The more I learn about Valve culture the more I realize they definitely have teams just throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks. I bet there are some really wild prototypes that we never get to see.
helenslunch@feddit.nl 3 weeks ago
"And there are people [at Valve] who were like, ‘I just want that for me.’ The point wasn’t even to make a product out of it. It was just, let’s see if you can actually make something that I would want to use for that purpose.”
Seems highly unlikely Valve was dedicating valuable dev/engineer time to make a toy they had no intention of ever producing…
Toribor@corndog.social 3 weeks ago
helenslunch@feddit.nl 3 weeks ago
Sure, with the intention of finding a product to sell. But the whole point of this article is that they never intended to sell it:
The point wasn’t even to make a product out of it
Olhonestjim@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
You do not understand what you’re talking about about.
helenslunch@feddit.nl 3 weeks ago
Wow, thanks so much for your insightful input.
thingsiplay@beehaw.org 3 weeks ago
You would be surprised how much companies experiment behind the scenes, that you never see. Prototypes aren’t actually the most expensive thing, so its totally doable, especially if you have lot of engineers hyped for that. Given that the teams at Valve produced hardware before, its only normal to get money for new experiments. Also the structure at Valve is a bit different than most companies.
helenslunch@feddit.nl 3 weeks ago
Sure but they’re saying it wasn’t a prototype. At least not intended to be.
thingsiplay@beehaw.org 3 weeks ago
Plans change and evolve. After the experiments looked good, more and more people got interested. Maybe the one guy who was successfull with previous hardware got involved and they started to see something bigger than anticipated. Its an organic growth. I mean I don’t have any internal knowledge or anything, just trying to think how it could have went.
sp3tr4l@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
This actually is basically how Valve works.
They have a pretty small team, and Steam is a fucking money printer.
They are a private company, not public.
That means no shareholders. No need to jam out a product to keep stock prices up, no boards of directors that also sit on 12 other boards that are all scheming to figure out how to push the whole industry toward stupid bullshit like NFT game items or ‘replace all our employees with AI’ or ‘every game is actually just a marketing tool for MTX or battlepasses.’
(The entire idea of loot boxes and in game microtransactions was basically just another ‘i wonder what would happen if, or if it would even be possible to…’ and the the steam marketplace of ingame items was born, and then basically every one else copied them, poorly.)
(Fuck, its basically the same with modern in game achievements as well.)
…
They could do nothing other than maintain their existing products and basically just coast on that forever, remaining profitable.
Because they have essentially no hard deadlines to put out some new product… this enables them to have a very loose, very voluntary, workplace culture which emphasizes quality over quantity, not rushing anything.
A whole lot of their projects in the last decade are just people saying ‘I’m gonna do this’ and then if anyone else thinks its cool or neat, they work on it too.
People are allowed and encouraged to contribute to any project, at any time, as opposed to basically all other corporate software studios that have very rigid and defined roles.
helenslunch@feddit.nl 3 weeks ago
I don’t know what any of that has to do with throwing millions in the garbage can…
Phen@lemmy.eco.br 3 weeks ago
Some projects will end up being a waste of resources, but others end up printing a ton of money.
helenslunch@feddit.nl 3 weeks ago
Sure, but anything that “The point wasn’t even to make a product out of it” is 100% definitely a waste of resources. So either they’re intentionally throwing money in the garbage or the intent absolutely was to make a product out of it…
ggppjj@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Steam made Valve more than $2,000,000,000 in 2021.
They have infinite money forever.
Gabe Newell runs a biotech company as well.
A couple million on a blue-sky product development pipeline is an incidental cost for the most part.
helenslunch@feddit.nl 3 weeks ago
You say this as if all the money goes into to pockets of the devs and engineers to fuck off an do whatever they want. I ask again how this explains why Valve would throw money away.
sp3tr4l@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
When you have a stable business with a guaranteed source of huge amounts of revenue, that all you have to do is basically maintain at a very low cost…
Most other revenue can be thrown at whatever, in how ever long it takes to do well and properly timeframe.
Actual innovation requires a series of creative ideas that are explored thoroughly, without overwhelming pressure or influence on decision making, or timetables.
Valve’s position allows them to do this.
Lots of those things go no where, but a good number of them work out, and basically revolutionize the industry, more than making up for the projects that do not work out.
As a certain wise old man once said:
“These things, they take time.”