Verno wrote on Dec 2, 2011, 16:25:
If people literally did whatever they wanted all day nothing would ever get done. You don't seem to understand you're reading PR. There is management, there are structured teams and not just rogue people all making their own games. I'm sure senior people get more freedom in this regard and their financial position lets them all pitch ideas to work on but to act like there is no oversight or larger company goals is kinda silly.
Google employs a similar approach where they allow employees time to develop ideas and small projects but there is structure and organization beyond just that. All of which again says nothing about HL3 either, just that Valve works on other things which is something they've done for awhile now. If an engineer can find porting a game to the PS3 interesting then I find it amusing you seem to think no one at Valve finds working on Half-Life interesting.
How is it PR when EVERY SINGLE VALVE EMPLOYEE that talks about it says the same thing?
You criticize me for taking things out of context, then when I put it into context, you refuse to believe something if it goes against your belief in how a system must work.
Don't believe their words if you don't want to, watch their actions. All the odd things they've done in the past 10 years is a lot clearer and explainable under this philosophy. They take this philosophy to an extreme. Most companies are in the middle of the management bell curve, some are on one extreme end with massive micromangement (I'd put MS into this category), and valve seems to be on the other extreme end with no management. Is it impossible to believe that there's at least one successful company out there at the end of the bell curve with a non-traditional style like this? A company could be even more focused on a style like this if they contract out all the work that no one is interested in doing like janitorial duties.
Valve is at a point that they DON'T NEED management to survive as a company off of steam profits. Anything they do with their own games is just gravy, and doesn't even come close to the steam profits.
Its similar in idea to google labs and the interesting and funky stuff that comes out of that, none of it changes their ad revenue, but in some cases people are interested in it so google furthers its development, and in others they stop it entirely. Its just that with google, we see a lot more of what goes on with these projects. With valve, we only see the projects they retail release (and what they do in steam).
My explanation for the seeming lack of HL3 work is the "cult of the new." You see this a lot with games, more people become more and more interested in something new, something thats latest and greatest. Well DOTA 2 is certainly new, not the direction valve has gone in before.
This comment was edited on Dec 2, 2011, 16:46.