City 17′s creator discusses why he left Valve
By Tim Colwill on July 30, 2012 at 4:06 pm
Valve seems like a dream place to work at, and that’s why people hardly ever leave – but Viktor Antonov, the designer of the iconic City 17 from Half-Life 2 and the now-visual-design-director for Dishonored says that he left after Valve stopped making “epic, triple-As”. “It’s all episodes now,” he says, reminiscing about Half-Life 2.
“Valve has grown into a much bigger company, and what I really enjoy about the philosophy of Arkane is that it’s a small, core team that does risky creative projects,” said Antonov. “And when I went to Valve, they were a small company. They’ve grown now, they’re much bigger, and I’m interested in a certain level of creative risk taking and a certain energy that can be compared to jazz, jamming or rock n’ roll, where it’s small, it’s intense and it’s about making revolutions in the media.” It’s not many who would say Valve are averse to creative risk, but there you go.
Source: Eurogamer
Dishonored pre-order bonuses releasing as DLC
Exclusive content no longer exclusive, shock grips the nation.
Dishonored: The Knife of Dunwall reviewed: A dark, violent, somewhat messy flashback
At only $10, this return to the world of Dunwall is great value.
You can use the following bbCode
[i], [b], [img], [quote], [url href="http://www.google.com/"]Google[/url]
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
facebook
twitter
google+
rss
He makes an interesting enough point, Valve are most certainly now “smaller” release developers – ie episodic release as opposed to the classical “big event” release.
You can certainly have triple A episodic titles but they do always feel like seperate games and not at all like one big experience (to me).
Haters will need to note his use of the word epic – which is to be great of size and extent and not the bastardised e-muppet version of epic, which of course is simply a synonym for cool in that context.
I wouldn’t call L4D2, Portal 2 and Dota 2 small releases.
slazza,
I would. With the exception of Portal 2 perhaps.
I would call all of those small games compared to Half-LIfe, or say, Assassin’s Creed or Dishonoured. Further, they are all sequels, with zero creative risk. A sequel to one of the most popular games of all time? WHOA! (I could be talking about at least 2 of those 3 games mentioned above).
The only risk Valve have taken lately is NOT releasing HL3 or Episode 3. :P
It makes sense. When I think of Valve these days I think ‘retailer’ not ‘developer’.
yeapal,
Agreed.
L4D2, Portal2 and Dota2 may of been quite popular with a large fan base BUT does not mean they were both innovative and epic projects like the release of the major Half Life installments.
In fact none of those three offered anything original, just the next installment of the same thing, whether they were better than the originals or not (debatable). I hope my ignorance in City 17′s creator leaving date leaves room for good news, being this was an action taken a while ago. If this was recent then it only suggests the new line up of games and projects that are yet to be announced are going to be lackluster.
Yep. I’d call everything Valve have done post HL2 to be “incremental”. HL2 practically redefined storytelling in modern games.
Check out their release list since –
Day of Defeat: Source – Visual upgrade of released game/mod
HL Ep1 and 2 – Small story-based additions to the HL2 universe with absolutely minimal new content.
Portal – Neat concept with the portal gun, integrated into Source engine.
TF2 – Probably what I would call their last big game. Originally a highly balanced competitive shooter. Now more of a testbed for Valve’s own experiments.
L4D – Half-life 2 – with zombies!
L4D2 – L4D map pack!
Alien Swarm – A mod created by a team that were highered by Valve during the mod’s creation. Still not entirely sure what the point of this title was. It was a neat game, but it was free and didn’t seem to contribute anything to Valve in general – except perhaps to give them something to say they released in 2010.
Portal 2 – A more fleshed out, complete version of Portal – Again, a great game. But nothing ground breaking here.
Counter-Strike: GO – About as “safe” as you can possibly go, by the sounds of it. The CS shooter formula, in a package I struggle to see any real justification to relaunch.
I won’t comment on Dota 2 because I have not played it or its predecessors.
Portal was definitely groundbreaking – from a creative perspective not a technical one though. IMO one of the most original games ever created.
Valve are boring
matthewdev, Portal was groundbreaking I guess (except that portals had been around since 1999) narbacula drop was the mod that became portal when valve hired the team that created it, so not really a valve game just a valve release.
The episodes were done so they could continue the story without the audience having to wait five years to play.
Of course, starting off with HL2: The Greatest Hits (or Episode One as it is known on Steam) was not a good start.
No massive releases does not mean they are any less of a company. Valve are very important to the current gaming landscape, and any comment to the contrary is simply misinformed.
Hmm…
So the last original game valve came up with on their own was HL1? Then they just hired the people who had started mods and made sequels.
It was not a mod but a university project; in the same way that Flow was created for a university thesis (which then prompted thatgamecompany to be formed and Flower and Journey to follow)…
More or less.
Half Life=Valve
TF=mod
CS=mod
DoD=mod
DoTA2=mod
Portal=students
L4D=other developer
Alien Swarm=mod
You can be both non-innovative and important at the same time. But importance in terms of influence is not the only value for a company to pursue. Nor is it the only thing a person may want in their career.