Valve Software recruits hardware experts

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-19475312

by shortlived • 14 years ago

73 53 14 years ago

bbc.co.uk

TimGremalm• 14 years ago

Hear Jeri Ellsworth talk more about Valve and Hardware: http://hackaday.com/2012/08/17/an-in-depth-interview-with-je...

MojoJolo• 14 years ago

I thought Valve will sell valves.

eckyptang2• 14 years ago

Incoming: another walled garden.

xlevus• 14 years ago

Or, Another range of "gaming" accessories.

seabee• 14 years ago

Consoles have been walled gardens since the 80s video game crash. It would be notable if Valve broke from this model.

yawgmoth• 14 years ago

It isn't fair to discredit what Valve is building on the principle that it isn't free and open. Steam is a walled garden and is adored, for the most part anyway, by its users.

vacri• 14 years ago

Steam isn't really a walled garden. Most of the titles on steam are things you can quite happily buy independently and install yourself. Steam won't stop you. Hell, I sometimes buy cheaper games on a competing service (like GMG) and Steam will still quite happily take on the license key from that purchase when I ask it to.

phn• 14 years ago

Yup. My only concern is more in the lines of "what if they close?". I hope they have great success so I can keep my games forever :P

eckyptang2• 14 years ago

People adore McDonalds. It doesn't necessarily means it is good for the people or the world.

Toshio• 14 years ago

Off-topic, a little detail caught my attention: that guy with a crowbar has a lambda symbol on his chest. Coincidence or a hidden reference to functional programming?

pharno• 14 years ago

neither. its gordon freeman(1) from half life(2)

1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Freeman 2: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half-Life_(series)

danbee• 14 years ago

It's Gordon Freeman, the main protagonist from the Half Life series.

jiggy20116• 14 years ago

The character is Gordon Freeman, the protagonist for the game series Half Life which is the game Valve is best known for.

The Lambda here represents the radioactive decay constant and is used as part of the measure for the "half life" of any radioactive material.

The Gordon character is a scientist, much of the game is set in a science lab and Valve are known for making games with many scientific references (see also: Portal).

zimbatm• 14 years ago

I can't really tell you. That guy is "Gordon Freeman", the main character in the Half-Life game serie. According to the following article, it comes from the "Lambda complex" where he's working on in the first serie, which is in also made-up for the game: http://half-life.wikia.com/wiki/Lambda_logo

corford• 14 years ago

I suddenly feel very old :(

Edit: unless you're not a gamer (yes, I'm clutching at straws!)

misnome• 14 years ago

I love the caption under that image:

"Hardware, in the form of a crowbar, plays a part in Valve's Half-Life games"

samd• 14 years ago

In Valve's New Employee Handbook released a few months ago there was a quip about how Valve struggled to hire disciplines well outside of its typical expertise. They specifically mentioned industrial designers as one of those disciplines. I guess people didn't pick up on it at the time.

Link: http://newcdn.flamehaus.com/Valve_Handbook_LowRes.pdf

*Economist was the other job they mentioned, which they filled with the famous Yanis Varoufakis.

programminggeek• 14 years ago

Well, the PC biz has not been great to gaming for a long time, if ever. Most PC's don't come with quality GFX cards, so PC games have to be least common denominator, which is basically to port from the XBox360/PS3.

From what I can tell the average selling price of PC's has dropped in the last 10 years from $1,000 to $500 or less. At a $400-500 laptop, you just don't get good GFX, so PC gaming kind of sucks.

Steam helped a ton on the software side, but if the average gamer is going to have to swap out a graphics card to be able to play Skyrim well on their PC, they'll probably just buy an Xbox instead.

The PC market needs some kind of "standard" box configurations with sane pricing and non-crappy software installs. Like, a $500, $750, and $1,000 machines loaded with stock Windows 8, no crapware, good gfx, SSD's, etc.

If Valve did the same thing with their own version of Ubuntu running Steam, they could lower machine prices and also really reshape the PC gaming landscape over the next 10 years, esp. for indie developers who are already porting to Linux.

Valve could even do something awesome with Steam where if you buy a "Steam box" it comes with your Steam account and games preloaded and ready to go when you start it up, sort of like what Amazon does when you buy a Kindle.

If Valve goes down that road and tries to truly innovate, there is some real potential.

mtgx• 14 years ago

I can't imagine the next-gen consoles selling that well in the future either. Most people would want them for the media access, but there are and will be much better and cheaper options for that.

tomrod3• 14 years ago

> If Valve did the same thing with their own version of Ubuntu running Steam, they could lower machine prices and also really reshape the PC gaming landscape over the next 10 years, esp. for indie developers who are already porting to Linux.

At that point, why not just release their own console?

flatline3• 14 years ago

Nowadays, what's the difference between a standardized PC running a custom/customized OS and your hypothetical console?

Now, if Valve actually moved backwards to a day when consoles were simple devices that didn't require OS updates, installation of the games, game updates, and a whole slew of other crap from the PC industry that makes it easier for vendors and harder for users, then they'd have a real 'console' that wasn't a PC.

Otherwise, modern consoles are just PCs.

talmand4• 14 years ago

Actually, PC gaming is one of the biggest overlooked markets in the industry. If you account for all available sources of revenue then the market is incredibly large; it's just that some people who tally numbers only count boxes sold over the counter.

Almost every computer sold today with AMD or Intel CPUs have a decent video card built in. It's true they won't run the latest and greatest in high quality graphical games but I bet they'll run 90% or more of the games available on Steam just fine and most of the rest with reduced settings that will match the quality of the consoles. Granted, there are exceptions to this.

Most games that are ports of console games are done cheaply because of lack of focus or budget, not because of hardware. There are several franchises out there that make a ton of cash if made for and marketed to the PC market correctly. Most publishers don't bother with PC gaming any more because they no longer understand the market. What consoles are today is what PC gaming was five to ten years ago and they still get that, it's easy. PC gaming today is different and the expectations are different. Companies like Valve that understand the difference are the people making money. When the expectations of the console market catch up with PCs (possibly the next generation) then the current publishers better adapt quick or they'll suffer.

Most of the larger computer makers have been marketing "game" PCs for years but there have no standard configurations because different customers want different things. I, for one, feel that's to the consumer's advantage but it does require a knowledgeable salesman that help make decisions.

Your thought of an Ubuntu box with Steam is interesting but I can't see it happening any time soon, they need many, many more games to run on Linux for it to happen. It would be interesting if they did though.

If Valve went this direction it would help fix the biggest problem PC gaming has ever had, Microsoft.

krakensden• 14 years ago

> Almost every computer sold today with AMD or Intel CPUs

That's really only been true since Sandy Bridge though. Before that, Intel's GPUs were... bad.. Real bad.

shardling2• 14 years ago

I find it disturbing that you equate quality gaming to graphics.

sliverstorm2• 14 years ago

Well, it certainly is the first and most critical hurdle, aside from "Does your processor support SSE2". You can argue quality of experience all day long, but if your hardware is tragically lacking, you aren't getting anywhere.

Confusion• 14 years ago

I downvoted you, not because I disagree with your or think you are wrong, but because you didn't read the article and your reply is entirely offtopic.

They are hiring industrial designers and allude to working on replacements for peripherals like the keyboard and the mouse.

qwertzlcoatl• 14 years ago

Well, they hired a Hardware Engineer (or something of the sort), and if you bother to read the article, it seems more to me like they may start designing peripherals for the PC. Which still is something to be excited about! Valve could really make some great ways to interact with their upcoming "Steam Full Screen Mode" or whatever it's called. Plus, We PC gamers are in dire need of our own controller. I'm tired of using my 60 controller.

apendleton• 14 years ago

That this person is going to design peripherals is pure speculation on the part of the article's author, and it seems to stem exclusively (looking at the original ad) from this sentence: "Even basic input, the keyboard and mouse, haven’t really changed in any meaningful way over the years." In context, though, that sentence could just as easily be just an example of one way in which innovation in the Mac/PC space has stagnated.

The alternate interpretation that this person will be designing whole systems is equally plausible to me, especially given their investment into the Linux space. Initially, that move didn't make a whole lot of sense because the Linux desktop space is so small and (particularly where issues around graphics drivers and the like are concerned) requires a fair bit of technical acumen. A ChromeOS-like strategy makes much more sense, though: heavily tailor the OS user experience to fit your specific target audience, and vertically integrate so you control the hardware, and the user never has to touch drivers or configs. Then it's not "Linux," anymore, it's "SteamOS" or whatever.

mkl• 14 years ago

Actually it seems as much to do with the more solid "Valve has a patent on a controller with swappable parts". Said patent is here: http://www.faqs.org/patents/app/20110105231

But yes, there is a lot of speculation, of course.

benholmen• 14 years ago

Ben Krasnow is a peripheral hardware designer (and all-around hacker) that recently went to Valve to work on "Top Secret" projects. Previously he developed specialized input devices for use around MRI machines so I assume his "Top Secret" projects at Valve involve peripherals.

His blog is really interesting and definitely worth following.

G+ profile: https://plus.google.com/115054970849159689228/about

A post on his blog where he discusses his previous business and mentions working at Valve: http://benkrasnow.blogspot.com/2012/08/tour-of-bens-shop-201...

jentulman• 14 years ago

A linux based Steam box of some sort seems like a fairly obvious guess.

With the recent interest in wearable computing I wouldn't be surprised if this is more about peripherals than gaming rigs. Working on additional HID's (heads up displays, kinect-a-likes, voice) might well be a more valuable addition to their software platform than getting into the console wars.

Or possibly a handheld. They seem to have 2 ends of the gaming market, high end FPS graphics fests which sell to people willing to build console smashing gaming rigs, and casual gamers who like the Bejewlled type games. It would be very hard to create a console that taps their existing muscle gamers, but capturing the gameboy, iphone casuals might be possible.

If they did go towards console territory what I'd love to see rather than a closed box console would be a line of Steam certified hardware so you could build a PC that matched your pocket, upgrade in future, and be guaranteed compatibility with the Steam linux distro it runs.

jiggy20116• 14 years ago

Didn't Valve previously say something about wristbands and how they would be the future of computer interaction?

That seems very vague to me and I'm having difficulty visualising exactly what that might mean.

Perhaps an accelerometer attached to your wrist would essentially allow you to use any object as a makeshift mouse/keyboard?

shardling2• 14 years ago

I'd guess that a sufficiently accurate sensor on your wrist could track the motion of your hand and fingers just via muscle/tendon/etc movement, for one thing. (Place a finger on your wrist, and move your fingers around!) Combined with an accelerometer to track the overall motion, and you have a pretty versatile system.

simonb• 14 years ago

I wonder if this has anything to do with CLANG [0] (the recently kickstarted sword-fighting simulator). In some of the videos they hinted that a custom controller is coming down the line.

[0] http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/260688528/clang

primitur• 14 years ago

Valve should get involved with the guys behind the Open Pandora console:

http://openpandora.org/

http://icontrolpad.com/

There is a next-gen design in the works, Valve getting involved with it would be a serious wake up call ..

aw3c2• 14 years ago

It is am ambigious project but not very good in any way. I owned one and it was awkward and annoying even for me as hacky linux distro user. They have my utmost respect for the idea and persistence, but the execution is nothing to glorify.

chrischen• 14 years ago

I'm guessing a VR headset.

cpeterso• 14 years ago

John Carmack has been prototyping VR games and, in his QuakeCon 2012 keynote, he said he knew ex-Id Software people are Valve were too.

Valve Software recruits hardware experts

Related Stories