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The Valve and Steam Platform Discussion Thread

Turjan

Arcane
Joined
Mar 31, 2008
Messages
5,047
Wow. I can't tell if Elves Adventure is a joke or serious, but it made me laugh. Definitely worth looking at the video for it.
Probably not completely serious. "Final boss called Deadly Dragon". Nobody claimed it is a deadly dragon.
 

LESS T_T

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Messages
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Codex 2014
Hotfixes to the review system: http://store.steampowered.com/news/24331/

- Now you'll see reviews from all users (Steam + Keys) on the store page by default. (Doesn't affect the review score.)
- Changed the color of the "Mixed" text to yellow/tan color. (yeah, finally.)

Ongoing Steam Customer Review System Improvements

Last week we made some changes to the Steam user review system, which you can read about here. In the week since, we've been reading a lot of feedback from customers and game developers to see what's working and what's not. Based on this feedback, we’re making a couple of tweaks to the review system today and are working on some longer-term updates. Here are the changes made as well as some information on the changes we're still working on.


Today's changes:
  1. One frequent piece of feedback we’ve heard regarding the recent changes is that it has become more difficult to find and read the helpful, articulate reviews written by customers that obtained the game outside of Steam. We want to make sure that helpful reviews can be surfaced regardless of purchase source, so we're making a change to the defaults. Starting today, the review section on each product page will show reviews written by all users, regardless of purchase type. By default you'll now see reviews written by all players of the game, including Steam customers, Kickstarter backers, bundle customers, streamers, and other users that acquired the game outside of Steam.

    UserReviewsUpdateSept20.jpg


    Regardless of the default, you may prefer to see only reviews by Steam customers. So we’ve also made it so that Steam will remember the last 'purchase type' you selected to view in the review section. As you move between game pages, Steam will remember your preference and display only those reviews.

    This change doesn't impact the review score. Each game's score will continue to be calculated based only on customers that purchased the game via Steam.

  2. Some developers have pointed out that we've been inconsistent in use of color for the review score of "Mixed." We've adjusted the color of the "Mixed" text to match the icons we’ve already been using in search results. It’s kind of a yellow/tan color now.

    UserReviewsUpdateMixedSept20_2.jpg


  3. There was some confusion in how reviews were sorted when viewing all reviews written by a particular user. It was previously sorted by 'helpful' rating of reviews by that user, which was often just a factor of the size of audience for each game reviewed. This meant that reviews on bigger games almost always were listed first in those views because there were simply more users clicking 'helpful' on reviews. This display is now sorted chronologically, so you can see what a particular user has reviewed most recently.

Work in progress:

As we mentioned in our previous announcement, we’ve been working on some changes to the ranking of ‘helpful’ reviews that appear for each product. The goal is to be able to better identify and highlight helpful reviews while hiding or lowering the prominence of unhelpful reviews. Our existing system just looks at the overall number of users that rated a review as 'helpful', but we're seeing this can produce unpredictable results. For example, sometimes unhelpful memes get rated as ‘helpful’ because people think it’s funny. So we're working on updating the system to consider more factors when deciding how to rank 'helpful' reviews so that it can generate better results. We plan on rolling out a beta soon, which you’ll be able to opt into so you can compare the sorting of helpful reviews before and after the change.

As always, please let us know what you think.
 

LESS T_T

Arcane
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Codex 2014
A number of store changes are coming in a few weeks:

We wanted to let you know about some upcoming improvements we’re working on for the Steam Store and what it might mean for your game.

When we launched the Steam Discovery Update, we introduced a new and smarter Steam store built around personalization and recommendations. In the time since the Discovery Update, we’ve iterated on the features and made improvements to support the goal of helping each customer find the titles they are most likely to enjoy playing. We think our progress in this direction has been really valuable in supporting a broader variety of gaming experiences big and small, while better serving individual customer tastes.

We’ve got another set of changes in the works to continue along this path. All this is subject to change to some degree in response to your feedback and suggestions, but here are the general highlights of this upcoming update:


Home Page Visual Refresh.

The Steam home page will be getting a visual refresh to use bigger game images in some places, add some new ways of surfacing games, and remove some visual clutter.


Additional Left Column Navigation.

The left column of navigation on the home page will be getting a new section of links to main destinations such as new releases, top sellers, recently updated, upcoming releases, and specials. When logged in, there will also be links to sections for you such as popular among friends, recommendations by curators you follow, and your discovery queue.


Friends Activity.

We’re adding a prominent new ‘Popular Among Friends’ section right to the home page that will highlight what your friends have been buying and playing.


Top Selling New Releases.

We’re adding a new section to the home page for new releases that have reached the top sellers list.


Global Customer Preferences.

We’re adding some new options for users to specify their preferences for which product types they wish to see across the entire home page, rather than managing each section individually. This will let customers opt to exclude particular types of products, such as Early Access, Software, Videos, and VR from appearing on their Steam home page and on a couple other browse pages.


Targeted Visibility For New Releases.

We’ll be making some changes to the initial launch visibility of new titles to better reach appropriate customers. While we previously granted 1M impressions of each new titles on the home page, this approach was not scaling well and was an inefficient method for reaching the right potential customers. Click-through rates for most titles featured in this section were low, and it had become clear that not every new release is relevant to every user. We think we can do better.

With the upcoming changes, newly released titles will appear in a few different ways on the “New on Steam” page and in the “New on Steam” Queue. The goal is to reach a more engaged group of customers, and drive more relevant traffic directly to your store page. This change should result in your title appearing to a smaller, but better targeted group of potential customers based on their preferences and tastes. New releases will continue to be recommended to specific users on the Steam Home page and can appear in popular lists if doing well.


Targeted Visibility For Game Updates.

Update Visibility Rounds will be changed to show your game to a better targeted group of customers. While Update Rounds previously caused a game to appear for 500,000 impressions on the home page, we found this method to be too broad for effectively reaching interested customers. We’ll be changing this system to instead show the game to a more targeted group of customers. This will include your existing customers, users with the game on their wishlist, and other customers that Steam recommends the game to. This visibility will continue to be on the Steam home page and may show your title for up to a week in this spot.


More Steam Curator Options.

We’ve noticed that more than a few Steam Curators are using the curator feature to provide valuable information about games, while not necessarily recommending the title. We’re going to give Steam Curators the tools to indicate whether their post is recommended, not recommended, or simply informational. This helps us better understand whether a curation should be used to promote a game on the front page of Steam, or if it’s intended to be informational that should primarily appear on the individual product page.


Curators in Main Capsule.

The Main Capsule banner will be updated to include titles recommended by Steam Curators that users follow. This means we can better surface appropriate titles to individual users based on who they follow and trust to make recommendations.


Improved Steam Curator Presence.

When following one or more Steam Curators, users will see a specific section on the home page that highlights recent recommendations. This space can include popular new releases or smaller niche titles depending on which curators the user is following. This section is being improved to show off the games in a better way. Additionally, we’re creating a new landing page to highlight many of the titles recommended by all the Curators the user follows.


We’re actively working on this set of features, and planning to roll out the update in a few weeks. We’re looking for your feedback on these changes and your suggestions for how we can best connect your game with the customers most likely to enjoy it.
 

LESS T_T

Arcane
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Messages
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Codex 2014


:M

Also: http://www.ign.com/articles/2016/09/29/jj-abrams-a-portal-movie-announcement-is-coming-soon

J.J. ABRAMS: A PORTAL MOVIE ANNOUNCEMENT IS COMING SOON

J.J. Abrams has confirmed the Portal and Half Life movies are still in development, and we can expect a Portal announcement "fairly soon".

Speaking to IGN on the Westworld red carpet (Abrams produces the HBO show), the filmmaker said both films were "still very much in development".

"We have a meeting coming up next week with Valve, we’re very active, I’m hoping that there will be a Portal announcement fairly soon", said Abrams.

When we asked if the movies would follow on from the story-lines that already exist in the games, Abrams kept his cards close to his chest.

"We are having some really interesting discussions with writers, many of whom...once you said you’re doing a movie or show about a specific thing that is a known quantity you start to find people who are rabid about these things. As someone who loves playing Half Life and Portal, what’s the movie of this, it’s incredible when you talk to someone who just ‘gets’ it, it’s like, oh my god, it’s really the seed for this incredible tree you’re growing."

Movies based on the Valve games were announced during DICE 2013, but there hasn't been information on the projects since.

Half-Life 3 will be a movie, I see.
 

Caim

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Messages
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How the fuck is a Portal movie going to work? You have GLaDOS and the person running the courses, that's not a lot of cast to work with. Even adding a character like Wheatley limits what you can do with a film if you don't want to make it an arthouse flick.
 

pippin

Guest
fan-made comic

Gotta love how idiots give away their work for free.

How the fuck is a Portal movie going to work? You have GLaDOS and the person running the courses, that's not a lot of cast to work with. Even adding a character like Wheatley limits what you can do with a film if you don't want to make it an arthouse flick.

Portal is about memes. Girls love it though, and girls love to spend money on shit they don't need. Most of the money will come from the marketing campaign.
 

Alienman

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Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy Codex Year of the Donut Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
How the fuck is a Portal movie going to work? You have GLaDOS and the person running the courses, that's not a lot of cast to work with. Even adding a character like Wheatley limits what you can do with a film if you don't want to make it an arthouse flick.

Maybe a bit like the movie the Cube. With less blood and gore of course.
 

Metro

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fan-made comic

Gotta love how idiots give away their work for free.

How the fuck is a Portal movie going to work? You have GLaDOS and the person running the courses, that's not a lot of cast to work with. Even adding a character like Wheatley limits what you can do with a film if you don't want to make it an arthouse flick.

Portal is about memes. Girls love it though, and girls love to spend money on shit they don't need. Most of the money will come from the marketing campaign.
Especially when you have strong (but silent) female protagonist! It'll be an extremely cheap movie to make. Abrams recently farmed out that 10 Cloverfield Lane or whatever that had nothing to do with Cloverfield but was a budget/indie movie filmed under another premise and shoehorned into the sci-fi/monster genre just to get all the rabid Cloverfield fans excited and generate a marketing buzz. Portal already has a big named tied to it so no need for rewrites. You only pay two actors: some young probably not-too-famous woman in her 20's and the voice actress who does Glados in the games (and isn't compensated nearly as much as some big Hollywood star). Set-wise you have a lot of generic/utilitarian white rooms with some office furniture and a lot of CGI. A sub $20 million budget is possible.

The studio will make good profit from ticket sales. The studio and Valve will make profit from selling licensed toys and crap. And Valve will make even more money focusing new customers to the Steam platform.
 

Spectacle

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Messages
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How the fuck is a Portal movie going to work? You have GLaDOS and the person running the courses, that's not a lot of cast to work with. Even adding a character like Wheatley limits what you can do with a film if you don't want to make it an arthouse flick.

Maybe a bit like the movie the Cube. With less blood and gore of course.
Yeah this. Add a few more characters trapped together inside the aperture testing range, and you can have as much drama as you want as they try to work together to escape despite all having severe personality defects that keep them from approaching the situation rationally.
 

Tom Selleck

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Joined
May 6, 2013
Messages
1,206
Yeah, a JJ Abrahms produced, Hollywood movie adaptation of a successful, marketable property isn't going to take the weird risks that having a single, mute character would have.

So expect any movie to be more of "Portal as an idea" not "faithful adaptation of the first game's storyline".

In fact, I imagine it will have a shit ton of Portal 2 content and my best guess would be that it's about a small group of people who discover they're in a bizarro funhouse testing chamber, do some Inception-inspired special effects gimmicks through walls, discover the sinister motives behind the testing, then defeat a personified computer GladOS (obviously a robot, maybe not entirely anthropogenic, but tangibly destroyable, at least) and then some kinda shit-tier twist ending.

Also the cast will be cartoonishly diverse.

In other words, it's gonna be shit.
 

Infinitron

I post news
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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
http://www.pcgamer.com/early-access-rules/

Steam's secret Early Access rules reveal Valve's hands-off approach
Previously only accessible by developers, PC Gamer has obtained a copy of Steam's Early Access rules and guidelines

Valve does not have formal penalties for developers who violate the rules of Early Access, according to a document obtained by PC Gamer. The document, which is private to Steam developers but was obtained by PC Gamer, reveals plenty of advice, a handful of rules, but almost no hard, enforceable standards about Early Access. A short excerpt of the rules was shown in November 2014, but this is the first full picture of how Valve governs Early Access, what advice it provides to developers, and what boundaries it sets.

The document is divided into three sections: rules, which developers "need to follow," guidelines, which Valve calls "suggestions for ensuring a better experience," and answers to common questions related to pricing, launching, the transition from Early Access to full release, and so on. These sections total 2,164 words. However, surprisingly few of the Early Access rules—one of four—set restrictions on how developers must communicate with players about the progress of their project. Here's that rule, in full:

Do not make specific promises about future events.For example, there is no way you can know exactly when the game will be finished, that the game will be finished, or that planned future additions will definitely happen. Do not ask your customers to bet on the future of your game. Customers should be buying your game based on its current state, not on promises of a future that may or may not be realized.

This language does echo the public Early Access FAQ, which makes it clear that players accept the possibility that an Early Access game will not be completed when they purchase it ("You should be aware that some teams will be unable to 'finish' their game. So you should only buy an Early Access game if you are excited about playing it in its current state," the FAQ reads.)

Broadly, the document conveys Valve's hands-off attitude to managing or policing Early Access participants who break rules. Although the document indicates that Valve vets the marketing messaging of each Early Access release ("Once your product page has been completed and reviewed by Valve, you may release your title as Early Access"), the rules do not paint a picture of Valve as an active arbiter or as a judge of what constitutes adherence to these rules and guidelines. Absent from the document, for example, is a mention of how long a game can or should remain in Early Access, or what Valve's action is when a developer does not deliver on a milestone or promise to its fans.

Given the controversies regarding abandoned projects and missed deadlines since the launch of Early Access three and a half years ago, it's perhaps surprising that there are no stated consequences for failure whatsoever within the document. Then again, this attitude mirrors Valve's approach for many of its other Steam projects, like Greenlight, a program intended to move Valve away from filtering what does and doesn't appear on Steam.

Of the four rules, three address specific aspects of distribution, like the need to publish an explanation of what Early Access is on any external websites where players can buy the game, or a requirement to not sell Early Access games at the same or lower price that they're available elsewhere.

347 games remain in Early Access. An unedited copy of the Early Access rules and guidelines can be read on the next page of this article. I've also written expanded thoughts about why Valve must take greater ownership over its Early Access program.

[Editor's Note: These are Steam's rules and guidelines for Early Access development, provided in full below. Although I haven't edited the rules, I have added some text formatting, such as bolding and paragraph breaks, to make this page more readable.]

Overview
Steam Early Access is a framework of messaging that helps customers identify and learn more about products that are currently under development with the involvement of the community.

As a developer, this is useful to help set context for prospective customers and provide them with information about your intentions during Early Access. Early Access is meant to be a place for games that are in a playable alpha or beta state, are worth the current value of the playable build, and the developer plans to continue to develop for release.

Rules & Guidelines for Steam Early Access
When you launch a game in Steam Early Access, there is an expectation by customers that you will continue development to a point where you have what you consider a 'finished' game. We know that nobody can predict the future, and circumstances frequently change, which may result in a game failing to reach a 'finished' state, or may fail to meet customer expectations in some other way. We work hard to make sure this risk is communicated clearly to customers, but we also ask that developers follow a set of rules that are intended to help inform customers and set proper expectations when purchasing your game.

Therefore, what follows are a set of rules and guidelines that govern your use of Steam Early Access. These are important to consider when evaluating whether Early Access is right for your product, whether you are ready to launch as Early Access, and how to talk to customers about your use of Early Access.

Rules
These are rules that you need to follow for your title in Steam Early Access.

You must include Steam Early Access branding and information about the current state of your game on any third-party sites where you are distributing Steam keys for your Early Access game.
We work really hard to make sure that customers understand what they are buying when they get an Early Access title on Steam. But we've seen that many of these titles are sold as keys on other websites where there is no explanation of what Early Access is or what the current state of your product is now versus what you hope to achieve. As a result, we are now requiring developer to include the Steam Early Access branding as well as information on the current state of your game and a link to the Steam Early Access FAQ on any site where you are selling Steam keys for your Early Access title. You should also include the Early Access questions that you answered when setting up your Steam page. You can read more in the Steam Branding Guidelines.

Do not make specific promises about future events.
For example, there is no way you can know exactly when the game will be finished, that the game will be finished, or that planned future additions will definitely happen. Do not ask your customers to bet on the future of your game. Customers should be buying your game based on its current state, not on promises of a future that may or may not be realized.Steam Early Access titles need to be available to customers through Steam.

If Valve is enabling your Early Access game we expect you to have the Early Access game available for sale on the Steam store.
Do not offer it for sale on Steam any later than you offer it anywhere else.

Don't overcharge Steam customers.
We expect Steam customers to get a price for the Early Access game no higher than they are offered on any other service or website. Please make sure that’s the case.

Guidelines
These are suggestions for ensuring a better experience for customers.

Don’t launch in Early Access if you can’t afford to develop with very few or no sales.
There is no guarantee that your game will sell as many units as you anticipate. If you are counting on selling a specific number of units to survive and complete your game, then you need to think carefully about what it would mean for you or your team if you don't sell that many units. Are you willing to continue developing the game without any sales? Are you willing to seek other forms of investment?

Make sure you set expectations properly everywhere you talk about your game.
For example, if you know your updates during Early Access will break save files or make the customer start over with building something, make sure you say that up front. And say this everywhere you sell your Steam keys.

Don't launch in Early Access without a playable game.
If you have a tech demo, but not much gameplay yet, then it’s probably too early to launch in Early Access. If you are trying to test out a concept and haven't yet figured out what players are going to do in your game that makes it fun, then it's probably too early. You might want to start by giving out keys to select fans and getting input from a smaller and focused group of users before you post your title to Early Access. At a bare minimum, you will need a video that shows in-game gameplay of what it looks like to play the game. Even if you are asking customers for feedback on changing the gameplay, customers need something to start with in order to give informed feedback and suggestions.

Don't launch in Early Access if you are done with development.
If you have all your gameplay defined already and are just looking for final bug testing, then Early Access isn’t the right place for that. You’ll probably just want to send out some keys to fans or do more internal playtesting. Early Access is intended as a place where customers can have impact on the game.

Early Access is not a Pre-Purchase
Early Access is not meant to be a pre-purchase space but a space to get your game in front of Steam users early and gather feedback from them while finishing the game. Often times the game is over 60 days from a release date and should still need finishing touches.

The main difference is that pre-purchase offers do not usually provide immediate access to play the game as it is being developed. Early Access titles must deliver a playable game or usable software to the customer at the time of purchase. Read more about pre-purchases on the Pre-Purchase Documentation.

Is Early Access Right For You?
Early Access is a tool to develop your game with the community by giving them access to your title before it is officially released. During Steam Dev Days, in January 2014, five developers shared what they have learned from being on Early Access; how it affected their development, their sales, and when does Early Access make sense.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRDwA3cQmlc
Panelsts are: Justin Bailey (Double Fine), Bob Berry (Uber Entertainment), Jamie Cheng (Klei Entertainment), Mark Morris (Introversion)

Describing Your Early Access

How should I describe my Early Access game to customers?
It’s very important to provide an accurate Early Access description where you clearly define the current state of your game build and pricing plan up until launch. This allows customers to be informed when making their decision to purchase the game now or wait for the full release. In addition if you choose to offer details of the features that will be offered in the final release build of the game, this list should be as accurate as possible to avoid unhappy future customers.

The "What The Dev Says" (Early Access Dev Description) should establish for the user on what to expect from the game and the developer and how their participation will be helping you as the developer. This description should answer the following questions:

This description should answer the following questions:

Why is your game in Early Access?
How long do you plan to be in Early Access?
What is the current state of the game?
What features are you planning to add to the game?
What is your pricing strategy during and after Early Access?
How can the Steam Community help you during your development process

Please check our Early Access area to see some great examples of games in this state on Steam. In addition, feel free to ask questions here in the Steamworks Development Group and we will do our best to respond.

Early Access Pricing

How should I think about pricing my Early Access?

Pricing your Early Access can depend on the nature of your game and what behavior you'd like to encourage. Most developers have chosen to start out with a price lower than their target launch price. This establishes a price that is fair for the content being provided at that time with the intention that the price will rise over time as more content is added and the game becomes more polished. Alternatively, some other developers have chosen to set their Early Access price higher than the target launch price so that they can reach a smaller group of more dedicated fans.

If you choose to start out with a lower price, it is generally a good idea to communicate that to customers in the Early Access description on your page.
This lower price should just be represented by configuring a lower base price for your product rather than setting it up as a 'discount'. Discounts are generally indicative of a brief, limited time offer, and send a different message to customers.

Note that you will not be able to run a discount within 30 days following a price increase. This includes a launch discount when your game transitions from Early Access to fully released. If you have raised your base price within 30 days of this transition you will not be able to run a launch discount.

Enabling Early Access

To enable Early Access on your product, you will need to complete these two items before your product is released on Steam:

Check the 'Early Access' checkbox under the 'Early Access' tab in the store page configuration area for your product.Completely answer all questions about how your product will utilize Early Acccess.Once your product page has been completed and reviewed by Valve, you may release your title as Early Access. For more information on releasing your title, please see Preparing for Your Release on Steam

Visibility During Early Access

When your product launches in Steam Early Access, it will appear in a couple places in the Steam store. This is a great time to make sure that you are spreading word about your product through as many external channels as well to reach potential customers wherever they are. The amount of exposure your title gets on Steam will depend on how customers are responding to your product by purchasing, playing, reviewing, and other such factors.
For details on how and where your game can appear to customers during Early Access, please see Early Access Launch Visibility documentation.

Transition From Early Access to 'Released'

Moving from Early Access to 'Released' is typical when the developer considers the product as feature complete and when the product is no longer in a significant state of change. It is worth pointing out that this doesn't mean you have to stop adding features or updating your product--you should keep adding content or fixing bugs as is appropriate for your title. But if your product is no longer marked as Early Access, the expectation from customers will be that your product is now more stable and delivers a complete experience.

When you are ready to remove the Early Access context from around your product, there are a couple of things that should happen:

You will need to upload and publish your updated build of your game or software. You can then click 'view release options' at the top of your product landing page to prepare and release your game fully. Pushing the release button will update the release date for your game, remove the Steam Early Access branding from your store page, and apply any launch discount you have defined.Note that if you increase your price within 30 days of your transition from Early Access to fully released, your launch discount will not apply.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Can my Early Access Game be listed as Coming Soon?

A: Your product can be listed as 'coming soon' before it is available to purchase, regardless of whether you are going to use Early Access or not. Once you have an Early Access title up for purchase, there is no notion of a product as being available to purchase in Early Access and coming soon at the same time.

If you are thinking about how you message the date of your product's transition from Early Access to 'released', you can do that on your own through announcements and on your store page, but there is no official place for defining this date on your store page.
 

Infinitron

I post news
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Messages
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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
The retired Marc Laidlaw has been sharing various old Half-Life stuff: http://www.marclaidlaw.com/writing-half-life/

Writing For Half-Life
10-03-2016 9:06 AM


(File dated November 9, 1998)

PREFACE: Another file from the same disk with the Nihilanth sketches, this one, if it is to believed, written the day after we shipped Half-Life. I do believe it because the file’s creation date is indeed November 9, 1998, and I am not l33t enough to know how to fake that sort of thing. The title of this file was “CGDCTALK” but I don’t remember ever giving a talk anywhere until years later, after the success of HL2. It might have been published somewhere (perhaps near Geoff Keighley’s piece on The Last Hours of Half-Life), but if so it was probably edited, and there might be some value in the unedited braindump. If this was indeed written right as we shipped the game, then I would not be surprised if it conflicts with things I’ve said in decades since. But the guy writing this little article was there, and his memory is much better than the old guy writing this preface, so I’d be inclined to believe him over me.

***

When I started working at Valve, Half-Life was almost finished. It would be on sale for Christmas. If I was lucky, I would get to put in a few weeks of touch-up work on the story, and then get on with a far more detailed storyline for our second game. That was in July of 1997.

Yesterday afternoon, just as the sun was setting on Kirkland, Gabe Newell took a crowbar to a headcrab pinata which had been dangling in Valve’s main room for several weeks like the headcrab of Damocles, waiting for Half-Life to go gold. As rubber bugs and monopoly money sprayed the room, I knew that I was finally finished working on the story for Half-Life.

Between July 1, 1997 and November 8, 1998, it seems to me that every day has been somehow occupied by Half-Life. I’m sure this is an exaggeration—but not much of one. If my memories are distorted, it’s because the world of Half-Life created such an intense and powerful gravity well that everything that came anywhere near it was inexorably drawn in until it was bent beyond recognition. I know the game put me through quite a few twists and turns before it was finished, and I can only hope it does the same for its audience.

Half-Life in the summer of ‘97 bore only superficial resemblance to the Half-Life that just went gold. There was a storyline in the spec involving an accident at a decommissioned missile base, a dimensional portal experiment, lots of smart alien and human enemies, and a bonus trip to an alien world. But when I looked at the game itself, it was not terribly obvious where or how this story was ever going to get told. My first detailed view of the game reminded me in literary terms of a shared world anthology. In a shared world anthology, some author or editor comes up with a basic background, such as Thieves World, and then asks a dozen other authors to write stories sharing that background. There is some obligatory overlap of characters and casual reference to events in other episodes, but overall each chapter is a distinct and separate performance by an individual. So it was with Half-Life. There was an experimental portal device, several silos, some train tunnels, a nuclear reactor, and endless miles of corridors and air ducts. They were great sets, but it was not at all clear what kind of continuing drama could ever unfold against them. Half-Life was still an anthology, when what Valve really wanted to create was something with the coherence and unity of a novel.

As a novelist myself, I hoped that I could provide some guidance to a team that was already well on the way to creating what had been from the beginning an ambitious game of great promise and epic scope. There was really no magic formula, and I had nothing but intuition and experience in a completely different medium to guide me. But that seemed appropriate, somehow, since Valve was doing something for which there were no previous examples. If we did it wrong, we would never know how near or far we had come to whatever the right thing was. But if we did things right, we would all know. And we would finally have our example.

Before coming to Valve, I had published half a dozen novels and scores of short stories. I was lumped in with the cyberpunks, and got to watch that little popular revolution from somewhere near the front row. I had written screenplays, dabbled in journalism, and lately I had started playing lots and lots of computer games. Playing them, yes, but also studying them. Trying to figure out what made them tick. I wasn’t exactly tired of writing prose, but I had been doing that and little else for more than 20 years, and my muse kept pointing me down other roads. I found myself making Quake maps for my own amusement. I found myself working for id, writing their company history, wishing I could be a part of it somehow.

The time I spent at id was a revelation to me. It was the first time I had ever seen a team of highly talented, extremely creative individuals at work on one project. I found it absolutely irresistible. I was also heartsick because there was obviously no place there for a writer. I had found the thing I wanted to do more than anything in the world right at that moment, which was to create these fantastic 3D worlds with John Carmack’s miraculous technology—and there was no place for me in it.

I guess it was right about then that I started scheming. I would either have to find a niche in that world, or carve one for myself.

I had originally come to id on assignment from Wired magazine, writing a cover story about the making of Quake. By coincidence, that magazine had just appeared on the newsstands when Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington were making their first trip down to id’s offices to discuss licensing the Quake engine for their start-up game company. Mike and Gabe were old associates of Michael Abrash, another ex-Microsoft employee and now one of id’s more high profile programmers. Abrash was the one person at id who proved endlessly willing and able to translate what John Carmack was up to into terms that I could understand and convey to the readership of Wired. We became friends, and the first time I heard about Valve, it was from Michael. I was agonizing because I had been offered a writing job at IonStorm, and I just couldn’t bring myself to move to Texas. Michael consoled me with vague hints of other possibilities, including one in the Seattle area. I knew they had licensed the Quake engine, which was the only technology that really interested me. I couldn’t understand why someone didn’t take the best engine they could get, namely Carmack’s, and use it to tell fantastic first-person 3D stories. Needless to say, when I finally got a look at what Valve was up to, I felt an immense cosmic click.

Writing, however noble an activity, is a solitary one—especially the writing of fiction, where you sit in front of a typewriter or computer screen and eat your own brain for as long as you can possibly stand the taste. I had collaborated a few times with friends, and those were great experiences. I had worked on a screenplay for a William Gibson novel, and it being Hollywood and all, that was a group effort in the sense that armed resistance is a group effort. But when I saw the group at id, I realized that I was aching to work with other people—people whose artistic visions and abilities would give me a daily jolt of awe and inspiration.

Valve is precisely that place. When I’m at work, I am engaged on almost every level, all the receptors are being stimulated. Every day I draw on the skills and intuitions I developed as a writer…and not only when I’m actually sitting down to work on a bit of dialog or some portion of a spec. An extremely limited portion of my time is actually spent in the act of writing; and yet I continually draw on what writing fiction has taught me to solve the problems that come up in the process of developing a game.

One of the best things about working alone is that you get to pay a lot of attention to all the subtleties of the creative process. There’s no one else to distract you. It’s like hiking in the mountains by yourself. You notice every step you take; every birdsong registers a bit more clearly because there is no one else there talking. Well, after writing a few novels with no other company than the characters you create, a writer starts to recognize certain milestones along the seemingly endless road between page one and THE END. Every novel I’ve ever written began with a jolt or even several jolts of inspiration. These overwhelming visions are usually so vivid as to be unforgettable, and yet somewhere along the way you inevitably lose sight of them. In the midst of creation you see nothing but chaos and dim glimmers of sense. You lose all perspective; you may even lose hope. It is very easy at this point to give up, and I have. However, if you keep on, you will learn that the floundering feeling of the middle game is temporary, and may even serve some purpose in causing you to question and test your assumptions. A book that makes it through the doubts and revisions of the middle stage is a stronger, more complex and curiously more stable book, I believe, than it would have been without the reevaluation. Still, it’s a hellish process, even when you’ve weathered it more than a couple times. You learn to keep doing the work. You keep on until you get to what you think is the end, so that you can finally realize it’s not the end at all but simply the next place you have to start from.

I am talking of novels, but the same applied to Half-Life. Maybe it applies to every work of real creativity.

It took me several months just to figure out what I was doing at Valve—and how I could possibly contribute. Our maps were a confusing collection of things named c1a1c, c2a3b, c3a2; so it was difficult for me to appear even remotely intelligent when people asked me things like, “What did you think of c2a4a?” By the time I had finally figured out the difference between c2a3 and c3a2, and was wondering how to pull the loose Half-Life story together into something fairly taut, Mike and Gabe decided that the entire game was in need of reworking. At Thanksgiving, just when we should have been bashing open headcrab pinatas, we took a crowbar to the game itself. The floor of the office was strewn with Half-Life components. We tore the game to pieces, trying to determine what worked, what might work someday, and what would probably never work given what we knew about our abilities. It was in some ways an extremely painful process—both because we knew that the game was going to slip far longer than anyone liked, and because it meant that a great deal of work was going to be lost and probably never seen again.

Now, I personally I enjoy revision, and the refinement of purpose that comes about during the rewrite process. But suggesting revisions to a collaborator is always much touchier than simply carving up one’s own work. Every piece of the game we discarded represented the work of some artist or programmer or level designer. I’ve been lucky enough to have had several excellent editors, and none of them has ever been shy about telling me when I wasn’t doing my very best work. But none of them has ever stopped at mere criticism either. A good editor tries to understand where things went wrong; a good editor can work miracles in getting a story back on track, by giving a few thoughtful comments to the writer. I tried to follow these examples when it came to working with level designers. We certainly had specific goals for the overall game, some things we expected Half-Life to deliver, but apart from that each designer has his own talents and interests. Wherever possible, the game benefitted from matching the designer’s strengths to the needs of the game. We have designers who excel at the broad plan, laying out huge complex areas in a few breathtaking strokes; and others who really go into high gear once the architecture has solidified, and they are able to set up finely balanced dramatic situations using monsters and triggers and scripted sequences. Half-Life benefitted immensely when we recognized and reorganized the workflow to take these differences into account. In the last few months of content creation, very few designers were solely responsible for maps they had originated.

As we moved beyond redesigning the game on paper, and into the mode of implementing our changes, I was asked to take on the role of lead for the level team. This was an ideal place from which to contribute further story elements to the game, and to make sure that all the various parts of the game interlocked as we knew they must. The level designers were so busy, nose to grindscreen, that they rarely had time to give in-depth consideration to what the other designers were up to. But I could look at everyone’s work on a daily basis. The designers were constantly inventing details that amazed me, things that were not in the spec but which belonged in the story. I had experienced this kind of spontaneous invention often enough in writing to feel that finally we were on the right track.

The crucial milestone for me was the completion of our first rough mock-up of the entire game—in essence our first rough draft. I knew that once we could move through the maps from beginning to end, without cheating, we would all discover a new vision of the game. Something closer to the final vision. This was something I believed very strongly, based on my experience as a writer. First drafts exist only to teach you what you really want to accomplish.

It was true enough in Half-Life’s case. Once we had finished up the first pass on the entire game, the process of adding scripted sequences and setting up dramatic gameplay suddenly became much easier. Designers were able to work on their levels with increased confidence that the work they were doing would actually end up in the game. Now, instead of cutting, we were able to get into the mode of improving and elaborating on existing material.

In a novel, it’s a common technique to take an isolated image and work variations on it elsewhere in the story. This creates a thread of meaning and metaphor which is much richer than if you leave only the one instance. I was really gratified to see something of the sort happening in Half-Life. One of the cleverer constructions in Xen, our alien dimension, is a series of puckered orifices which swallow you and spit you high into the sky for a lethal fall. These were picked up by one of the other designers and worked back into the terrestrial levels, giving the impression that the earthly plane is being infested by the alien one. Then a third designer did more benign earthly versions which fling you one or two stories high. So the puckers turned from a localized trap into an important gameplay element for a significant part of the game. This kind of borrowing and scattering of imagery is a function of revision, and to me one of the most effective things that happened spontaneously in the latter stages of Half-Life’s creation.

But was I, as the person in charge of the story, responsible for this level of invention? Not at all. Did I encourage it? Hell yes. Keeping up with the constant inventiveness of the level designers was a fulltime job. Because they were working on the details of the game on a daily basis, the story itself kept shifting from day to day.

Several times we had Valve-wide meetings where I would tell the entire story of the game as we understood it from beginning to end, so that everyone would be on the same page as we went forward. But invariably, as soon as those meetings were over, we’d find some reason to change the story yet again. We’d discard the ending, we’d eliminate a central element, or introduce a new one. It became impossible to keep everyone continually informed on the state of the story. Again, I was used to this kind of fluctuation; it more or less describes the writing of every novel I’ve worked on. I would have been happy enough to reassure everyone else that this state of perpetual disarray was normal, but no one seemed too bothered by it. And as we drew closer to our deadlines, everyone became so busy with their parts of the Half-Life universe that they rarely had time to think about the big picture. Everyone assumed that someone else was keeping track of the grand scheme. I was the only person who wasn’t allowed to assume that.

We tried out and discarded quite a few grand schemes. Some of you may remember, as I do, early talk about how there would be no bottlenecks in the game; how you would be able to run from one end to the other and all the way back again. This would have been a very easy feature to implement, given the nature of our transitions, but I was very relieved when we jettisoned this notion. Total freedom for the player would have meant a total loss of dramatic suspense. All narrative forms of drama, but especially horror, rely on pacing and rhythm. In horror timing is crucial. You have to set up your traps just so, and wait until your victim is precisely in position. There’s nothing worse than springing them a moment too soon or too late. This would have been virtually impossible to control in a nonlinear game. would have been choosing to throw all suspense right out the window. We really wanted players to have an artfully structured experience, and time and trial have basically proven that the most satisfying narratives are linear.

I was also a champion of avoiding third person cut-scenes and cinematics. I came into Valve with a deep prejudice against cinematics. My feeling was that if we were going to do a first person game, we should stay in first person the entire time, and never break the narrative spell or jar the player out of the story for even a moment. Midway through the process, I became a reluctant advocate of the camera. Some of us were convinced that important scripted sequences would only work if we could lock the player into position. Our developers implemented an absolutely beautiful camera system which I’m sure the mod-authors will enjoy, but as it turned out, we only used it once, and when we did it was to simulate a first-person viewpoint and further deepen the spell we were trying to cast. There were a number of critical scenes in the game which we couldn’t quite envision doing without a camera, one of the key scenes being the disaster that really sets the story into motion. We had recorded all the audio leading up to the disaster; the voices were wonderful, the test chamber was impressive, but the main event itself was still a mysterious void known simply as The Disaster. Due to time constraints, The Disaster had gone from being a developer’s problem to being a level designer’s problem. Some of us spoke of a third person camera solution, but nothing was settled. I remember I went home on Friday and The Disaster was still an act of faith; someone else would make it happen. And someone else did. On Monday morning I came in and I could hear people all around me in the office playing the opening disaster over and over again. I held off as long as I could. When I watched it, my hair stood on end. It delivered the final blow to the third-person camera. Having seen that we could pull off the Disaster in first person, it was obvious that we should be able to do just about anything we could think of within the limits we had set for ourselves. So we went first person all the way.

The one noticeable casualty of the camera’s elimination was the absence of Gordon Freeman himself, our main character, as a visible presence in the game. Apart from the loading screen and the multiplay menus, and on the box itself, you never get to see Gordon Freeman. This introduced an interesting challenge. How could we make a real character out of someone you never saw, and who never uttered so much as one word? Well, we let the player solve that problem for himself. You start the game knowing very little about Gordon; but apparently everyone else knows you who are, and they fill you in on their expectations. In the gray zone between the player’s ignorance and the NPCs’ knowledge of Gordon, something rather interesting happens. Players create their own Gordon Freeman—a character they can identify with completely. There is nothing to jar you out of Gordon, once you’re in the game. He never says anything stupid that you would never say in a million years. He never does anything you wouldn’t do—since you are behind all his actions. He becomes a hollow receptacle into which every player pours himself.

This flexibility makes traditional character development a bit problematic. We create an experience for the player—a story that has a beginning, a middle and an end. We provide plenty of clues from which the player, if he chooses, can construct an explanation for what is really going on in the story. And by the end of the game, every player will have experienced some unique version of Half-Life which is meaningful to them in a different way than it is to anyone else.

Before beginning work on Half-Life, I encountered a lot of comments to the effect that a first person shooter didn’t need a story—that hardcore gamers didn’t want one, and that anything more complicated than a bunch of moving targets and some buttons to push would be lost on them. The reaction from our audience has largely contradicted this. If anything, what players seem to want is more story—but story that is integrated into the action, story that matters but doesn’t bog you down. It should go without saying that a boring story is a bad story, and that writing for a medium which is not considered “literary” is no excuse for creating boring or otherwise terrible stories. If gamers don’t like the bad stories they’ve been offered, the gamers themselves are hardly to blame.

Anyone writing for computer games should start off recognizing the principles and techniques of drama that give impact and meaning to traditional forms of art—start there, but by no means stop there. The great thing about working in this new medium is that tradition is not a narrow set of restrictions, but a proven springboard. With a solid foundation in traditional storycrafting, I believe we are in a better position to create totally new kinds of experiences which our audience—any audience—has never had before.

My ideas about game design are in a constant state of creative tension between tradition and experimentation. When I consider our main character, Gordon Freeman, as a conduit through which a player invents an identity for himself, I can’t think of a literary or cinematic equivalent. That right there excites me immeasureably. How often does a writer get to work with tools that are completely untried? The early history of literary and cinema is already written. For any writer who wants to know what it feels like to pioneer—this is the place to be.
 

Astral Rag

Arcane
Joined
Feb 1, 2012
Messages
7,771
Gambling commission is cracking down on Valve over third-party skin gambling sites
Yet Valve was victorious in a class-action lawsuit over the same topic.
By Jeffrey Matulef Published 06/10/2016

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The Washington State Gambling Commission has set its sights on Valve over the proliferation of third-party sites using Steam's skin-trading system as a method of facilitating gambling.

The skin gambling racket has been a profitable business in recent years, though many sites running such operations have seemed shady. To wit: earlier this year the folks who ran skin gambling site CS:GO Lotto, Trevor "Tmartn" Martin and Tom "Syndicate" Cassell, were outed as dishonestly promoting the site they operated while pretending to be unaffiliated lucky winners.

Furthermore, YouTuber Lewis "PsiSyndicate" Stewart confessed to being paid by skin gambling site Steam Lotto to pretend that he won a bet, when in fact his winnings were staged.

When all of this was going on, Valve made an effort to shut down various skin gambling sites and released a statement explaining that it was not involved in facilitating this digital black market.

"We'd like to clarify that we have no business relationships with any of these sites. We have never received any revenue from them. And Steam does not have a system for turning in-game items into real world currency." said Valve's Erik Johnson back in July.

Yet Valve's efforts to distance itself from these sites hasn't been enough for the WSGC, which has accused Valve of facilitating the system that allows for skin gambling sites to exit.

"'Skins' transactions are usually facilitated within Valve Corporation's Steam Platform," the WSGC said in the announcement of its investigation (via eSports Betting Report). "All third party gambling sites have Steam accounts and use the Steam platform to conduct their gambling transactions.

"These gambling transactions are automated and performed by a software program or 'bot,' and have proliferated so much that a recent market report by Esports Betting Report indicates that one specific gambling website, CSGO Lounge, brought in approximately $1 billion in 'skin' gambling between January 1st and, August 1st this year alone."

"The Gambling Commission expects Valve to take whatever actions are necessary to stop third party websites from using 'skins' for gambling through its Steam Platform system, including preventing these sites from using their accounts and 'bots' to facilitate gambling transactions," the WSGC continued.

Valve now has until 14th October to explain how its operations are in compliance with the state's gambling laws. Should it fail to do so, the WSGC will "take additional civil or criminal action against the company. "

"It is our sincere hope that Valve will not only comply but also take proactive steps to work with the Commission on future measures that will benefit the public and protect consumers," the WSGC stated.

When asked for comment, Valve referred Eurogamer to its statement in July and pointed us to this Law360 post about how Valve recently won in a class-action lawsuit against the company after frustrated parents blamed Steam for their children losing money to unaffiliated skin gambling sites.
 

Black

Arcane
Joined
May 8, 2007
Messages
1,872,592
VALVE LISTEN TO ITS FANBASE AND BRINGS BACK GOOD OL' SPRAYS TO CS:GO
AS SOMETHING YOU BUY FROM THE E-SHOP
AND WHICH HAS LIMITED USES

Dat's rite, something that used to be free and silly since Half-Life 1 is making a comeback as a microtransaction in CS:GO.

http://steamcommunity.com/app/730/discussions/0/350544117175816901/

:keepmyjewgold::keepmyjewgold::keepmyjewgold:

Let us not forget that Valve went butthurt over TF2 admins using plugins that allowed everyone to wear their stupid hats, disabled skin and sound modding in CS:GO (but you can still buy skins and open chests!), now they're doing the same to innocent sprays.

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Infinitron got outjewed again, he needs to step up his shekel game.
 
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pippin

Guest
what has been the public's reaction? it's ok when valve does it?
 

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