I mentioned that Gary and Charlie are now at Valve on the Talk Spot show yesterday

Gabe Newell on the New Faces at Valve

I mentioned that Gary and Charlie are now at Valve on the Talk Spot show yesterday, and people have been sending me mail asking for more details. Charlie Brown, Gary McTaggart, David Speyrer, and Dhabih Eng have joined up in the last couple of weeks. Charlie and Gary are initially going to be doing engine work on Team Fortress 2, David is working on Worldcraft, and Dhabih is doing a variety of 2D and conceptual artwork working mainly with Ted Backman.

We're continuing to look for a couple of more senior people, especially a project manager, and level and game designers. We also have the open office manager job. I'll be at the Games Developer Conference next week, so that's a good place for people to hook up with me if they want to talk about working at Valve. We've been working with some of the hardware manufacturers who are going to be at the GDC to set up LANs so people can play TFC, so I'll be moving between those booths making sure that's running smoothly.

We're planning on releasing Team Fortress Classic in two weeks. We had 18 PCs running TFC at the CPL Extreme Annihilation tournament (thanks to everyone involved). The feedback from the TF clans who played gives us more confidence that we are on track to go gold in 1 week. After we go gold we'll get it out to a bunch of people to test in real-world environments, and then release it broadly on the 26th via the Half-Life autoupdate mechanism as well as download from any sites who want to host it. Doug Lombardi at Sierra is working out the details of the test release, and which will be going out to members of the Primary Server Program, and to people who are willing to put together a LAN event to put TFC through it's paces.

Here are the bios for people. David and Jay Stelly are long-time cronies. Charlie is, oddly enough, the fourth person from Ft. Walton Beach to join Valve. If you haven't seen Dhabih's artwork before, his website (listed below) is worth checking out.

Charlie Brown. Software Developer.
Charlie earned his reputation within the gaming industry while working for 3Dfx Interactive and later Ritual. A Ft. Walton Beach, Florida native, Charlie graduated from the University of Florida in the summer of 1994 and then headed for California and 3Dfx. His responsibilities there included developer support, ports of products to hardware, sample code and simple demos, and ultimately working with 3Dfx Developer Relations managing the engineering game porting effort. After a 2-year stint, Charlie left 3Dfx with college-friend Gary McTaggart to create the Uber(tm) Engine at Ritual Entertainment in Dallas, Texas. Shortly thereafter, Charlie and Gary left Ritual to start their own company. Valve subsequently contacted Charlie (and his friend Gary) with an offer "they couldn't refuse."

Gary McTaggart.
Software Developer. Gary left the University of Florida in 1995 to pursue a career in programming at 3Dfx Interactive as employee number 11. While there, he created demos that were used to show the potential of Voodoo Graphics hardware. The most notable of these demos are the Valley of Ra and Wizard's Tower. Additionally Gary worked as developer support for other game companies wanting to get the most out of 3dfx's hardware. Gary left 3Dfx with Charlie Brown for a short stint at Ritual Entertainment. After working at Ritual, Gary and Charlie decided to start a new company and do contract work for Electronic Arts. Later, Gary decided that Valve would be the ideal place for him to be able to work on great games and technology without having to worry about the day to day operations of a business.

David Speyrer.
Software Developer. David has a BSEE from Louisiana and six years of experience in network and serial communications software development and project management. PC games have been David's passion since he started programming at the age of 11. David was living and working in Boulder, Colorado, when he played through "Half-Life: Day One." Soon he was packing his belongings and putting his house up for sale. David now says that Valve was about the only thing capable of compelling him to leave Boulder's rock climbing and 300 days of sun per year. An eternal optimist, David is convinced that the sun will come out "any day now" so that he can go climbing.

Dhabih Eng,
Artist. (pronounce ZA-bee) Dhabih, who's been playing games since he was six years old, has a degree in Interdisciplinary Art from the University of Washington. He started making a name for himself by doing freelance design work for gaming magazines (Electronic Gaming Monthly, Official Playstation Magazine, PC Gaming World) while still in school. Dhabih has also done web design and worked on the Quake2 TC pack "Zaero" from Team Evolve. He started at Valve by doing freelance work in mid-1998, and signed on full-time in early February of this year. Dhabih is truly a world citizen, having grown up in six different countries (Australia, Macau, Canada, China, Taiwan, and the USA). You can find out more about Dhabih and check out some of his work by visiting his website, www.sijun.com