More sites should interview mod-makers, I feel. If one of this week’s picks is anything to go by, they can have some interesting things to say. Modding might not usually be quite as huge a process as making a full-on indie game, but as a modder you face your own unique problems, ones we don’t always get to hear about. Maybe we should take note of that at RPS. Either way, read on for this week’s roundup.
A Reddit user by the name of vism did, so they emailed Valve boss Gabe Newell. And actually got a response, if not from the big man himself.
The man in question, who is displayed during the opening credits of Valve games (and can be seen in the clip above), sadly remains a mystery, but the story of how he (and the other "intro guy", with a Valve stuck in his eye) got the gig opening some of the greatest video games ever made is still an interesting one.
Valve veteran Ray Ueno explains:
I worked with Gabe and team to develop the "guy in the logo" back when we first named the company, Valve (circa 1995/6), and needed to develop the visual brand vocabulary to go along with it.
Interesting that you should ask about the bald guy. Back then, the casting agencies we were using to find models only had "supermodel"-type talent. We kept requesting "heavy-set", "normal" models, and they kept sending us "beautiful", "thin", "perfect" headshots to review.
So, we finally asked them to just go out on the street and pull "everyday Joes" who were more "interesting", "common", and for the bald guy, "kinda big, heavy-set, and bald".
They went out to the streets of Seattle's Broadway district, took tons of polaroids of the types of folks we were looking for, and brought the shots back to us. We selected the bald guy from the batches of "off-the-street" polaroids-he was literally pulled out of a coffee shop or book store!
A few days later, we brought him into studio and shot the image you now see at the beginning of our games. We also shot a 2nd image of a different guy with a valve in his eye using the same process (you might remember him as well-attached below). The two comprised the "Open your mind. Open your eyes." concept for our initial brand, respectively.
It's been very long since we did that work, so we don't know who the models were. And the fact that they weren't professional models, would make it very difficult to find them-if not impossible for the bald guy (not facing camera).
If by some freak occurrence either of the gentlemen in question (or any of their friends or relatives) are reading this, get in touch! It'd be great to put a name to a face. And see what you look like without large metal valves sticking out of your head.
The guy in the Valve splash screen [Reddit]
In the week of Portal 2′s release, it seems apt that Valve’s games should dominate the mod scene’s output. While the range of titles you can mod these days is impressive, and so many of the tools are easy to learn, I’ve still yet to come across a moddable engine that’s quite as intuitive and flexible as Source. I can’t wait to see what people can do with Portal 2 when we’re able to mod that. It’s going to be very interesting to see the results. Onwards, then…
Steam today represents a billion-dollar operation staffed by hundreds. But has the platform's meteoric rise restricted Valve's capacity to actually create games?
We haven't had a proper Valve-bred IP since The Orange Box games Team Fortress 2 and Half-Life 2: Episode 2 arrived more than three years ago.
Brad Wardell - leader of Stardock, the company behind Steam rival Impulse - drew on personal experience to argue that yes, Steam's success has "definitely had an effect" on Valve as a game maker.
"Even though Valve is in Seattle, where you can get developers everywhere, [Steam's] had an effect on their own development schedule. There's not been a new Half-Life in a long time; a lot of people have complained about that," Wardell explained to IndustryGamers.
"[Valve has] had their own challenges getting new titles out the door, and a big part of that I'm sure is the same problems we've had. When one of your groups is so ridiculously profitable, every business instinct you have is to throw all your best people at it, because that's what's making the money. That's just sound business. At the end of the day, again you have decide if that's what you want to do.
"Steam and Valve - of the companies out there I would say we're the most similar. Obviously they're bigger and far more successful than our games unit is, but culturally they're pretty similar. If you were to look at a time-line of games developed in-house by Valve not developed externally and then acquired and you look at before Steam and after Steam, it's definitely had an effect," he added.
"I don't argue that that's a good thing or bad thing, but I do know the effect that's had on us, where I've had to put some of my top developers over the years onto Impulse to make sure it was getting better and better."
Since the 2007 release of Half-Life 2: Episode 2 and Team Fortress 2, Valve has launched Portal, Left 4 Dead, Left 4 Dead 2 and Alien Swarm. Portal 2 is imminent and DOTA2 (Defense of the Ancients 2) has been announced with a tentative 2011 date.
Look at those games again:
What happened to Half-Life 2: Episode 3, Valve? And more importantly, is there a Half-Life 3? There are few announcement platforms on the scale E3 this summer. Is it Valve's turn this year? Maybe, just maybe.
Video: Half-Life 2: Episode 2 - the last Valve thoroughbred.
Garry Newman set a trap within Garry's Mod to expose people pirating his work.
"Anyone unable to shade polygon normals?" asked Newman on Twitter.
Hours later he added: "Just enabled this error in GMod today. It happens when you pirated it. Having fun watching people complain."
A search for "unable to shade polygon normals" turns up plenty of results on Google.
There are even pirates asking for help dealing with the error on the official Garry's Mod forum.
The best part about the pirate-catching error code is that the naughty user's Steam ID is posted within it. When they reproduce the code on a forum asking for help, Newman can cross-check the code against legitimate purchases and hoof the pirates out.
Garry's Mod, a physics sandbox, started as a Half-Life 2 mod. The $10 download now works with most Source-powered Valve games, allowing the objects and characters of the world to be spawned, manipulated and played with.
From an interview with Valve Software's Chet Faliszek from Beefjack.com:
With regards to the co-op campaign, how does it fit in the Portal universe?
Chet Faliszek: It has its own separate story, with its own characters, and takes place after the single-player game. GLaDOS has a little thing for you to do, and I'll say no more to avoid spoilers! The story in co-op really has to step back a little bit because you need room for people to breathe and talk. They have their own story that's competing against it, you know? They won't go: "Remember when I was playing P-Body and you were Atlas and I pulled the light-bridge out from underneath you?" They're going to say: "Hey, remember when I pulled the light-bridge out from underneath you, and you fell off into the goo?" There's more of a personal story that comes from that.
Of course, no one's quite sure how the overall Portal 2 story will be woven into Half-Life, but there is some speculation (among a few random gamers that I've talked to) that part of the reason we haven't heard anything about Half-Life 3 at all is because events in Portal 2 will heavily affect the Half-Life universe. I'm starting to get a totally speculative hunch that we'll be hearing about Half-Life 3 soon after Portal 2 is on shelves. (Wishful thinking?)
Related: Valve Plans to Bridge Portal and Portal 2 With a Surprise, Keep Gordon Freeman Out Of It [Kotaku]