Alt-Tab: Is Valve the future of PC gaming?

Posted Aug 28th 2008 3:00PM by Kyle Horner
Filed under: Features, FPS, Opinion

Anyone could come up with a lot of reasons for why Valve is such a successful company. Ask any two people what makes Valve so successful and they'll probably point to different things. Some will say their cabal style game design and free content updates. While others will point to the Steam platform, mod support and integration of top mod designers. Some may even call out Gabe Newell himself. Oh and don't forget Doug Lombardi, either. We could go on and on about just what made (and continues to make) Valve so very special. Though I doubt it's any single one of those things as opposed to many of them at the right moments in the right way. Or in other words, a lot of chance, determination and some vision.

What I do think can be gleaned from the success of Valve, is where PC gaming will -- or at least should be -- going over the next few years. Hit the image above to take a look at what I think their model of game design and business decisions has to offer the wider PC gaming market.

Gallery: Alt-Tab: Is Valve the future of PC gaming?

Tags: alt-tab, counter-strike, day-of-defeat, doug-lombardi, featured, gabe-newell, half-life, half-life-2, joystiqfeatures, l4d, left-4-dead, mod, mods, steam, team-fortress-2, tf2, valve

8 Comments

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

all i know is this fall im looking forward to left 4 dead n cant name any other game besides that (though im sure there are plenty of good games comin out). just wish valve would come out with high quality tf2 models

-Posted at 3:16PM on Aug 28th 2008 by snu83

Valve is a visionary company, and Steam is a great example of that. But we shouldn't forget about some of the other concepts they pushed like episodic gaming, which only took off with a small handful of games. HL2 episodes were supposed to come out every six months or so. It's been over a year since ep2 came out, and there isn't even a murmur about when we can expect ep3 to release. After EA is done eying Take 2, they might turn to Valve next. I wonder what would result from that union. Would Valve still keep its visionary attitude?Posted at 3:26PM on Aug 28th 2008 by Steven Wong

eh, they are a great company, but I hate how they handle their games registrations. I ended up installing HL2 on an old computer, then after we had the BSOD and crap happen, we had to reformat it. We had to wait a few months though, and by the time we got it back, I forgot my steam account, so when I went to install it on my laptop, i couldnt because the key is registered to that old account.Posted at 4:13PM on Aug 28th 2008 by seishinokami

Valve as a developer may not be, but Steam definitely is.Posted at 6:45PM on Aug 28th 2008 by Sokkratez

well if u forgot ur account, you could have contacted them with ur email and given ur information and tried to get a new free seriel number. Posted at 10:54AM on Aug 29th 2008 by snu183

@Sokkratez

I think that Valve will certainly be at the forefront of PC game development for a while at any rate.

I mean, HL2 was one of the best games ever made, and Left 4 Dead is looking very good. The gaming journalists tend to miss the point of Valve games (probably because they review the console versions) but they are in my view the best developers out there.

I imagine with a new engine, Half Life 3 is going to blow our socks off once again in a few years.Posted at 12:48PM on Aug 30th 2008 by Haggard

May I ask, what is the purpose of clicking 6 times to read the story? Some of the other blogs on the AOL network do that and it's very frustrating. It just seems...backwords. I'd rather click once and read the whole story.Posted at 9:28PM on Sep 4th 2008 by doug

Valve all by themselves? no
Valve's Steam-ing pile of crap? hopefully NOT
why not Steam? because if they ever pull the plug, your entire library of games is GONE; God help you if you ever forget your login name or email address you registered it toPosted at 1:54PM on Nov 20th 2008 by anon