"The Vive headset was developed in conjunction with Valve, creators of such ground-breaking games as Portal and Half-Life."
And that sentence pretty much illustrates why the shine has come off Valve, at least for me. The last Half-Life game was in 2007 (as was the last Team Fortress game). The last Portal game was 2011, and Kim Swift has moved on to other things. Left 4 Dead's developers have moved to another publisher with Evolve. Counter-Strike is still limping along. Dota 2 exists, I guess. The only thing they've released since Dota 2 are Linux ports of old games, unless you count the ports of old games that Nvidia did to Android. Meanwhile the Steam Machine hasn't seen commercial release, we still don't even know what their Steam Controller is supposed to look like in its final form... and they're announcing a VR headset? After all their big names in VR already jumped ship to Occulus? Is there an adult somewhere at Valve minding the store?
In terms of Valve Time, I've been struck by something John Carmack said[1]:
"that was id’s mantra for so long: 'It’ll be done when it’s done.' And I recant from that. I no longer think that is the appropriate way to build games. I mean, time matters, and as years go by—if it’s done when it’s done and you’re talking a month or two, fine. But if it’s a year or two, you need to be making a different game."
Steam is bringing so much money to the company, I guess they no longer feel the pressure of publishing new games and new concepts like in the old days. They just release a few hats on Team Fortress from time to time and work on fun projects in the mean time I imagine.
It sounds much more likely that this device was largely produced by HTC with Valve consulting because HTC has no experience in VR or the PC gaming market. I wouldn't downplay the success of CSGO and Dota 2. Sure HL3 will never live up to hype if it gets released. Valve hasn't kept a traditional shine, but one that has evolved with the interests of the industry.
Honestly, I feel like Steam really hasn't aged well. The size of the catalog has grown tremendously, but Steam's efforts at curation all seem to miss the mark, and Steam's tools for managing your game library are basically nonexistent.
I've found steam is by far the best digital distribution client when it comes to managing my game library, mainly because of the 'steam libraries' feature that lets you create a steam library on any hard drive to install games to, and it makes restoring your games on a clean install of windows extremely simple too (just go into steam library settings, point it to the steam library folder(s) on your drives and all your games are back).
Origin and uplay aren't nearly up to par when it comes to stuff like managing games on multiple hdd's.
I have 153 games. Steam's built-in categories seem to be Recent, Installed, Favorites. It'd be nice to be able to sort my library by, say, games with controller support, games with coop, games with multiplayer, etc. (Or further -- say, games with multiplayer and games that support Linux, in case I want to find a game I can play with my friend who games on Linux.) You can add your own categories, but one category per game.
Both Dota 2 and Steam are practically printing money, things seem to be working quite well over there. There isn't much in terms of released (and completed) projects, but I attribute that to Valve's stated policy to only release great things.
Having one small part of your business print money often masks atrocious management schemes. They purchased the Dota IP and had the creator start the team right? Good on them for not fucking it up, but they already had a hit and just ported it.
What great ideas have come out of Valve in recent history?
Dota 2 basically prints money, and they're spending most of their development time on it. They're currently working to completely upgrade it to the Source 2 engine.
Saying Counter Strike is still limping along is a pretty inaccurate portrayal as well. CSGO's popularity is in a constant increase currently - as I write this, there are 433k players currently in game in CSGO. It's honestly probably more popular than old CS ever was, even prior to the popularity decrease with 1.6 and then Source.
With the overwhelming success of Dota2 and CSGO, I don't think you can really suggest Valve is in a decline.
Artistic merit and commercial appeal are orthogonal. As Half Life and Portal showed, great storytelling can be profitable, but great multiplayer battles and addictive digital hat markets are not necessarily artistic.
I'm an optimist. I'm overjoyed by the fact that Valve have been so successful they can beaver away quietly on HL3 and whatever other projects they have on the boil, funded by the incredible success of not only their own games but riding on the back of simply, hands down, the best online content purchasing system.
As has been seen time and time again, with complete freedom over when to release a game generally comes greatness (given the caveat that they developers actually have a clue, and by golly Valve staff are clearly among the best).
ps: I can understand your comment of "Dota 2 exists, I guess" if you're measuring it against LoL. Take a broader view of it in the entire online market and it is a massive success: http://store.steampowered.com/stats/
Better link (primary source with actual specs including screen resolution): http://www.htcvr.com/
Highlights:
- 1200x1080 per eye with two 90Hz panels of unspecified type
- "Consumer product available holiday 2015"
- No pricing information and not taking preorders.
- Inside-out position and rotation tracking with a laser position sensor
- Outside-in tracking with a pair of base stations covering a 15ftx15ft area
- Will include a pair of single-handed controllers with location tracking in them
Based on my past subjective measurements with a DK2, which is a similar resolution (960x1080 per eye), I estimate that the 1200x1080 resolution corresponds to a minimum tolerable font size that would be equivalent to 27pt on my 2560x1600 monitor at 3ft. (This is assuming, first, that because the vertical resolutions are the same, the extra horizontal pixels were allocated to peripheral vision; and second, that it's the same the same 2:1:1 pentile style display. If those are full pixels, that drops by a factor sqrt(2) to 19pt.)
22 comments
[ 163 ms ] story [ 1071 ms ] threadAnd that sentence pretty much illustrates why the shine has come off Valve, at least for me. The last Half-Life game was in 2007 (as was the last Team Fortress game). The last Portal game was 2011, and Kim Swift has moved on to other things. Left 4 Dead's developers have moved to another publisher with Evolve. Counter-Strike is still limping along. Dota 2 exists, I guess. The only thing they've released since Dota 2 are Linux ports of old games, unless you count the ports of old games that Nvidia did to Android. Meanwhile the Steam Machine hasn't seen commercial release, we still don't even know what their Steam Controller is supposed to look like in its final form... and they're announcing a VR headset? After all their big names in VR already jumped ship to Occulus? Is there an adult somewhere at Valve minding the store?
[1] https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Valve_Time
"that was id’s mantra for so long: 'It’ll be done when it’s done.' And I recant from that. I no longer think that is the appropriate way to build games. I mean, time matters, and as years go by—if it’s done when it’s done and you’re talking a month or two, fine. But if it’s a year or two, you need to be making a different game."
1) http://www.gamefront.com/john-carmack-on-doom-4-id-quake-liv...
I've found steam is by far the best digital distribution client when it comes to managing my game library, mainly because of the 'steam libraries' feature that lets you create a steam library on any hard drive to install games to, and it makes restoring your games on a clean install of windows extremely simple too (just go into steam library settings, point it to the steam library folder(s) on your drives and all your games are back).
Origin and uplay aren't nearly up to par when it comes to stuff like managing games on multiple hdd's.
I think you can do both of these in Big Picture Mode.
Maybe their famous no bosses, flat structure doesn't actually work.
What great ideas have come out of Valve in recent history?
Saying Counter Strike is still limping along is a pretty inaccurate portrayal as well. CSGO's popularity is in a constant increase currently - as I write this, there are 433k players currently in game in CSGO. It's honestly probably more popular than old CS ever was, even prior to the popularity decrease with 1.6 and then Source.
With the overwhelming success of Dota2 and CSGO, I don't think you can really suggest Valve is in a decline.
As has been seen time and time again, with complete freedom over when to release a game generally comes greatness (given the caveat that they developers actually have a clue, and by golly Valve staff are clearly among the best).
ps: I can understand your comment of "Dota 2 exists, I guess" if you're measuring it against LoL. Take a broader view of it in the entire online market and it is a massive success: http://store.steampowered.com/stats/
Highlights: