[epolanski]

One thing I have found extremely interesting was how Valve hit the jackpot with many early hires.

It was literally people that often didn't even have a CS or let alone gaming background and yet so many of them proved to be relentlessly resourceful, creative and hard working.

The guy who wrote most of the HL code wasn't even a developer and at the time was studying to become a lawyer or accountant iirc.

I can't but think that timing, founders but also straight up luck played an absolutely crucial factor.

[AndriyKunitsyn]

Because technically, they didn't. As they say in the documentary, the version of the game that they made after the first year or so was bad, and they acknowledged it, and they changed their processes and introduced the "cabal" - so they basically paid that first year to gather experience. And what's important, their publisher Sierra was okay with it.

I don't see that happening today, to be honest, in "AAA" titles at least. Budgets have gone through the roof, and the publisher won't give you a plan B, they will force the developer to duct-tape what they have and ship it no matter what. And the game can always be patched later, right?

[Cthulhu_]

> I don't see that happening today, to be honest, in "AAA" titles at least.

Thanks for adding that caveat; it's an unfair comparison IMO to compare the well-selling games of 25 years ago with AAA games of today. Half-Life was built by a team of about 80 people according to a quick Google, and there wasn't the ecosystem of tooling, resources and outsourcing that we have today, versus hundreds if not thousands of people (if you include outsourcing / engines / etc) for AAA titles today. And the modern day game devs will have enjoyed a relevant education, whereas back then those educations didn't exist yet. Notably, John Carmack did a lot of ground work in translating math into 3D video game engines; he was behind Wolfenstein, then Doom, then Quake, and the Quake engine was used as the basis for Half-Life's.

Anyway, 80 people is pretty substantial even at the time; for comparison, indie hits like Hades had ~20 people working on it, Hollow Knight's Team Cherry has just 3 employees (but they used Unity so they didn't have to do much engine programming, and the ports to various consoles was outsourced); Wube (Factorio) has had a few dozen people working on it. "indie" hit Kingdom Come: Deliverance had like 240 people working on it.

[masklinn]

> Anyway, 80 people is pretty substantial even at the time; for comparison, indie hits like Hades had ~20 people working on it

I wouldn’t call Hades an indie hit in the classic sense. Bastion was an indie hit, but by Hades supergiant had releases 3 acclaimed games.

That’s not to detract from the well deserved success of Hades, but SG was damn well established by then.

[panopticon]

Past success is a weird way to define "indie". The term is usually used to distinguish smaller teams from their bigger AA/AAA counterparts, and I think most people still consider Supergiant an indie studio.

[philistine]

Exactly. Indie doesn't come from the word new, it comes from the word independent. Are you a team detached from the traditional large players in the industry. Yes? Then you're indie.

[bombcar]

Reading the Factorio blogs shows their progression from "developer" to "game developer" to "top-tier game developers" - it took years.

You could likely do the same today, but the key would be finding someone (like Gabe) to fund it whilst it got off the ground.

[kevinventullo]

With all due respect to the Factorio devs (it is one of my favorite games of all time and I credit them with essentially creating the genre), have they made even one other game?

[naikrovek]

number of games made does not correlate with game-making skills. They aren't coupled, anyway. It is probably much more correlated with game design skills, but that's not the context, here.

Their skill in honing the game and becoming a respected game development company are what are in question, and while not an AAA studio, they are recognized as a company that knows how to highly optimize their game.

They deserve as much respect as any other game developer, in my mind. Their approach is different than other game studios, and that alone is testament to their abilities to both make a game and run a business. They're doing things their own way, focusing on the one game (at least as far as we know) and they are still simply "killing it" and I mean that in the very best way.

[riffruff24]

I imagine you will see similar things with Icefrog, in their tenure as the custodian of DotA map in Warcraft 3. Balancing a competitive game is something that even Blizzard struggle with.

(well, Icefrog isn't burdened by the need for monetization.)

[tapoxi]

Today they ship in early access, which is a better approach since it opens you up to a ton of feedback. The most recent, and successful, example being Baldurs Gate 3.

[eur0pa]

The problem is with these "AAA" games. I've spent a dozen years having great fun with perfectly enjoyable and memorable 7/10 games. Nowadays a 7/10 is a death sentence for a gaming studio. The industry is poisoned.

[whywhywhywhy]

The criteria has changed I feel, a 7/10 in the 90s/00s probably meant it had some good ideas, a highly creative setting, an innovative tech or gameplay mechanic so the end product, while 7/10 because one of the parts just didn't hit the mark or it was just very buggy, the actual game was still enjoyable.

The modern AAA mentality has stripped too much of it down to formulas they consider working or "best practices" (e.g the "UbiSoft Towers" phenomenon) or they're literally shaping the whole game to try and force a specific business model that is more important than shipping good content (Bungie Destiny 2).

Difference is when a game built with that ideology doesn't hit the mark it ends up just being insanely dull and has no spark to keep you going or win you over. Instead of Flawed But Fun you get Competent But Boring.

[Cthulhu_]

In hindsight, we spent a lot of time on said 7/10 games, and they were just fine.

But it was a different time, mainly in terms of what was available, how much time you had, and how much time a game took.

Most games we had were copied shareware games from diskettes; on occasion a CD with loads of shareware games, and on rare occasions someone had a copy of the full version of a game like Doom.

But nowadays a lot of games - AAA and indie both - are at least 40 hour games, if not (a lot) more; Assassin's Creed Valhalla takes 123 hours to "do everything" (platinum); I've got over 300 hours in Factorio and about half that in Kerbal Space Program; FFXVI took me 60 hours to finish, I still have outstanding sidequests, and that one doesn't even have that many side activities or time sinks.

And then there's the "live services" (or MMOs if they have a multiplayer aspect, or MMORPGs if it's WoW or FFXIV) which are designed to have great / tight gameplay loops but effectively infinite game. I've got a lot of hours in FFXIV and they keep adding Stuff to it. If I had infinite time there's a few side activities in it that cost just as much time to "finish" as the base game's stories.

[thereddaikon]

I don't know if you can even say competent at this point. So many "AAA" games with their army of developers still launch with performance issues and bugs. If massive teams should be good at one thing, it is making a polished and well running product. But that doesn't seem to be the case. Devs cried for years to get the ability to make their own custom shaders. Now that DX and Vulkan allow it, we find they didn't know what they were asking for and every AAA game suffers from massive shader compilation issues. A problem that never existed when it was left up to AMD and Nvidia. You also don't see this problem in indie games because they never have the bandwidth to even consider writing their own shaders. And that's just one example.

[devnullbrain]

I see it as overspecialisation. When GTA 6 costs 10 years and a billion dollars, it needs to be an unmatched hit. But what if it's just bad on a conceptual level? More money can create more models, textures and 'content' but it can't create fun. For GTA 3, it would have been a setback for a year. For GTA 6, it could be fatal.

[bonton89]

I remember reading Bullfrog would take the engine from their last game and build a prototype to play to see if it was any fun. Then they'd throw it away and start over.

[Goronmon]

"Poisoned"? Or just more competitive? If you thought Half-Life was a "7/10" back in the day, what would you play instead? Quake? Unreal Tournament? Both were mainly multi-player games and not really a direct alternative.

[devnullbrain]

Other games that released in 1998:

- Ocarina of Time

- Final Fantasy VII

- Baldur's Gate

- Starcraft

- Metal Gear Solid

- Resident Evil 2

- Pokemon Yellow

If only it was as competitive as 2023, in which some of the top games were:

- A Zelda game

- A Final Fantasy game

- A Resident Evil remake

- A Baldur's Gate game

[1123581321]

He is talking about first-person shooters.

If you had a taste for a certain kind of game in the late 90s you didn't have many choices that were done by a full studio and polished. Most of the games you listed had the same "problem" of being unparalleled at the time.

Now you have a lot of clones of the same idea, plus so many of the classics are still replayable or remastered and rereleased. A good-but-not-great game has many substitutes with a similar scope and feel.

[kodt]

Unreal, Quake 2, Jedi Knight, System Shock 2, SiN, Blood 2, Hexen 2, Rainbow Six, Turok 1 & 2. There were a number of great FPS games available at the time.

[devnullbrain]

In 1998 we still called them Doom clones. Goldeneye didn't even use conventional twin-stick aiming. There's a reason there weren't many. How many non-Nintendo 3D platformers are there today?

[masfoobar]

1998 was a great year for gaming... as a N64 and PC gamer (voodoo2 graphics)

[kipchak]

Thief, Sin, Shogo, Delta Force and Rainbox Six were 1998, and if you go out to 1999 there's system shock 2. 1997 had some classics also like Dark Forces II though they're more of the doom clone variety like Blood.

[kodt]

There were plenty of single player FPS games then. And I don't think anyone was arguing that Half-Life was an example of a 7/10 game. Quake 2 and Unreal were both games with great single player campaigns when Half-Life came out, Unreal Tournament and Quake 3 didn't come out until the following year. Dark Forces II Jedi Knight is another good example.

[chungy]

Unreal Tournament didn't exist yet, and both Quake 1 and 2 were very much single-player focused games.

[sitzkrieg]

laughs in quakeworld

[Goronmon]

You know, I was wrong on this. I had forgotten how many games were available around that time. Plenty of competition was available in that space around when Half-Life was released.

[rib3ye]

Somehow audiences will respect effort vs resources as long as there is community outreach and the price makes sense.

There are a lot of 5/10 games that are successful on Steam because the devs set the right expectations for the experience.

Recently Vampire Survivors comes to mind. Definitely a 6/10, but something about the balance of no-effort art and masterful game tuning makes it VERY sticky.

[devilbunny]

Goat Simulator is not a good or deep game, but I definitely got my $3 or whatever I paid out of it. It’s just mindless fun.

[ndsipa_pomu]

> Vampire Survivors comes to mind. Definitely a 6/10

That's fighting talk round my way!

There's something they've got incredibly right between the no-thinking gameplay and the gradual progression through the various secrets and unlocks. I thought I'd grown tired of it after finishing the base game and not being bothered about gold farming, but I bought the DLC the other week and I was instantly hooked again.

[leviathant]

Everything about Vampire Survivors made sense to me upon learning that it was developed by an Italian guy who used to work on slot machines. It also reinforced that I've been right to avoid casinos my whole life.

I get that the art was a no-effort import, but everything else about that damn game is a good illustration of something that only seems simple because it's exceedingly well done.

[riffruff24]

Same thing with Dead Cells and Slay the Spire. Many similar games but very few of them managed to imitate the delicate balance of carrot and stick.

[jimbob45]

no-effort art

In fairness, isn't is specifically meant to look like a ported Italian game with laughably incorrect translations?

[filoleg]

I suggest trying the new Robocop: Rogue City game. It is pretty much a perfect encapsulation of a 7/10 or AA type of a game, where it is just fun, solid, well done, has quite a great amount of soul in it. But isn’t aiming to be some do-it-all open world AAA michael bay type of an affair.

One of the most enjoyable games this year for me, and it says a lot (given how many amazing games of all kinds we got this year). And yet, it isn’t overly ambitious. Just overall, that’s pretty much the exact type of a game that you are talking about, which I’ve noticed we had an almost complete drought of over the past decade.

[bitcharmer]

Sadly today 9/10 just means the game is actually finished upon release.

[ajmurmann]

I think time and trust is so critical. I remember a talk by the people who made FoundationDB about their approach to testing. They spend a year just creating a variant of C++ that allowed them to control concurrent execution order and build a framework to simulate/mock network, disc access etc. It's incredible work and AFAIK more than paid for itself. Yet, at most places it would be impossible to get a year-long testing effort of that scale funded or really any engineering effort that produces nothing shippable. All too often you might get 3 months and after 2, a urgent product request comes up and the work sits and rots away till it's useless and nobody gets back to it

[hello281237]

Sierra is an interesting company. In the video game industry has very few well known female game designers, and that was even more true back then. Yet the adventure game genre had several - Roberta Williams, Lori Cole, Jane Jensen, and Christy Marx (not as well known, but her games are well regarded), all of whom worked for Sierra. One has to wonder if Roberta Williams being co-owner of the company (and the designer of the first graphical adventure game) is one of the reasons for this.

Another interesting story is when Ken Williams (Roberta Williams husband, the other co-owner of the company) hired middle-aged retired police officer Jim Walls to design the Police Quest adventure games (he designed the first three). Ken apparently was talking to his hairdresser about his idea for a police adventure game, when she mentioned that Walls, her husband, might be an interesting person to talk to.

[bena]

If you're the only one willing to tap into a talent pool, you get to pump that resource as much as you want.

So if Sierra is the only company really willing to hire female game designers, they really get to take all the best.

[bzzzt]

I don't think others were not willing to hire female designers; some Infocom games from that time also had female authors. I think it's more to do with the time they started. Somewhere during the 80s the 'white male nerd' stereotype became a self-reinforcing thing which scared a lot of women away from everything computer-related. Also, I don't consider Sierra games 'the best designed'. Some of their games have lots of 'personality' and they were first with many innovations, but it's clear everyone was still figuring out how to design games at the time.

[nickpeterson]

I’m sure all these people were talented, but it reinforces my own belief that the most important things are passion and focus. I feel like the tech world fixates on 10x programmers like Carmack, but motivated people can pull off amazing things.

[Loughla]

I think for most hiring, regardless of industry, the secret is searching for passion, focus, (I would add) ability/willingness to learn new skills, and a positive attitude toward other humans.

Specific job skills can be taught or learned. If you have the right attitude, positive outlook, and are inherently someone who learns things, you can be very successful in most jobs.

Too often, hiring filters for specific job skills/credentials. Because these are supposed to be a proxy for the softer skills. It's not as effective, but much easier to deploy at scale, I think.

[underlipton]

There are a lot of people who are loathe to admit this, because they draw a lot of their self-worth from their expertise and the success derived from it. To say that most people, with the right attitude, could perform just as well is anathema. They get and keep jobs, but their behavior is often toxic and keeps teams from success. In extreme cases, they may jealously guard their domain and undermine coworkers.

On the flip-side, there are a lot of people dealing with trauma of one kind of another. Outwardly, they may seem to be negative or acerbic or closed-minded, when, internally, they are trying mightily to get their passion and earnestness to break through a wall of their own bitterness or anxiety.

I don't know that recruiting or management have reliable methods of dealing with either pro-socially.

[thinkingtoilet]

I have built some truly awesome teams and besides a base level of knowledge, the only thing I care about is attitude. Another huge factor is passions, I always ask what they do outside of work. If you are passionate about something you know how to focus and care about the details. This strategy has been very successful for me.

[Cthulhu_]

Carmack was the giant whose shoulders a lot of games - including Half-Life - stood on; I'd say he's a 100x or 1000x even, but then, engine developers are usually unknown and underrated. The work he did and what the Unreal engine now does is not to be underestimated.

[filoleg]

> engine developers are usually unknown and underrated

As a testament to their (the original id software team that had both Johns) great efforts and legacy, they pretty much invented the concept of a game engine to start with. At that time, most games were written as a one and done type of a package deal.

Given that the team wanted to push the technical edge with the games consistently, they wanted to have some reusable/modifiable core that they could use across multiple projects, have visual level editors, etc., they converged on “accidentally” creating a game engine and coining that term. I forgot which game was the one that led to the creation of it for them, iirc it was one of the earlier Commander Keen games, but my memory might be failing me here. They didn’t even have the goal of creating a game engine, they just ended up getting there and then realizing what they did as they were trying to build their reusable “toolset.”

[z3phyr]

Carmack the pizza guy. He did not have any computer science education at a formal institute.

[bluedino]

Well, he did go to University of Missouri for a year (not sure if he took compsci or?)

[qiine]

they fixate on the Carmack's but forgot that the Romero's are important too !

[masfoobar]

"they fixate on the Carmack's but forgot that the Romero's are important too !"

Very true -- You can create an amazing game engine (carmack) but it wont sell unless you have talented people pushing it capabilities (romero)

From memory, referring to Doom and Quake 1, Romero built the level editor for said games. Quake, I believe, was created on NextStep machines. Romero (and others) were also the ideas of creating the world.

[acomjean]

They knew Michael Abrash from working at Microsoft who went to id, told them to "you should use our engine". They went to id and walked out with the quake engine, and some advice from Romero.

Sometimes it really helps who you know, and there is always some element of luck in making it. Having a great team certainly made that game what it was. It was interesting how they balance realism and fun.

Its always interesting how things get made.

[willis936]

That coupled with the fact that the talent pool and tooling for game development were limited. Having id at your back was a superpower (which is arguably still true today when you compare their tech to other engines).

DYKG recently did a video about Ken Sugimori (the Pokemon guy). He is an overly harsh critic of his own skills, but I think there is a kernel of truth in this insight:

"It's kind of embarrassing to admit actually - but [video games were] a brand new industry back then, and standards were lower than in other fields..."

https://youtu.be/SVFnYLTsxdc&t=18m30s

[hypercube33]

There is a video somewhere where gaben is really self destructive about how half life 2 turned out and I think it's why we don't see half life 3 or any other new games - I think he's overly critical about his work. Watching this 25th documentary really felt like the team had a nostalgia trip making it and fond memories of the game. I wonder if the spark is gone with that teams weird dynamic.

[chucky_z]

As someone who just got the OLED Steam Deck the spark is not gone!! Valve is still the same company, they’re just succeeding in very different ways.

I think this is the benefit of not being a public company. They’ve pivoted over and over and over. They’re still in the same space (video games) and the breadth of the areas they’re in are immense!

[Blackthorn]

Yeah, this. They don't have a ton of releases, but their batting average is insane. I can think of only one really notable failure (Artifact). So many of their other releases have been industry changing in many different ways.

[riffruff24]

And who could forget their 2010 masterpiece, Alien Swarm. To this day I believe they only created it as an exercise. It's also free.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/630/Alien_Swarm/

[thereddaikon]

It helps a lot that they self publish. Many cant afford to do that but Valve is flush with cash from Steam in a similar way to how Apple is propped up by the App Store. That allows them to pick and choose what they do and only release products they are confident will do well.

[nickpeterson]

I think part of it is that games (like films, novels, albums, etc) are intense, grueling creative efforts. I think many young dev teams go in pretty naive and strike gold, and assume it was hard because it was new. Then they make another and realize, nope it’s just hard every time. I think it would be very difficult to sign on to each new project after years of 70 hour weeks. What’s the point of success if you can’t enjoy your time after?

[7thaccount]

Turned out? Like as in bad? I remember playing it when it came out and couldn't believe graphics had gotten that advanced. The gravity gun? That blew my mind. Both the games were amazing experiences for me even though I didn't get to play them in full until years later. I'd like another game to help me understand the lore better.

[fishtacos]

Half Life 2 was not only mind-blowing, but also my introduction to a relatively newfangled thing called Steam that I was NOT a fan of at first (DRM-wise). Through the years I acquired 2800+ games on the platform, as a sort of digital hoarder with the hope of at least trying every game I purchased (often in bundles/sales) as an exclusive PC player - before I got too old or too dead. I just don't see that happening anymore... Just not enough time left but to sample.

Back to HL2 - it's the 2nd game I've ever finished twice (FF VII being the other), still love the story, the very cool physics gun, the incredible dystopian narrative and setting, and it holds up today wonderfully 19 years later.

It's a shame we'll likely never see an HL3. There are so many talented development firms they could outsource it to, with current engines like UE5, it would be fantastic with the proper writers. Maybe even the original ones. Alright, done gushing here.

[dkdbejwi383]

That’s quite sad in a way; Half Life 2 is still an incredibly influential and beloved game 20 years later.

Or is that maybe why? The weight of expectation is too great to live up to

[ErneX]

They did release a new HL game after those: HL:Alyx (VR only though) it was critically acclaimed.

[Nekhrimah]

The follow up Episodes One and Two are fantastic.

And the leaked storyline for Episode Three looking really strong as well.

I hold out hope that the Crowbar Collective (the group that remade Half-Life with the Source engine and called it Black Mesa) have been secretly working on implementing the Episode Three storyline in Source. Though, now that Source2 is out who knows? This is all my speculation anyway.

[Hikikomori]

He said he didn't think much about his past work and he is hardwired to keep his eyes on the future.

[underlipton]

That struck me, too. They really took a chance on so much staff, without any real proof that they'd be able to deliver. My impression was that this was a lot more common then than now. These days, you have to be capable of work a level or two above what's needed for shipping, presumably because management and timelines are so warped that you'll be rushed and overworked and still have to deliver. People starting out or shifting careers don't have anything like this kind of backing; you go it alone and hope that you're developing the skills necessary to get hired.

[pipes]

Similar with goldeneye team, I think only one team member had done game Dev before (or something like that).

[smcl]

Goldeneye was developed by Rare, who had been in existence for 10 years by the time Goldeneye was released. I'd be really surprised if they had landed the rights to a big IP and then turned a bunch of newbies loose on it.

[alargemoose]

The 90s were a very different time my friend, prepare to be really surprised!

https://youtu.be/3AEvEIYzMbU?si=S5NDh1874vsE72Kl?t=8m28s

This is video is a wider retrospective about the game that I think is worth watching, but I linked to a clip in it from a GDC talk given by the games director. Where he states himself that only he and one other goldeneye 007 team member “had ever made a game before”

[pipes]

Thanks for that, exactly what I was meaning!

[smcl]

WOW ok I stand 100% corrected

[Hikikomori]

He's correct. Martin Hollis was game director and had worked on one game before, cant remember if he was the only one that had worked on a game before or if they had one more, the rest of the team had never worked on a game. He thought it was one of their strengths as they came up with stuff that seasoned developers would never have tried.

Here's his GDC postmortem presentation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1Fx18cppZk

[masfoobar]

I feel the 90s is a missed opportunity for someone like myself. If I was just a few years older... I could have been one of those "programmers" given opportunities.

Building games today is a different beast, comparable to making a movie.

[pipes]

They been around a lot longer than that as "ultimate play the game" :)

[nimajneb]

Some of them had experience in map making and modding though, correct? I don't know if Dario Casali had a CS degree at the time or if he does now, but he was making Doom maps and contributed to Final Doom prior to being hired at Valve. I think he had economics degree at the time. He recently did a play through of HL with him giving commentary and realy fascinated, definitely watch that. He talks about how a bunch of them didn't really know how to make a game and somehow they did it.

That doesn't take away from a bunch of inexperienced people making an awesome game though. That was hard to do I'm sure. I couldn't even dream of accomplishing that.

[dysoco]

They hit the jackpot or, a reasonably motivated developer, under a cool project to keep them engaged and a nurturing environment with peers in the same situation is on high chance of flourishing?

[platzhirsch]

Diamonds in the rough with a hunger for more. Kudos to the founders recognizing this.