In 1996, we set out to make great games, but we knew back
then that we had to first create a place that was designed
to foster that greatness. A place where incredibly talented
individuals are empowered to put their best work into the
hands of millions of people, with very little in their way.
This book is an abbreviated encapsulation of our guiding
principles. As Valve continues to grow, we hope that these
principles will serve each new person joining our ranks.
If you are new to Valve, welcome. Although the goals in
this book are important, it’s really your ideas, talent, and
energy that will keep Valve shining in the years ahead.
Thanks for being here. Let’s make great things.

It all started with Snow Crash.

If I hadn’t read it and fallen in love with the idea of the Metaverse, if it hadn’t made me realize how close networked 3D was to being a reality, if I hadn’t thought I can do that, and more importantly I want to do that, I’d never have embarked on the path that eventually wound up at Valve.

By 1994, I had been working at Microsoft for a couple of years. One evening that year, while my daughter was looking at books in the Little Professor bookstore on the Sammamish Plateau, I happened to notice Snow Crash on a shelf. I picked it up and started reading, decided to buy it, and wound up devouring it overnight. I also started thinking to myself that I had a pretty good idea how about 80 percent of it could work right then, and wanted to implement it as badly as I had ever wanted to do anything with a computer – I had read SF all my life, and this was a full-on chance to make SF real. So I tried to start a project at Microsoft to do a networked 3D engine.

Were you a big Gowalla fan? Did you like Dodgeball? Did you think Trunk.ly (gasp!) was better than Pinboard? Did you make a lot of contributions to Nextstop? Do you miss Aardvark and EtherPad? Did "I Want Sandy" change your life?

These projects are all very different, but the dynamic is the same. Someone builds a cool, free product, it gets popular, and that popularity attracts a buyer. The new owner shuts the product down and the founders issue a glowing press release about how excited they are about synergies going forward. They are never heard from again.

Theme One: Do not, under any circumstances, start a startup.

This is, of course, tongue in cheek. But more than half the speakers said, in one form or another, do not start a startup. The summary went something like:

Don’t start a company just for the sake of starting a company. Don’t start a company because it’s cool. Don’t start one because you think it’s going to turn out like it does in the fictional movies, because it won’t - death is the default for startups. Don’t start a company because you want to be like the founders you see at startup school, or want to be the “next [fill in the blank].”

Gamification is bullshit.

I'm not being flip or glib or provocative. I'm speaking philosophically.

More specifically, gamification is marketing bullshit, invented by consultants as a means to capture the wild, coveted beast that is videogames and to domesticate it for use in the grey, hopeless wasteland of big business, where bullshit already reigns anyway.

I was employee #20 at the first start-up and the first engineering lead. Over the course of two years, the team and the company exploded to close to 200 employees. This is when I discovered that growing rapidly teaches you one thing well: how communication continually finds new and interesting ways to break down. The core issue being the folks who’ve been around longer who also tend to have more responsibility. As far as they’re concerned, the ways they organically communicated before will remain as efficient and simple each time the group doubles in size.

They don’t. A growing group needs to continually invest in new ways to figure out what it is collectively thinking so anyone anywhere can answer the question: “What the hell is going on?” This is the first question The Rands Test answers. As I’ll explain shortly, the second question The Rands Test helps you answer is selfish. The second asks: “Where am I?”

Think Big.

It needs to start with an incredible idea. Not just good, or different, but incredible. This will not only set you apart from the rest, but drives the momentum of the team to a common goal during hard times.

Timing must be right: you are not working for another game company, finished with prior projects & obligations to your colleagues, have enough money to last through early development / prototyping etc…

In June 2010, as the world waited for news on the release of Portal2, Valve announced that making games is hard.  Everyone inside the industry knows this, but to gamers and journalists alike this seemed to come as a surprise. Partly because of disappointment that a game they were looking forward to wasn’t coming out for a bit longer, and partly because Valve is an industry leader. For them to put their hands up and say “hey, this ain’t so easy” made people think: “if they find it hard, what about everybody else?”.

Well, yup, everybody else finds it hard as well. But why? Surely we just take the last game we made and stick some new levels and graphics in it? Or just sit around all day playing the game until one day we decide to release it?

Unfortunately, it’s not like that at all. But why not?

One of those things that most business people don’t talk about unless prodded. I’m not sure why, but I assume it’s one aspect of the fear “don’t burn any bridges; don’t let anyone think you can be nasty; don’t let anyone see you’re human”. None of which are healthy, long-term ideals IMHO – although they may be a good idea for many people. (they’ll often keep you in a job you’re unsuited for for longer than you would survive without them).
“I have on many occasions regretted not firing somebody quickly enough.

At the recent LOGIN conference, I was on a panel entitled "Wannabe Farmers replacing Pretend Mass-Murderers: Are Social Games a Fad?" To make the panel more interesting the panelists took extreme positions, and I was the solid "social (network) games are a fad" guy. Not that I believe that entirely, but it made for an entertaining panel discussion. (I'll post a link when the talk is posted online.)

But, I mentioned something that I think is very true: business works in cycles. And, by looking at previous cycles we can use them to divine the future of the current cycle. Let's take a closer look, shall we?

Is it hard to build, market and maintain a web app that makes at least $1000 a month?
For a single, skilled web developer.

Sony’s huge PlayStation Network (PSN) has been down for a week now following the theft of ID and credit card data on some or all of the gaming and video entertainment network’s 77 million customer accounts. Readers have been asking for comment but I stay out of these things unless I have something new to contribute. That something finally comes a week into the crisis as gamers begin to wonder why the network is still not back in operation and speculate on what this all means to Sony? It’s a huge loss of face, if course, but beyond that the damage to Sony is minimal. And the upside for PSN members, including those involved in the many emerging class action lawsuits, is likely to be bupkes. Nothing.

Probably the single biggest thing that stands between the idea of making a great game and the reality of actually doing it is the cost.

Even with agile practices in place, games need a certain level of development before they start to show their potential. The game actions need to extend, the loops need to be in place, the dynamic needs to be coming together and the wins need to build toward something. It needs to develop an aesthetic voice and style, work on the user experience and finally have some level of testing. These things take time and money.

How much? It varies massively depending on what it is, but the bare minimum is $100,000. If you find yourself pitching well below that, it usually portends trouble

Zane emailed us a very thorough article from The Register which described the necrotic core at Nokia. It reads to me that through mismanagement, failures were leading to a death of Nokia from the inside.

This will surely anger Symbian fans. I’m sure what ever Nokia does, media will perceive it as an awful thing. Nokia on Symbian? “Oh that’s awful, they should get rid of it”. Nokia not on Symbian “Oh that’s awful, why did they get rid of it”.

When Nokia CEO Stephen Elop announced that Nokia was abandoning its development of its own smartphone platforms and APIs, and betting the farm on somebody else's, many people asked why it was necessary.

Nokia had spent 15 years trying to develop and maintain its own software, which it regarded as strategic to maintaining its independence. Elop's decisions have ensured that Nokia didn't just get another option to run alongside its own, but it would abandon these, writing off the investments it had already made. In his opinion, these weren't good enough.

Ob Logo-Design, Visitenkarte, Flyer, Webseite, Werbebanner... Stellen Sie jetzt Ihr Projekt ein und bewerten Sie bereits nach wenigen Stunden die ersten Designvorschläge.

Sometimes you just need a few things to get started. I think this is the case for mentoring. We have been helping a company develop a mentoring culture and in typical Anecdote style we collected 50 stories of good and bad mentoring in the organisation and then help potential mentors draw lessons from these stories themselves. They learn that listening is more important that giving advice, that questions are more important than answers and the ability to tell a story is important to share experiences.

Listening to good entrepreneurs make their pitch is great fun. How well, or poorly, they align their passion and persuasiveness to the product details reveals a lot. Are they pushing an idea or telling a story? Is it all about their own charisma or is the innovative idea the real hero? Are we having a conversation or am I being sold? How will they get me to "get it"?