[matwood]

Reminds me of Valve's no manager management style: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-04-27/why-there...

When you have a lot of money, a lot of things work because you have a lot of money. You often see the same thing with people trying to emulate pro-athletes training methods. A genetically gifted pro-athlete can often succeed in spite of their training, and not necessarily because of their training.

[thearn4]

The endless spigot of cash from Steam is something that does enable Valve to take some very experimental leaps (VR, Steam machines, SteamOS, etc.)

In my opinion, Valve also has the same shortcomings as google: practically zero customer support, and an un-curated app platform full of shovelware (finding gems on the Steam and the Google Play & Chrome Web Stores can be tricky).

But there is still a ton to admire in both organizations.

[halomru]

Valve's platform full of shovelware is due to (perceived) consumer demand, not because of size or cost reasons. Steam used to be very selective in who gets in, and people complained that a lot of small developers were left out. So Valve added the greenlight system to let the community find the gems that Valve should let in. People still complained that too few games got in. So instead valve made major changes to improve recommendations and reviews and to establish a community of curators, and then opened the floodgates.

[oxide]

Over 40% of the titles on Steam have been added in the past year alone.

The floodgates need to close, now. As someone who has voted on hundreds of Greenlight titles, Greenlight is an abject failure IMO. It's flooded with garbage, the first few waves of approvals gave us some great titles that otherwise would have never seen the platform, but now it's a nightmare. There are no more approval lists. What's worse, it's the only way onto Steam. Your indie gem is just as likely to be lost in the shovelware noise as the latest idle game ported from mobile.

Anyone with $100 can post games there. Anyone with more than $100 can purchase a service which votes their pre-purchased unchanged asset pack "game" through Greenlight. It's ridiculous.

Tags and abandoned curator lists are not a solution to hundreds of shovelware titles clogging up the new releases section IMO.

Unfortunately, nothing will change until something comes along to replace the current system entirely. Valve will act when they are forced to act, not before.

[the8472]

> The floodgates need to close, now.

Why? The internet itself is an open, uncurated platform.

The basic ability to publish things and finding good content are two separate problems. Don't try to solve one by restricting the other.

[EpicEng]

Steam != The internet. No one is preventing people from marketing their crappy games on their own. I have to dig through a mountain of shit in hopes of _possibly_ finding something worth playing. It's bad for users.

[the8472]

But why should it be different from the rest of the internet? You also have to dig through mountains of shit to find, let's say HN.

[phil21]

So you're saying I should publish on the open/free Internet, and use a custom app to find good content?

[the8472]

I'm not proposing solutions. I'm saying that "restrict publication" does not follow from "I'm seeing low quality content".

Don't restrict other people for your own benefit. Instead a solution that lets them do their thing while you get the content you want is much more equitable.

[dleslie]

One person's shovel of shit is another's gem in the rough; and Valve wins because it accepts this.

I have paid for, and not returned, numerous bizarre or niche indie games that are slayed in their reviews; whereas I've returned more than a few Overwhelmingly Positives heaping shovelfulls of mainstream schlock.

It's part of growing your userbase; you lose its initial narrow focus of taste.

[shuntress]

You don't use steam to find gems. Steam is just where you go to buy them.

[robryan]

The user review system for games is the best I know of and arguably more useful in deciding what to buy than critic reviews.

Steam is also constantly promoting new games to you and making suggestions based on what you currently play. There is also the social aspect in that you can see who is playing what, leading to new discoveries.

[iamatworknow]

Why does it seem like every review I read is basically a joke by someone with 1500 hours in a game saying simply "it's pretty good" or conversely someone with 2 hours in a game that writes an entire novel about how let down they were when they barely scratched the surface?

I will admit that at least having the verifiable length of time a reviewer played a game helps, but I don't find the reviews themselves to be all that worthwhile for most games.

[NTripleOne]

Why does there even need to be a full review when someone has spent 1500 hours of their life playing it?

If it was worth 1500 hours of the reviewer's time then it's probably worth 10-50 of a potential buyer's.

Inversely, I don't need to play a bad game for 1500 hours to decide that it's bad. I played 60 minutes of No Man's Sky and you'd have to pay me to play a single one more. Does that mean I should be discredited from voicing my opinion?

[mjevans]

I realized I was starting to rant about NMS, so instead I want to try to be more constructive about the problem-space and avoid that game as a topic.

The return system and the achievement system should probably be integrated. Likely there should be some sort of achievement related to 'escaping the tutorial'. They might even call it "Almost bought the farm" or something.

Playing to that point should give a player a good idea what kind of game it is, and what sort of plot (if any) is happening in the game.

From /that/ point they should have maybe 30-60 min of 'game runtime' to return the game or not.

Functionally this would be an in-product demo.

[s_m_t]

Once you've played a ton of video games you can easily judge most games by their game play aspects within 2 hours.

The exception would be with highly competitive multiplayer games, and even then you can quickly get a very good idea.

[BoysenberryPi]

Someone said this on another forum and I disagree with them as I disagree with you. I've found plenty of games through Steam that I wouldn't have known about otherwise.

[civilian]

I also find games through Steam, but I do wish I found games through a different avenue. I've also had to promise myself that I'd strongly vet any early-access games I was buying. I've just been burned too many times.

[npunt]

This. Discovery is a rather unique activity that has a wholly different set of details / constraints / etc. Way more social and content driven. Every store & platform out there does its best to accommodate discovery (and sometimes succeeds), but this is secondary to things like maintenance/updates/cust svc, providing relevant product information, and managing transactions.

Steam isn't bad at discovery, but because they're not creating much original content and their UI is janky, they're also not that good at it.

Source: created comprehensive database of education technology products [1], and while we made best attempt at discovery, we learned pretty quickly it was secondary in importance to having comprehensive info.

[1] https://www.edsurge.com/product-reviews/

[VikingCoder]

Why don't they let people offer curated lists, right in Steam?

[fudgie]

They do - http://store.steampowered.com/curators/recommendedcurators/

[halwa]

They do, you just need to be the owner of a Steam Group. http://store.steampowered.com/curators/

[paulcole]

>the same shortcomings as google: practically zero customer support

As someone who pays for AdWords, I have no problem getting someone on the phone to help when I need it.

[Black-Plaid]

I imagine that most people don't realize they are not Google customers. If you have paid Google money, then you are a customer. People using Google's 'free' services are not. Only customers will get good support.

[voltagex_]

>If you have paid Google money

If you've paid Google enough money. I have to keep paying $6AUD/month unless I want to lose $300+ of Android apps forever (Google Apps for Work). No chance of transferring them to another account (I'd pay $100+ for this)

[tln]

That is a curious situation. Have you really paid for $300 of apps for yourself?

[mcpherrinm]

That doesn't seem so unusual to me. I've been using Android for about 6 years now, and I'd estimate I spend $2-5 a month on apps - the occasional $10 utility, some $1 games, etc.

6 years * 12 months/year * $3/month = 216 USD = 289 AUD.

[flashman]

Yet if your Google account gets suspended for some reason, you'd better have a contact at Google or you're in a world of pain.

[bbctol]

They said customer support.

[muse900]

This is so true especially for valve.

They have a gem game called Counterstrike Global Offensive which is their 2nd biggest game after dota2(which is free), and up to a half a year ago that I was playing, we all thought (me and reddit) that they had 0 devs working on it.

Bugs were all over the place, noone was taking action into fixing them, releases were every once in a blue moon including just new skins that were content created by players etc.

Now of course the game has evolved and there are some new developers trying to do something with it but its funny to think that a game of that calibre that returns prolly billions in revenue has pathetic support.

The only gaming company I've seen keeping up with what they make is Blizzard.

[deadowl]

Are you kidding me about Google customer support? They're the only company that ever solved my problem with a Linux question, and later helped me when I purchased a movie on YouTube on an account I didn't intend to purchase on. They might not provide great customer support to some market segments, but when it comes to the end-consumer, they go above and beyond.

[jcrawfordor]

I'm kind of astounded to hear anyone speaking positively of Google support, and certainly my experience trying to get support and even pre-sales on Google Apps has been miserable - a lot of filling out forms (often slightly broken ones) and never hearing back. Most notably, someone once started spamming an organization I worked for from Gmail by just pasting hundreds of addresses into the To:. Over a year of multiple abuse reports from multiple people and they were still going, and the abuse report form had broken validation so that having the headers too long (because of the over 300 recipient addresses) resulted in a message that the headers field was empty. This is where oddly typical of my experiences with them.

This makes me think that it's rather particular to the product. YouTube was acquired and now has a significant focus towards consumer sales via movies and Red, perhaps these two factors have lead to a significantly different culture surrounding support?

[astronautjones]

If the op was talking about AdWords, he is wildly correct

[Kurtz79]

"In my opinion, Valve also has the same shortcomings as google: practically zero customer support..."

This strikes me as something you can afford because you are in a factual monopoly ("You are not OK with our service ? Find an alternative... whooops :)"), rather than just having a lot of money.

Steam benefits from the fact that even people not completely happy with it (personally I have no complaints, but I use it exclusively as a store/launcher) are already invested in the platform, and do not want the hassle of dealing with two or more similar services, so they are wary of any alternative that might surface (see Windows store or proprietary stores like Origin).

[adnzzzzZ]

The store letting more games in now is intentional. From a Valve employee himself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGCyfEYfLks#t=5m40s

[rqebmm]

Valve also has the prestige of being a high-profile gaming company, which brings with it choice pick of engineers. A "normal" enterprise app consulting shop doesn't have the luxury of every computer geek clamoring to work there.

If you have first-pick of incoming talent, it makes sense that you can get away with giving those employees an extremely high degree of autonomy.

[kohanz]

Is that really true though? I remember when me and my engineering peers were in our teens, some of us dreamed of working for a gaming company, but now that we're older no one does. Most actually have a very negative perception of employment conditions in that industry.

[dpc59]

The reason why there is a negative perception of employment conditions is because employment conditions are not very good, and they're not very good because a lot of people want to work in the industry.

[kohanz]

Yes, but that demand isn't coming from everyone, it's coming from a certain demographic (young people that are into games). Having your pick from that demographic is far from having "choice pick" when it comes to the overall talent pool. And we haven't even talked about attrition.

[milcron]

I for one would prefer to avoid the gaming industry, but would not turn down the opportunity to work at Valve.

[chipperyman573]

Game development is what gives the games industry a bad name. While valve is supposedly working on a few new games now[0] and updating 3 of their older games (tf2/dota 2/cs:go), it would be entirely possible to work exclusively on Steam (their online store) and never touch game code, especially with their rolling desks that literally roll so you move to whatever department you want, whenever you want.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fSt7BjJ29c

[jon-wood]

My perception is that Valve are the exception to that rule. They've got the money on tap from Steam, meaning their game development side is more of a hobby than anything else, giving a lot of freedom to the teams working on new games. I could believe it's a bit less rosy working on new hats for their Avatar Dressup games.

[SXX]

Actually Valve no longer make these "hats". Most of items that included in content updates are created by the community.

[ghaff]

It's very tempting to look at successful companies and identify their traits as key success factors. There was a very popular business book in this vein in the eighties called In Search of Excellence. The problem is that for every success characteristic you can usually find another successful company with a diametrically opposite approach or a company with a similar approach that's going bankrupt.

[dredmorbius]

Tom Peters.

[user5994461]

I think you and the parent commenter are missing a critical points.

These companies were successful because of what they were, and they continue to be successful because of what they are.

It is a virtuous circle living on money, people, management and many more characteristics that go together.

[dionidium]

They aren't missing that point. They are making the opposite point. Google had a great product at the right time and they executed well. Now it makes billions. All the other stuff is most likely incidental.

[user5994461]

And I'm making the point that they executed well because of what they are, and were from the start.

Google didn't suddenly transformed to being Google overnight the day they reached the first $1B.

[sbov]

How many successful companies do the exact opposite of Google? Have you done any research to determine which company succeeded: in spite of, because of, or no effect, from these models? What about the - surely - hundreds or thousands of companies that failed with Google (or not Google's) model?

Trying to imitate success seems to turn into a cargo cult. For whatever reason people seem to shutoff their brains when talking about this.

[dmix]

Most of the attributes in question (office environment, perks, etc) are just semantics around the product/market. The semantics matter a lot especially when your team is critically dependent on a high-turnover potential staff and require talented smart people to stick with your company, or they need an environment that helps them be creative and think out hard problems.

It's similar to questions of programming language, infrastructure options, etc. They are important supportive aspects to the core business but mostly the core of the business could still operate even if those supportive aspect were mediocre/non-optimal - just not as effectively. On a longer time scale that stuff starts to matter in a highly-competitive market.

Most startups and small businesses don't really have those issues, or at least they aren't critical at that stage of the company when the core business hasn't been figured out. So emulating them at a high cost is a bad idea.

The context of everything is important. Sadly most advice dolled out in business books is extracted and formalized without considering the context of where it worked and why.

[htrp]

>How many successful companies do the exact opposite of Google? Have you done any research to determine which company succeeded: in spite of, because of, or no effect, from these models? What about the - surely - hundreds or thousands of companies that failed with Google (or not Google's) model?

Do you know of any examples offhand? Definitely agree that it's a virtuous cycle of talent -> revenue - > perks -> talent

>Trying to imitate success seems to turn into a cargo cult.

Love the apt description of this.

[sien]

The model of trying to land smart people with perks like kitchens, foosball tables, Aeron chairs and all the rest and hope that they come up with something that makes lots of money was what many companies tried in the first Dot Com boom.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot-com_bubble#Free_spending

Offhand examples are the list of failed companies on that page.

[monksy]

I would agree with that. They didn't go in trying to make a billion. They made a product(s) that are worth billions.

[Qwertious]

Except, Valve's cabal system was in use for the development of HL1, and of course they didn't have buckets of money before HL1.

[dimino]

I don't think that's quite right, though the message ends up being the same.

It's not the genetics that matter, it's the years of training leading up to the current workout routine, not to mention the pro athlete's knowledge and understanding of his/her own body, as well as the dedicated free time to put into a workout that needs that kind of attention in order to succeed.

When you have all day, and you like working out, you can do things that don't normally make sense and still see results.