doug-lombardi posts

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.

In a recent interview with Gamasutra, Valve Software VP Doug Lombardi revealed that if talks of acquisition came about from industry giants such as Electronic Arts, he would be "happy to have that conversation."

Since the merger between Activision and Vivendi Games that resulted in Activision Blizzard, arguably the industry's greatest force in terms of publishing, the gaming world is one that is beginning to revolve around mergers and acquisitions. Electronic Arts, once the undisputed juggernaut of the publishing world, would certainly consider themselves blessed if they were to acquire Valve. In fact, given the relationship between Valve and EA, who will be publishing Left 4 Dead when it releases this November, such talks seem likely.

Describing the relationship between Valve and Electronic Arts as "really good," Lombardi praised EA for their understanding of Steam, perhaps Valve's greatest contribution to PC gaming. "EA was very progressive about saying, 'We understand who you guys are. We understand what Steam is. We don't want Steam to go away,'" said Lombardi.

During an interview at E3, Valve's Doug Lombardi revealed that the company hopes to add a movie making function to Left 4 Dead at some point after the launch of the core game. He loosely described features that would allow players to record, edit, play back, and possibly share their virtual near-death experiences. Sadly, that functionality probably will not be available for a while; we didn't see it in our own hands-on experience with the game.

Lombardi also mentioned that Valve went to Microsoft, Yahoo!, and RealNetworks when it was first conceptualizing Steam, but was told by all that such a service would only exist "10, 15 years in the future." Of course, now Microsoft operates the separate and struggling Games for Windows Live service, which shares some features with Steam.

And yes, we know the above screenshot features the old, now-replaced Left 4 Dead characters. But how about a little nostalgia?

Valve Software's Doug Lombardi revealed in the second half of a two part interview with Shacknews (in part one he declared PC gaming alive and well) that the studio hopes to ship its co-op, zombie-themed, survival horror FPS Left 4 Dead sometime in November of this year.

Left 4 Dead is Valve's big release this year, and the company hopes that it will do the same thing for co-op multi-player gaming that Counter Strike did for competitive play. The audience is clearly there; zombie-themed, user-created Half-Life 2 mods like Zombie Master and Zombie Panic are among the most popular on Steam.

Lombardi also suggested that gamers will get to play the full version of Left 4 Dead free for a whole weekend, and that a demo is probably coming as well. He wasn't able to confirm a time-frame for either of those, though.

There's an excellent interview up on Gameindustry.biz with Valve's Doug Lombardi. It offers up an enlightening view on how an independent company in Seattle can be one of the major movers in the industry by being visionary. It also sheds a little light on the history of Steam as a platform, which reveals a blunder that Microsoft and the other big companies at the time made:

"We went around to everybody and said 'Are you guys doing anything like this? We need this for our games, and therefore other people are going to need it someday soon.' And everyone was like: 'Blah, blah, blah...That's a million miles in the future.' So we said 'We need it now' and everyone said 'Well, we can't help you.'

So we just went off and started doing it. Once we pick something we just start going after it and we're not really too concerned with what other people are doing because that's just an easy way to get distracted."

They've got to be feeling stupid now, considering that Steam has 15 million subscribers regularly buying and playing games on the service. Some, like EA, have even tried to get their own service started, although it isn't as robust as Steam. Check out the full interview over at GameIndustry.biz.

If you've been hoping for a sequel to Portal to show up this year, it's time to be disappointed. Valve Software's Doug Lombardi told Eurogamer that we shouldn't expect a new Portal by Christmas. He said that since Portal was revolutionary, "its successor has to be equally revolutionary," and that means the team will be taking its time to make it a much better experience than a more-of-the-same offering.

A few things he said in the interview implied that Portal 2 might be a much bigger and more expensive game than its predecessor. "Half-Life 2 was the right decision," he said. "It was painful, six years and upwards of 40 million dollars to develop, but that paid off. That's our recipe." So what would a $40 million Portal look like? We won't find out this year!

[Via XBox 360 Fanboy]