Whats The Big Deal About Valve?

[Blatherscythe]

Alright why do we all seem to love Valve so much? They take a long time to produce a single game and yet they are never really critizied if the game was not worth the wait. It seems that they owe most of their fanbase to the Half-Life series which I have tried, don't say HL1 is better than most games today because it isn't, it's a piece of shit by todays standards and take off your rose coloured glasses. As for HL2 played it didn't like it, gun play was bad, story wasn't great, no real characterization and an over used physics engine.

My main problem with Vavle is that they hold so much gaming prestige and only release maybe 1 game a year, most of the time (in my point of view anyway) it seems that it truely wasn't worth all the effort they put into it. Granted I haven't played Portal, and when I tried to play Team Fortress 2 no one was playing it (that usually means it's not that great), so maybe I should try Portal though that probably won't change my mind about Vavle being a mediocre game studio with a fanbase that is completly devoted to them if they release a certain game within the next 1000 years.

Now I realize this will probably earn me a ton of hate from the community here, but you know what? I really don't care if I do.

 

[Rauten]

While you may not enjoy their games (which is fine, there isn't a single game that EVERYONE enjoys), most people find them to be either master pieces (HL series) or find them to be just too darn fun (TF2, Portal).
Add to that the constant support they give to their community, never shying away from providing modding tools, and even advertizing some of the greatest ones, the constant updates to their love-child TF2 and all the humour surrounding them, the creation of arguably the best digital distribution system which has a roaring and loyal fanbase despite of it's flaws, and their openly admitted anti-DRM politic towards their games.

All this makes VALVe one of the most beloved game companies out there.

 

[Proteus214]

It's because those games were massively innovative when they came out. You call the Havoc Engine overused. It wasn't even used at all before Half-Life 2. Valve is really an innovator in the industry. Their games don't necessarily pass the test of time (even Half-Life 2 is starting to look dated), but their elements are copied over and over again by other games.

And yes, modding tools and communities are a huge part of it.

 

[Nalgas D. Lemur]

They're not everyone's thing, but I like their style of games. It helps a lot that they're very polished (on the same level with Nintendo and Blizzard, which almost no one else can pull off/puts the time into), and they have great free support of their games for years after they come out, with patches and fixes and large amounts of free additional content long after most other games that came out at a similar time from other companies are dead. If you don't like their games, you don't like their games, but it's hard to argue that they don't treat their customers (on the PC side, at least) much better than almost anyone else out there does (hi 2k/Gearbox, I'm looking at you and not buying your games anymore after getting shafted with the PC release of Borderlands).

 

[Dr. Paine]

Alright why do we all seem to love Valve so much? They take a long time to produce a single game and yet they are never really criticized if the game was not worth the wait.

Probably because the gaming community at large has yet to find a Valve game that wasn't worth the wait. (Left 4 Dead 2 is the freak exception, because it was shoved out in less than a year, and has since become the designated buttmonkey for Valve games.)

 

[Delusibeta]

Pretty much everything I can think of has already been mentioned: aside from the fact that they made Steam. Sure, you'll get your detractors, but it's pretty much the first service to push digital distribution towards the mainstream of PC gaming.

 

[XMark]

They take a long time, but their work is all exceptionally high quality.

And in the case of the Left 4 Dead series, it seems that they can whip up good games in a short time if they feel like it.

 

[TheBritish]

VALVe have other things besides the quality of their games to admire (if you didn't like their games).
They have provided amazing modding tools, for free to their fans which allow them to make their own levels and whole separate games using the engine. This is fairly commonplace on the PC now, but back in the early days it was unheard of.
They are very... personal as a company They provided commentary on their recent releases to let the people who made the game personally explain some of the design choices and if you want to email any of the creators directly, their emails are available and they reply.
Their games are innovative.
They're a game company that seems to really like games. They play mods and other games and recruit people from these circuits.

More than anything else though, it's the games. They take forever and... are they worth the wait? Meh They have an unbelievable level of polish... it seems like everything they do is done for a reason. They also may only release one game a year but a lot of time between is spent modifying and tweaking the games they've released to make them better.

Portal and L4D and HL2 and Counterstrike are all games under the VALVe purview and all are considered great games. If you don't like them, fine, but asking why the community likes them, when their games are all highly rated, isn't... meh

I don't know what you actually wanted out of this, but I hope I gave it

 

[Internet Kraken]

and when I tried to play Team Fortress 2 no one was playing it (that usually means it's not that great)

I consider Team Fortress 2 to be one of the best games I've ever played. This is probably one of the biggest reasons for my Valve fanboyism. I've been playing Team Fortress 2 for over 3 years and have yet to get sick of it. It's just such a fun game that never seems to lose it's charm. Valve also releases large updates for Team Fortress 2 for free, which I enjoy immensely. So yeah, Team Fortress 2 is the reason I love Valve.

Of course it's not the only reason I love Valve. There is also this;

It's because those games were massively innovative when they came out. You call the Havoc Engine overused. It wasn't even used at all before Half-Life 2. Valve is really an innovator in the industry. Their games don't necessarily pass the test of time (even Half-Life 2 is starting to look dated), but their elements are copied over and over again by other games.

And yes, modding tools and communities are a huge part of it.

Valve also uses one of my favorite methods of story telling [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/issues/issue_236/6999-Gordon-Freeman-Private-Eye] in several of their games, which is something that many other games still do not utilize. Then there is Steam and all the neat games and discounts I get on it. Then there is all of the other stuff people are mentioning in this thread. So yeah, there are a lot of reasons to love Valve. I can understand people not liking Valve, but I don' at this point get how some people still don't understand why others do like Valve.

 

[Enigmers]

snip snip hooray

What exactly is wrong with releasing a quality game every year? I could shit into a box three times a day, that's not necessarily a good thing.

I didn't like Half-Life 2 when I first tried it, but now I think it's a great game, and Episodes 1 and 2 are also amazing. They take some time to grow on you, but the level design in those games is uncanny - they playtest the hell out of those games to the point where I end up going exactly where the level designers intend for me to go, but I never feel like I'm walking down a hyper-linear sewer pipe (like I do when I play Final Fantasy 13)

Oh, and you must have been trying to play Team Fortress 2 on the moon (or maybe a console) because there are tons of people playing it nowadays and it's a very good game with continuing support.

VALVe also loves their community and releases things like modding tools and SteamWorks. I know this probably doesn't mean much to you, but without the ability to make mods for games, we wouldn't have games like TF2 or Counter-Strike. VALVe knows that the community around a game is important, and is one of those few companies that cares about their community.

Through Steam, indie developers can digitally distribute games and make a living, and non-indie developers can also release games through Steam, some of which tend to be hard to find.

Find me another developer that does all that, and also makes quality games.

 

[Dexiro]

Quality over quantity. I don't care how long they take to release a game as long as the result is awesome, and it always is.

They're about as good as it gets when it comes to character and level design too. And whatever it is they're doing with the Half Life story, it's awesome.

People who don't like Valve ALWAYS seem to bring HL1 into the equation too for some reason. I've never caught anyone ever saying that it's better than recent FPS games or that it was in any way revolutionary. It was good for it's time and that's all it's ever been known for.

 

[Devil's Due]

I don't understand the Valve love. I enjoyed some of their games, but most to me were just basic or repeditive. The only game in Valves history that I actually must give a lot of credit for is Portal, which I must say I love to death. But everything else is so bland and typical. And the whole rushing of L4D2, ugh, lets not even go down that street.

For your question: Who knows? Asking why do you love Valve on The Escapist is no different than asking why do you love Halo on the Bungie site. It's just what it is.

 

[TheBritish]

They have provided amazing modding tools, for free to their fans which allow them to make their own levels and whole separate games using the engine. This is fairly commonplace on the PC now, but back in the early days it was unheard of.

Ever heard about id Software or Epic Games?

One problem I have with Valve is, they often receive undeserved praise for 'inventing' something they didn't invent.

The only thing they invented were ways to screw up the FPS genre. Then Microsoft brought the Xbox and finished the deed.

Okay end of rant... Back to playing Doom II. Or Devil May Cry. Or anything where I can PLAY instead of pretending I'm playing.

I didn't say they invented modding tools, I said that they released "amazing" ones. I never used the id one (Radiant), but I used UnrealEd plenty and it was nowhere near as impressive as Hammer or Worldcraft. Not to mention you can do some fairly original things in Hammer without knowing a line of code, but UnrealEd requires you to learn UnrealScript for some very simple things. THEN AGAIN UnrealScript is "easier" to add new weapons and things. But just to play the Devil's Devil's Advocate, the HL2 Source gives you a lot more power, if you can get the bleeding code to compile

 

[Altorin]

they're not the best developer, but they're the only publisher in the whole industry that seems to LIKE ITS CUSTOMERS.

that's why. People like being liked.