come under scrutiny. Valve arguably has only made two games in the last five years from this approach – Half-Life 2 Episode 1 and Episode 2.
Asked if he thought the episodic games model was a success, Newell said: “I think that we accelerated the model and shortened development cycles with it”.
But Valve is nevertheless moving on. Its new approach is to embed itself in its community of 30 million Steam customers.
The idea is to obtain as much feedback from the community as possible, and in return build entertainment that capitalises on their tastes.
This is not a content creation philosophy limited to games; Valve has made short animations and comics from this approach.
“We’re now fully focused on asking how we can take advantage of being constantly and fully connected to our customers,” Newell said.
“We now work from data we get back from our customers, reading into what they actually do.”
However, Newell insisted that building games under a single philosophy would not result in overly-similar Valve projects.
“We sort of amortise the risk by working on different frequencies for different projects,” he said.
“Team Fortress 2 is the fastest frequency we work on with comparatively fast updates. Er, Half-Life is apparently the slowest! [Laughs] Although, from the outside world, we have no evidence that Half-Life is working on any frequency at all. [Laughs]
“Left 4 Dead is starting to approach the Team Fortress 2 cycle,” he added.
“Portal 2? We’ll have to see how much our customers want us to push in that direction. In general, our approach is to come into work and ask ‘what can we do for our customers today’?
“We get a huge amount of value in releasing things. Every decision you see our Team Fortress 2 team make is a direct result of feedback they’re getting from customers.
“Everything our team does is a result of tests they’ve done on the last two or three releases. Because its information from the last few updates that tells our team what to do next.”
The rapid-fire development model doesn’t necessarily spell the end of mammoth five-year projects at Valve, Newell added.
“You want to distribute your choices. Right now there’s a bunch of pressures to have shorter and shorter development cycles. But that could change.
“I’d have to find a reason for it to change, but it could. I don’t want to be caught completely off-guard and overly invested in one area.
“I think you’ll still see projects from us that are huge in scale, simply because we have the ability to do that.”
Valve’s comments are drawn from a new six-page feature in Develop magazine issue 116 (which arrives at games studios and on doormats from today).
The feature draws from interviews with ten key staff at the company. It is available online now, and throughout the rest of the week Develop will publish five separate Q&As with key studio staff.
The feature can also be found through Develop’s free digital edition.
that actually makes a lot of sene dude.
www.totally-anon.at.tc
Does anyone else think this is a terrible idea? So now not only will we be hardly receiving new games updates, we'll receive less of them once then finally come out? Ive been waiting for episode 3 for YEARS and now apparently its not coming at all.
This is great news! I always thought Gordon Freeman was lacking some hats. Hats for me, hats for you, hats for everybody, we all happy.
Expanding the hat market is the way to go... not.
Pete, did you even read what he said?
All Valve games are instant classics. So, the company has bought itself a little breathing room and wants to take care of its team. That's cool. But, the Half Life 2 delay experience was not solely the result of burnt out teams (won't go into those other reasons here). And, I found the short Episode response very disappointing. Why? The obvious: episodes were too short. Takes time to get into a game created world and couldn't notice the plot moving along. Graphics tech was not notably improved. Character development was not big. Mind you, the Half Life game series is my favorite of all time so it's hard for me to level criticism. Still, I think the antidote that I see to these problems is a full length feature Half Life 3. Not shorter dev cycles per se, or another episode. The real strength of HL is its story. Lowering the price per episode relative to a full title game doesn't make it any more discernible or attractive. To return to story telling, perhaps Valve should speak to some Hollywood writers, some anthropologists, and perhaps some psychologists. This combination would come up with something fresh and substantive to base HL3 on. Finally, when you gear your product to what's easiest for your company, you're selling your customers short. Can't say Valve's done that otherwise (TF, CS, and P/P2 are awesome), but another Half Life 2 episode would make me think Valve has lost its perspective. Keep up the otherwise incredibly awesome work, Gabe.
T-1000
Anything but getting Valve to talk to Hollywood writers. Please let them not go down that awful path. The writing and way the story was told in HL2 was excellent in my opinion, though naturally there is always room for forward movement. Expanding on their unique interactive brand of storytelling and developing a distinctive and unique style is much more desirable than Valve turning into another game developer trying to emulate already vapid blockbuster films.
I love TF2, i even played on a high-mid level team for a while, but thats the only way i could make it through the game. I loved the vanilla items and game balance soooo much! I loved the ability to see what the opponent was using, and react to it. i was fine with the first round of updates, to give a different change of gameplay.
BUT TOOO MUCH. TOO MANY NEW WEAPONS. HATS ARE FINE. NO MORE NEW WEAPONS, they change the balanced structure of the game
It all started with those damn hats.
TF2 players invested a lot of game time to get hats, then craft hats, and finally, buy hats. I'm sure when Valve realized they could sell a single hat for as much they would earn creating and selling an entire episode of a standalone game, the old models went out the door.
But custom weapons and yes, too many hats, have utterly transformed TF2. It's as if you invented a new chess piece every few months. Like the Bishop? Then you'll really love the Wizard, which can teleport across the board! And next month, the Duke, which can disguise itself as an opponent's piece!
The game you would end up with may be fun while the novelty lasts, but it isn't Chess. Eventually, the novelty just becomes clutter and noise, and the game isn't fun anymore because it has lost its essence. If that's the path Valve is on for all their games going forward, what a huge loss that will be.
Valve's biggest strength has always been storytelling through gaming. And storytelling takes a lot more work than selling a new hat or weapon or robot pose. I thought that Valve was to games a bit like Pixar was to films, a studio where creators gave themselves permission to tell stories and create characters they wanted to see, and trust that profitability would take care of itself if they did so. Maybe I was wrong.
If Half-Life 3 is all about buying new outfits for Alyx, I'll know I was.
They never really did the episodic model. Breaking a story into episodes is only one part of the model; you have to release frequently, not like every 4 years. It became clear after ep1 that they never intended to do real episodic content; only their marketing department considered it episodic.
Valve Will not give up half-life... And they are tricky.
Maybe its a joke, no but one thing i have learned playing valve Games is to never take them seriously. At least not always. HL is Awsome and valve knows it. Hang in there gamers of the world.
I just hope it dose not en up like duke nukem...
