Last month I was at Valve HQ in Bellevue to play Portal 2 and interview seven of their key staff. You can read the resulting preview and feature in the current issue of PC Gamer in the UK, and we’re also putting an interview up every day for a week here on the blog. Yesterday MD Gabe Newell, project manager Erik Johnson and marketing director Doug Lombardi explained their history of surprising decisions, and teased three more major surprises in the next year. Today, I innocently ask them if there’s anything in their history they see as a failure, and get thirteen different responses.
Valve are surprising. Half-Life itself was surprising enough, but then they surprisingly scooped up Counter-Strike, sprung Steam on us surprisingly, turned Half-Life 2 surprisingly episodic, then took surprisingly long on the episodes. When I flew out to visit them last month, I half expected to find they’d moved to the moon and turned themselves into a yacht manufacturer. And since they hadn’t, I was, again, surprised.
I was there to play Portal 2 co-op for the preview feature you can read in the current issue of PC Gamer in the UK, and interview seven of their key staff for a profile on Valve themselves to go with it. But they told me so much cool stuff that we’re going to be putting up an interview a day for the next week. Today’s is from a marathon chat with MD Gabe Newell, project manager Erik Johnson, and marketing director Doug Lombardi, and I start by asking them the question I’ve wanted to ask them for about three years.
A lot of things in life are only scary in a certain context. Buses: not scary, unless you’re about to be hit by one. Mothers-in-law: not scary at distances over two feet. Amnesia is scary everywhere.
The spiritual heir to the Penumbra series from Swedish indies Frictional, Amnesia: The Dark Descent is arch survival horror. I’ve been playing it and scaring myself silly, and thought a chat with Frictional might keep the darkness at bay. Fat chance…
Valve’s CEO and co-founder, Gabe Newell, has told PC Gamer that the only way there’d be a Half-Life movie would be if Valve made it themselves. He also said they’ve been experimenting with doing just that.
Speaking to us in an interview earlier this month, Valve MD Gabe Newell described an action fantasy RPG Valve were once making – about fairies. The next issue of PC Gamer in the UK is a Valve spectacular, and part of that is a huge interview feature on why the company keeps making such surprising decisions. I sat down with Gabe, project manager Erik Johnson and director of marketing Doug Lombardi and asked: “Are there things you think you’ve failed at?” Their response was long, and that’s how they got onto the fairy game.
On October 5th, Valve will release a new campaign for both Left 4 Dead 1 and Left 4 Dead 2. It’s The Sacrifice, a story which bridges the gap between the two games, and explains the mysterious events of previous downloadable campaign The Passing.
As a special treat for Left 4 Dead 2 owners, they’ve also carried the original game’s No Mercy campaign across to Left 4 Dead 2. And everyone will get a huge 190 page comic beforehand, leading up to the events of The Sacrifice. I spoke to producer Chet Faliszek about, like, what the hell.
Epic-length two-hour podcast! Evan, Logan, Josh, Dan, Andy and newcomer Chris Comiskey relay a flood of news coming out of Germany’s Gamescom. Relic’s Dawn of War II expands while Dawn of War III peeks over the horizon, Torchlight 2’s co-op trailer triggers a Pavlovian drool response, Jagged Alliance goes online, and Microsoft brings back Age of Empires and Flight Simulator – sort of. Then we play World of Warcraft: Cataclysm’s Collector’s Edition: buy or no buy, answer listener questions and interview the CEO of hardcore strategy publisher Paradox Interactive.
Team Fortress 2 has updated all nine of its classes now, so everyone’s curious about the future of the game. I posted myself to Mann. Co headquarters in the hope of wrestling Saxton Hale for answers, but when I arrived I found only project lead Robin Walker, in his throne room at Valve. Disappointed, I clambered out of my box and interviewed him nevertheless.
He talked about where TF2 can go from here, how many people are still working on it, what they plan to include in the next update, why unlocks work the way they do, why they might start a new TF2 beta, and what the point of hats is. Accordingly, the interview is long. This is part two, part one is here.
Team Fortress 2 has updated all nine of its classes now, so everyone’s curious about the future of the game. I posted myself to Mann. Co headquarters in the hope of wrestling Saxton Hale for answers, but when I arrived I found only project lead Robin Walker, in his throne room at Valve. Disappointed, I clambered out of my box and interviewed him nevertheless.
He talked about where Team Fortress 2 can go from here, how many people are still working on it, what they plan to include in the next update, why unlocks work the way they do, why they might start a new TF2 beta, and what the point of hats is. Accordingly, the interview is long. This is part one – part two is here.
You already know that Retribution, Relic’s just-announced second expansion for Dawn of War 2, is finally giving the series some proper Ork love–the franchise’s first-ever Ork campaign will be the centerpiece of the expansion. We got Jeff Lydell, Lead Producer at Relic Entertainment, to talk about it.
PC Gamer: Why Orks?
Jeff Lydell: We’ve wanted to do an Ork campaign for a long time, and they bring a whole lot to the table in terms of tone and humor. On top of that, they’re one of the iconic 40k races, and we are thrilled to have given them a chance in the sun.
More of this man’s words, many of which reveal exciting information about the angry green people we adore, inside.
