You may have read or watch a lot of interviews with Erik Johnson or Gabe Newell about the company, but this one done by Gamasutra is by far one of the more in-depth interviews done.
In the interview, Gabe Newell, CEO of Valve and Erik Johnson, Project Manager answers questions such as how they pick projects to work on, how important monetizing a game, is and many more. A few extracts are available below.
While there is not a lot being revealed about Dota 2, it is still good read to get into the intricacy of the company.
But in the case of Dota 2, was it more liking DotA, or liking IceFrog?
EJ: Both, absolutely both.
GN: For us, it's like there's some people you meet and you just say, "I wanna work with this person." And IceFrog is that kind of person. There are a lot of people at Valve who don't ever have to work again. The reason we all go to work each day is we get to work with people that we do. The idea that you can go to work each day and see what this person is doing is pretty exciting.
It's the same way with Doug Church, who is working at Valve now. It's just a total blast for me, to go in and talk with him about enemy design or user generated content. It's just ridiculous how much fun you get to have by working alongside these people.
Conventional wisdom suggests that you have to be aware of your monetization design from a game design level.
GN: I think not sucking is way more of an important thing to pay attention to first. I think every gamer can point to shipping too early, or sucking, as being a way more dominant story in our industry than, "Oh, it was slightly cumbersome to give the company money." I mean look at Minecraft, right? Notch wasn't thinking through his incredibly precise monetization strategy.
EJ: It's also just, do the hardest stuff first, and make the game fun; making a game fun is so hard. It takes so much time. Figuring out how to make sense out of making some money out of it, that's not nearly as difficult.
Did you recruit a lot for this game?
GN: No -- we don't recruit for games. We recruit people.
Read the full interview here.
Links
Gamasutra - Source
In the interview, Gabe Newell, CEO of Valve and Erik Johnson, Project Manager answers questions such as how they pick projects to work on, how important monetizing a game, is and many more. A few extracts are available below.
While there is not a lot being revealed about Dota 2, it is still good read to get into the intricacy of the company.
But in the case of Dota 2, was it more liking DotA, or liking IceFrog?
EJ: Both, absolutely both.
GN: For us, it's like there's some people you meet and you just say, "I wanna work with this person." And IceFrog is that kind of person. There are a lot of people at Valve who don't ever have to work again. The reason we all go to work each day is we get to work with people that we do. The idea that you can go to work each day and see what this person is doing is pretty exciting.
It's the same way with Doug Church, who is working at Valve now. It's just a total blast for me, to go in and talk with him about enemy design or user generated content. It's just ridiculous how much fun you get to have by working alongside these people.
Conventional wisdom suggests that you have to be aware of your monetization design from a game design level.
GN: I think not sucking is way more of an important thing to pay attention to first. I think every gamer can point to shipping too early, or sucking, as being a way more dominant story in our industry than, "Oh, it was slightly cumbersome to give the company money." I mean look at Minecraft, right? Notch wasn't thinking through his incredibly precise monetization strategy.
EJ: It's also just, do the hardest stuff first, and make the game fun; making a game fun is so hard. It takes so much time. Figuring out how to make sense out of making some money out of it, that's not nearly as difficult.
Did you recruit a lot for this game?
GN: No -- we don't recruit for games. We recruit people.
Read the full interview here.
Links
Gamasutra - Source
