The Engineer Bias – and why Valve is doomed if they don't restructure

[yoshibb]

I find it a bit crazy that despite a near 0% track record in companies creating new and interesting IP, more companies haven't picked up on what Epic is exploiting.

Kids are flocking to Epic not just because of the regular content updates, but because Epic has enough sense to realize that art, aesthetics, pop-culture, and theme are important.

There is an old saying in creative fields; you never want to make it before you have the skills to create in a consistent manner.

This happens most in the music industry, a band will stumble upon a sound purely by chance, then a song will go plat, but when it's time to create more "they just can't make anything as good as the first album."

Engineers, like average people, only have a couple killer ideas in them because creativity is a muscle that needs to be trained.

Fact is: engineers refuse to believe that creatives spent the same staggering amount of time honing their skills - because that means engineers possess about as much creativity as we do OOP skills.

As a private company, Epic was free to break hold of the incestuous lateral promotion cycle. Instead of promoting the guy who spent his entire life coding, they hired the guys who spent their entire lives working on art. A good designer needs to live and breathe art/culture. But again, with these skills you can't just backload them any easier than I can backload the skills needed to build engines.

I see Activision-valve in the decade if they don't make some pretty radical changes. They need to return to making genre games, and need to drop this "only the top of the top will do"

Imagine if music functioned like Valve . . . Nothing but 21 pilots, Imagine Dragons, Beeber, and Lil Yachty because they are at the top of the charts, and obviously the best, right?

[throwaway66666]

This would be very relevant if Valve made games. Valve doesn't make games, they make a game store. Their competition is more like gamestop and gog, than Capcom/Ubisoft/Acti-Blizzard/EA etc...

Maybe now that they are entering the VR market we might see some VR experiences from them again. I always wondered what the hundreds of engineers they employ do since it has been more than a decade since Portal, Left 4 Dead, Team Fortress etc came out.

EDIT: They didn't even bother to keep their source engine updated and appealing to use. Source 1 was used by many big titles back in the day. And Source 2 was was really really big among modders. Lost opportunities, but seeing how well Steam did, why would they bother.

I believe they could have eaten both Unity's (keep updating source engine) and Discord's (adding built-in chat/video to steam) lunch with ease, if they tried to do so back then.

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Blizzard is in a similar position. Starcraft 2 kinda failed to pick up as much steam as the first one did. Diablo 3 was... umm.. remember the real money auction house? And of course they kept milking WoW for as long as they could (predictable). What comes after? Oh right, licensing popular Chinese mobile games and rebranding them as "Diablo" to be released in the west. Mama Activision is making deals with companies like Fromsoft for being the distributor of refreshing games like Sekiro. It's all a big strategic play.

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I kinda envy and admire companies like Rockstar games. They enter a period of a 7 year silence, and come out of it releasing Red Dead Redemption 2, which for all the criticism it has gotten, is fantastic on all levels. Technical and artistic alike.

[yoshibb → throwaway66666]

At the top I did mention companies, but I could have been more clear in that regard.

The bias and lateral promotions are the hangup. All the creative talent is going to TV/self publishing because there is no way in.

Twenty years ago, it was fine, because graphics and processing power was limited, and the art/direction was limited by the technology as a result.

Since then the tech has come a pretty long ways, but we haven't had many big cultural phenomenons like Half-life, Doom, or Mario, why? Because other than visual, there is no pipeline for creative talent.

I'm sorry, but being around videogames and coding isn't the same thing as dedicating your life to the arts. The gulf, all the acquired knowledge, shaping, and pre-requisite skills makes all the difference in the world.

Ask an engineer and creative to give you five pitches, and the difference would be the same as asking a non-coder to design and implement your netcode.

It's a gulf, and like I said, it isn't just Valve, it's all big studios. It's an existential issue at this point, and companies like Epic, who are tapping into the talent that engineers love to condescend are completely dominating the new wave of gamers.

There are 100million PC gamers in the US. During peak western hours on steam, we see around 8-10 million players online.

So maybe about 1/4 Americans are on steam, which is probably about the amount of OG half-life fans who are still into gaming.

Nearly everyone else is, which is just a bunch of kids now, is on FN. And all the new adult gamers, women, lgbt, are playing hero shooters.

There is no reason why Valve should remain relevant as a platform, so I'd say valve has about seven years to really turn things around.

The rules have changed, Valve can't compete as a publisher. They might be able to sub sales to match epic, but WePlay is preparing to launch, and they have state funding to subsidize sales and acquire exclusives.

The only way to survive is to provide value through variety and high quality content. There is no other way.

Valve can't race to zero against WePlay, and VR is probably going to end up as a wii like product.

There is still a long way to go in terms of visual fidelity pushing immersion on flat screens. This is only an iphone 7, but it's enough to induce presence

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEerPQHl_4k

We are far from that level of fidelty, but look at the presence . . . can you imagine CS like that?

Also: Did you guys even watch the silicon valley arc on VR? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsXK0w4CUtg