Why Do We Love Valve?

Introduction

Here's a thing, many games have been released by numerous companies over time. Some instant classics and unbelievably enjoyable others not so good. Many games have spanned different companies and genres and sometimes just been produced to death. Whilst some have been one hit wonders and never touched again. Why are Valve games the ones we keep coming back to time and time again to play?

As of this date Counter-Strike Source is the 4th "most played" game on X-Fire, only being beaten by the Call Of Duty franchise and World of Warcraft. All of Valve's major online games appear in the top twenty list. Surely now the Counter-strike horse has been beaten to death, the original game having been officially released ten years ago.
What is it about these games?

One Studio

Let's take a look at the Medal Of Honor series. This particular IP has lashed the World War 2 series so many times it's frankly boring now. But in development the IP has been switched to different production team pretty much every time a new game comes out. This kind of erratic production cycle means than gameplay ideas and concurrent motives are passed on between the games without the new team developing anything new. Infact more than likely the new teams take existing resources and create new maps and weapons without contributing to any original format at all. The same can be said with Tomb Raider, having had so many different development cycles yet still churning out the same game over and over again. Not quite realising that their leading lady cannot support the mediocrity that the actual games are.

Now let's look to what I like to call the "Valve Series" of games, because lets face it, they are. Each game has been developed by the same studio, with pretty much the same development teams and always the head honcho "Gabe Newell" at the top, lording over his digital domain. Let me ask you, what is the one advantage to having the same development team create four distinct multiplayer games, experience.

The best thing that Valve does in my opinion is learn from their mistakes. When you work on one game fixing and patching bugs you get to understand what the ins and outs of multiplayer problems are. Then subsequently this problem is already addressed in the next game they produce.

The other advantage they have is one described earlier; they don't flog the dead horse. Now one could say that this is because they release games once in a blue moon. The development cycle along for the "episodic" content alone is enough to create several blockbuster films. But the main reason that if they have an extremely popular game such as Counter-Strike that always tops the multiplayer lists, why make another one. Wouldn't it be more prudent to create a new IP or fix bugs in our existing games rather than create the same game over and over again.

But, I hear you say, what about Counter-Strike: Source, Team Fortress 2. Are we not expecting Portal 2 and Half Life 3? This is what I call the exception that proves the rule. CS:S is pretty much (with exception to physics and some gun balance) the exact same game as the original CS, originally updated to be a companion to Half Life 2 and show off the physics engine online. Also they wanted CS to be a wholly Valve product rather than a mod-for-sale. Team Fortress 2 itself bears very little resemblance to the original Team Fortress Classic as the gameplay and weapon loadouts have changed completely. Only a few maps and the class structure remains. As for Portal 2 and HL:3 it's all in the story. More explained on that later.

Keep It Simple

When I was a young piano player I asked one of my mentors for advice about how to be a better player and songwriter. "Keep it simple" he said, "Don't try and overcomplicate anything, generally the simpler you make it, the better a song it will be". This I find is one of the strengths of Valve's games, simplicity. Look at CS:S, two teams, attack and defend, but ultimately wipe out the other side, rinse and repeat. One could call it episodic gaming, small sections with direct objectives that have a clear winner and loser. No respawning till the next round either, you had to do better next time. It actively encouraged people to do better every time. Quite a simple structure with much more advanced mechanics underneath.

Another factor to Counter-strike's success is pacing. Other games at the time such as Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament were hectic and fast paces and allowed little room for the inexperienced player. The movement speed in CS is slow in comparison, probably a leftover from being a Half Life mod (where speed wasn't a priority). This allows for more tactical situations, it allows for less experienced players to hang back behind their team mates and learn.

(a small side note, I know that CS was developed as a mod before Valve acquired them, but the people who worked on CS have gone on to work on TF2 and L4D so in all fairness we can call CS a Valve game)

Team Fortress 2 managed to enhance something that counter-strike didn't do too well at. Teamwork. In the original Team Fortress Classic many of the classes were built to cover multiple situations, for example your class would be equipped with a rapid fire, gun, melee weapon and your speciality. In TF2 it was all stripped away in a sense of simplicity, meaning each class was no longer an effective weapon on its own. Each team has be balanced between the majority of the classes to win the round, so a rush of Heavies or Demomen will rarely win the round due to them being ineffective against a well rounded team.

Like CS, Team Fortress 2 has clearly defined goals for each round, either being capture the point or the flag. These goals are helped by the art design of the game itself too. Very colourful and distinct with unique character identities so you can easily play the game itself without having to think about whether your shooting a friendly character or getting lost on the map. It's nigh impossible to get confused between friend and enemy on TF2 simply because of the extreme colour difference and the responses you get on the screen.

I suppose Left 4 Dead is the next evolution in this simplicity theory. Let's get four players, and have them shoot down hordes of zombies until they get to their objective. And that's pretty much the entire game, sounds quite boring and repetitive, but it's really not. Ever since House Of The Dead, zombies and gaming been pretty much inseparable. And for once, a game has been released where you can play fully co-operatively with your friends. Add that to an intelligent omniscient Director AI and you have hours and hours of playability.

On the face of it you get about two guns the entire round, one health pack and maybe some grenades if you can find them. Sound dull, sounds like something you'd play once and then put down, sounds like -oh- a single player game. This is where Valve has learnt from previous games again. Taking all the good bits from single player games and multiplayer games and merging them together into a brilliant zombie experience. As well as creating heavily unique characters that can make you laugh in the most desperate of situations.

Conclusion

Going back to what I was originally talking about, why do we love Valve games? Partly because every game is unique. Because every game is simply fun. Because every game is well supported, and no hunting for patches is needed. Because we get contact from the developers. Because they keep working on the games long after the game has been released (and not for the reason that it's unfinished like a lot of releases). Mainly because we have faith in a developer, they are giving us hope in this bleak recession and for filling their promises (even if they do take a little longer doing it than they say). Let's hope they can keep their integrity and quality through into the next ten years.

(Reading this article: it may seem like i'm a Valve fan boy, and in a certain light I am. I merely reflect in this article the pros and things that valve have done right over time. I try my hardest to give a fair impression of the games I'm reviewing, but the article is about why we love Valve so that should give you a fair impression of what's going down here)

(edit: i've not even gone into the versitility of the source engine, how extremely huge the modding community for the source engine is and how it's being used in teaching establishments as a base to create games themselves. Nor have i gone into the great communities or the steam program itself which is also developed by valve. I guess i'll save those for another time)

By Alex Sharkey (aka Idoliside)