Valve is the most desirable employer in the video game industry, study finds - Polidicks

I'm honestly surprised that Bioware is above Naughty Dog and Bethesda, considering that they are owned by EA and haven't made a good game in years.

What about Riot Games? I've heard that they're a pretty good company to work for.

[QUOTE=General J;45759571]My gripe with Valve right now is that the only thing they seem to be doing in the big picture is absorbing other smaller projects. Seriously the last original thing I can think of was L4D. Think about it; Counter Strike, DoD, Team Fortress, Portal, Dota, all of their big name games are things started as community projects or college demos that they picked up and admittidly made into better games but still it's all just sequels on existing ideas. I mean I love dota and CSGO, but honestly I don't think I'd work at Valve if I cared about making my own idea a working title. If I just wanted to generally work in videogames though? Yeah Valve is the best for that. [editline]21st August 2014[/editline] I highly doubt that if you work at Valve with the "do what you want" attitude with a whole new idea, that it will get any traction or support within the company. I feel like there's more of a chance for an official sequel to a mod absorbed by Valve like Zombie Master 2 or Pirates, Vikings, and Knights 3 has more of chance of being Valve's next new title than another Half Life.[/QUOTE] L4D wasn't made by Valve originally either. They bought the studio.

[QUOTE=General J;45759571]My gripe with Valve right now is that the only thing they seem to be doing in the big picture is absorbing other smaller projects. Seriously the last original thing I can think of was L4D. Think about it; Counter Strike, DoD, Team Fortress, Portal, Dota, all of their big name games are things started as community projects or college demos that they picked up and admittidly made into better games but still it's all just sequels on existing ideas. I mean I love dota and CSGO, but honestly I don't think I'd work at Valve if I cared about making my own idea a working title. If I just wanted to generally work in videogames though? Yeah Valve is the best for that. [editline]21st August 2014[/editline] I highly doubt that if you work at Valve with the "do what you want" attitude with a whole new idea, that it will get any traction or support within the company. I feel like there's more of a chance for an official sequel to a mod absorbed by Valve like Zombie Master 2 or Pirates, Vikings, and Knights 3 has more of chance of being Valve's next new title than another Half Life.[/QUOTE] Valve does take projects internally and puts them into action though. For example, there was SOB though it failed for reasons I cannot remember, and there is all those prototypes done for that 6 week process that ended up as features in Portal 2. See, you say Valve doesn't make original stuff anymore but that's really hard to say because we don't know of the politics that go on inside of Valve. Most people I assume are working on Dota 2 or TF2 because that is a fun as hell game to work on, or Source 2 games like Left 4 Dead 3 or the Source 2 in general because that actually will help people rather than trying to fix constraints of the former engine. Because of the flat structure, people are going to usually go for the project everyone else is on, and there will be a few left to do the projects we don't hear about often, like the Source Filmmaker, the Source SDK, or Half Life 3 (probably SOB too, but that's my own speculation.) Inside Valve, you've just gotta find a team of dudes who want to work on it with you, and hey then you'll be making the next Portal. But people like working on the stuff that's already there cause that's easier, with a new game you've gotta go completely from scratch. It's why there's a ton of L4D/2 code in Alien Swarm, cause half that stuff was already there for them (or CS code in L4D, same deal.)

How does Double Fine handle their work culture to make them so desirable? The rest of the studios are large, but Double Fine sticks out.

[QUOTE=BlindSniper17;45760867]How does Double Fine handle their work culture to make them so desirable? The rest of the studios are large, but Double Fine sticks out.[/QUOTE] I think they're a lot more open to ideas. Not only do they have a really good back catalouge, but they have Amnesia Fortnight which REALLY impresses people. It's the one time in the game industry where dudes get to let their creative juices flow, and bigger companies usually don't do that because they're sticking with what they've got now.

[QUOTE=General J;45759571]My gripe with Valve right now is that the only thing they seem to be doing in the big picture is absorbing other smaller projects. Seriously the last original thing I can think of was L4D. Think about it; Counter Strike, DoD, Team Fortress, Portal, Dota, all of their big name games are things started as community projects or college demos that they picked up and admittedly made into better games but still it's all just sequels on existing ideas. I mean I love dota and CSGO, but honestly I don't think I'd work at Valve if I cared about making my own idea a working title. If I just wanted to generally work in videogames though? Yeah Valve is the best for that.[/QUOTE] I don't see anything wrong with this though. Counter Strike, DoD, Team Fortress, Portal, and L4D would not even be a blip on the gaming radar without Valve. The ideas were there sure, but Valve is the only company I can think of that will actively and regularly hire modders or college students with great ideas and bring them on to expand their ideas. You just can't get the same quality of L4D or TF2 from a couple of guys working in their basement on and off for a few years. Instead Valve hires those people, takes them in, and they work on their concept. And at what point is the game just a "sequel of existing ideas"? L4D started out as counter strike with knife only bots, and it evolved into a fast paced survival shooter with radically different enemy types and likable characters. Portal was a very shoddy looking game about a princess in a castle or something with a neat base concept and look what it became. Yeah you might have the few people behind whatever the concept game of Portal was, but then you introduce them into a full studio with developers that have 10+ years under their belts also working on it. That means Portal is just as much a Valve game as it is an expansion of an existing idea. If people think what Valve releases is any less of a game because it's somehow just a "sequel of existing ideas" then you are wrong. If you don't have any interest in the radically different titles they have released, that is your fault.

[QUOTE=A_Pigeon;45753229]I just want a new valve game, it's been too long[/QUOTE] CS:GO released in 2012 and Dota 2 came out of beta in 2013. I don't know about you but 2 years isn't "too long" since the last game

[QUOTE=JCDentonUNATCO;45761546]I don't see anything wrong with this though. Counter Strike, DoD, Team Fortress, Portal, and L4D would not even be a blip on the gaming radar without Valve. The ideas were there sure, but Valve is the only company I can think of that will actively and regularly hire modders or college students with great ideas and bring them on to expand their ideas. You just can't get the same quality of L4D or TF2 from a couple of guys working in their basement on and off for a few years. Instead Valve hires those people, takes them in, and they work on their concept. And at what point is the game just a "sequel of existing ideas"? L4D started out as counter strike with knife only bots, and it evolved into a fast paced survival shooter with radically different enemy types and likable characters. Portal was a very shoddy looking game about a princess in a castle or something with a neat base concept and look what it became. Yeah you might have the few people behind whatever the concept game of Portal was, but then you introduce them into a full studio with developers that have 10+ years under their belts also working on it. That means Portal is just as much a Valve game as it is an expansion of an existing idea. If people think what Valve releases is any less of a game because it's somehow just a "sequel of existing ideas" then you are wrong. If you don't have any interest in the radically different titles they have released, that is your fault.[/QUOTE] no, don't get me wrong. I'm a major Valve fanboy. I love everything that they've put out. It's just that as a major Valve fanboy I'm worried that they're starting to rely or favor the model of "multiplayer game with self sufficient community driven content / unboxing crates for killtracking items." It's a great model admittedly, but the last true Valve single-player experience was over three years ago. I'm not saying that they should be pumping that stuff out every couple of months, I'm glad that they don't. But come on- Valve is totally in the position right now to completely stop developing singleplayer games. They could come out and say "We will never finish Half-Life." and mostly everyone would just be okay with that. I just never want Valve to stop making unique or singleplayer titles. My concern is that they really don't have to any more.

[QUOTE=General J;45763104][B]They could come out and say "We will never finish Half-Life." and mostly everyone would just be okay with that.[/B] .[/QUOTE] No one would be okay with that, I would be pretty pissed tbh.

[QUOTE=RichyZ;45760941]tim schafer rubs everyones bellies periodically as part of their legally mandated pay[/QUOTE] Top reason why I'd love to work there. If I die before having hugged Tim Schafer at some time in my life I'll have died an uncontented man.

[QUOTE=Jim_Riley;45758166]I always felt like Valve was the Pixar of the video game industry.[/QUOTE] [url]http://www.cartoonbrew.com/business/pixars-ed-catmull-emerges-as-central-figure-in-the-wage-fixing-scandal-101362.html[/url]

No shit the employer who makes the least fucking games is desirable do no work for money