Speaker 1: Get in text with technology with tech Stuff from stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to Tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I am your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm a podcaster with
Speaker 1: how stuff Works. Wow. Things be changing, y'all. Yes, I
Speaker 1: am the podcaster host of Text Stuff, the show that's
Speaker 1: been on the air waves of the internet for about
Speaker 1: eight years now, nine years something like that. Nine years.
Speaker 1: And we cover all things technology, you know, the stuff
Speaker 1: that I love to chat about. Stuff what beeps, as
Speaker 1: my former co host Chris Palette used to say. Today,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna cover a topic that I have received numerous
Speaker 1: requests to cover in the past. Multiple people have asked
Speaker 1: me throughout the last few years to cover this topic,
Speaker 1: and that is the company Valve. So to day, I'm
Speaker 1: going to start down that pathway. But spoiler alert, that
Speaker 1: story is pretty complex and pretty long, so it's going
Speaker 1: to be more than a single part. I will do
Speaker 1: at least two parts on this topic. I do not
Speaker 1: know exactly how long it's going to go, because I've
Speaker 1: only done enough research for one part. In full, I
Speaker 1: suspect I will have enough to do three episodes about
Speaker 1: Valve entirely to cover the full aspect of it. Unless
Speaker 1: I really truncate things in part two. But since it's
Speaker 1: too early for me to say, I'm not sure, I
Speaker 1: will tell you another spoiler alert. This story could also
Speaker 1: be called the Half Life story because the beginning of
Speaker 1: Valve is very much concentrated on the development of their
Speaker 1: first game, that is Half Life. And if you had
Speaker 1: not guessed up to this point and you have not
Speaker 1: heard of them before, Valve is a game developer company,
Speaker 1: or at least that's how they started out. Today they're
Speaker 1: known more for something else. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Speaker 1: They play a really important role in PC gaming, first
Speaker 1: as the publisher of games and then of course as
Speaker 1: the operator of the most successful online store for PC games.
Speaker 1: But how did it all get started in the first place. Well,
Speaker 1: you know me, I'm not gonna begin this episode with
Speaker 1: the start date for the company itself. That's way too simplistic.
Speaker 1: We need to look at the people who founded Valve,
Speaker 1: where they came from, and how they got to where
Speaker 1: they are. And those two people, the co founders of
Speaker 1: Valve are Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington. Now, Gabe Newell
Speaker 1: was born on November third, nineteen sixty two, in Washington, State.
Speaker 1: After he graduated high school, he enrolled in Havid University.
Speaker 1: He attended classes at Harvard from nineteen eighty until nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty three, at which point he chose to drop out
Speaker 1: of school and work for a little company called micro
Speaker 1: offt The dropping out of school motif becomes a popular
Speaker 1: one in this episode. That doesn't mean that, kids, you
Speaker 1: should drop out of school if you want to become millionaires,
Speaker 1: because trust me, it doesn't work out that way for everyone.
Speaker 1: But in this case it worked out pretty well well.
Speaker 1: He didn't just make the decision spontaneously to drop out
Speaker 1: of Harvard. What actually happened was he was visiting his brother,
Speaker 1: who worked for Microsoft out in Washington, and according to
Speaker 1: Newell himself, he was getting in trouble with Steve Developers
Speaker 1: Developers Developers Bomber for distracting his brother at work. See
Speaker 1: it turned out his brother was so busy developing at
Speaker 1: Microsoft that he couldn't take time off to go and
Speaker 1: see the sites in Seattle with his brother Gabe. So
Speaker 1: instead Gabe went to hang out with his brother over
Speaker 1: at Microsoft. But because you know, he wanted to spend
Speaker 1: time with his brother, he was taking some attention away
Speaker 1: from his brother's tasks. Bomber said, Hey, I don't mind
Speaker 1: if you hang out, but if you're gonna hang out,
Speaker 1: you're gonna do some work. So Balmber actually put Gabe
Speaker 1: Newell to work at Microsoft. Newell would later on say
Speaker 1: that he learned more about computers and software development in
Speaker 1: those three months working with Microsoft than he ever did
Speaker 1: in his undergraduate studies over at Harvard, and so he
Speaker 1: made the decision to quit school and started Microsoft full time.
Speaker 1: He began to work mainly on the Windows operating system.
Speaker 1: You might be familiar with it, or as Newell described it,
Speaker 1: he was the producer of the first three releases of Windows.
Speaker 1: He joined the ranks of what was known as the
Speaker 1: Microsoft millionaires. These were employees during the relatively early days
Speaker 1: of Microsoft who ended up making more than a million
Speaker 1: dollars through their stock options with the company. So, Microsoft,
Speaker 1: like a lot of software companies out there, would reward
Speaker 1: their employees with stock options. As it turns out, Microsoft
Speaker 1: was remarkably successful, as we all know, and so the
Speaker 1: people who had been rewarded with those stock options made
Speaker 1: out like bandits, except for the fact that they actually
Speaker 1: earned the money that they earned. Right they created the
Speaker 1: value in that company, and so the company grew exponentially,
Speaker 1: and as a result, so did the value of those
Speaker 1: stock options, So people like Gabe Newell became millionaires, at
Speaker 1: least on paper. Well. Mike Harrington, the other co founder
Speaker 1: of Valve, attended the University of Oregon before he too
Speaker 1: dropped out of school. Now, he went originally to go
Speaker 1: work for a company called Dynamics, that's d Y in
Speaker 1: a m i X. This was a software company that
Speaker 1: created titles for PC games publisher Activision. So in the
Speaker 1: world of PC games, you typically have a couple of
Speaker 1: different entities. Sometimes they can be one and the same,
Speaker 1: but typically you will have game developers who actually make
Speaker 1: the games you play, and game publishers that take the
Speaker 1: games that other people have made and then published them
Speaker 1: or get them out to consumers put them out on
Speaker 1: the market. So in this case, Dynamics was a game
Speaker 1: developer and Mike Harrington was working for Dynamics. They would
Speaker 1: create games for Activision, which would then go on to
Speaker 1: publish them. Now this would be a seven when he
Speaker 1: was working for Dynamics and he leaves that company to
Speaker 1: go and work for Microsoft. So he joins Microsoft in
Speaker 1: seven whereas Newell had joined a couple of years earlier.
Speaker 1: At Microsoft, Harrington worked as a software developer and later
Speaker 1: a manager on a few big projects, including Windows in
Speaker 1: T and the infamous software bomb known as Microsoft Bob.
Speaker 1: His wife, Monica Harrington, was the communications man up from
Speaker 1: Microsoft Bob. Although they were not married when Harrington first
Speaker 1: went to go work for Microsoft, they met at Microsoft.
Speaker 1: According to Monica Harrington, she was the one who was
Speaker 1: really interested in getting married. They started dating for a while.
Speaker 1: She wanted to marry him, he was not certain yet
Speaker 1: if that's what he wanted, and then they broke up.
Speaker 1: Then they decided to just kind of go on a
Speaker 1: date together. They weren't even really going out. They just
Speaker 1: spent the day together, and at the end of that day,
Speaker 1: Harrington decided that in fact, he did want to marry Monica,
Speaker 1: and he proposed and she accepted. And I think that's
Speaker 1: a very sweet story. However, that sweet story is somewhat
Speaker 1: balanced out by the terrible disaster that was Microsoft Bob.
Speaker 1: Microsoft Bob is an incredible story, so incredible that I
Speaker 1: actually did a full episode of tech Stuff about that
Speaker 1: disastrous software release if you want to learn more about it.
Speaker 1: And I encourage you to do so, because it is
Speaker 1: an amazing story. You can listen to the Tech Stuff
Speaker 1: episode titled what About Microsoft Bob, which published on May eighth,
Speaker 1: two thousand thirteen. It's really the software package of the
Speaker 1: millennium in my estimation, and Lauren Vogelbaum was my co
Speaker 1: host on that episode, So if you guys, miss Lauren,
Speaker 1: you should go back and listen to that episode and
Speaker 1: learn all about that attempt to create an operating system
Speaker 1: for the average person that ended up being a complete
Speaker 1: and total failure in all sense of the word. Anyway,
Speaker 1: Harrington also became a Microsoft millionaire because he was also
Speaker 1: awarded stock options. And you had Newell and Harrington to
Speaker 1: Microsoft employees who were at least on paper millionaires. But
Speaker 1: what were they gonna do with all this filthy lucre.
Speaker 1: The answer to that question followed a former Microsoft employees path,
Speaker 1: and this is where we have to talk about another
Speaker 1: guy named Michael A. Brash. Now A Brash attended the
Speaker 1: University of Pennsylvania and had been programming since the early
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties, and like Newell and Harrington, his work focused
Speaker 1: on lots of different types of software. Now he cut
Speaker 1: his teeth on building computer games, one of them being
Speaker 1: Space Strike, which was essentially a clone of Space Invaders.
Speaker 1: By the early nineteen nineties, he had joined Microsoft, and
Speaker 1: he credits the science fiction novel snow Crash, which was
Speaker 1: written by Neil Stevenson, with inspiring him to work on
Speaker 1: a networked three D engine. In the world of snow Crash,
Speaker 1: there is a virtual reality kind of Internet construct that
Speaker 1: characters can enter into, and they have avatars within this
Speaker 1: virtual world that they inhabit, and they can do all
Speaker 1: sorts of stuff in the virtual world as a result
Speaker 1: of that, and our main character, hero protagonist, which is
Speaker 1: a great name, is one of the early developers in
Speaker 1: this metaverse that is created in the world of snow Crash. Now,
Speaker 1: we have a Brash who wants to create a three
Speaker 1: D networked engine, and he's at Microsoft, and he tries
Speaker 1: to convince people in Microsoft that this is a project
Speaker 1: worth pursuing, but he doesn't get anywhere. No one really
Speaker 1: shows any interest in supporting such a project. It doesn't
Speaker 1: really align with Microsoft's plans at that point. So a
Speaker 1: Brash ended up having a meeting with John Carmack of
Speaker 1: IT software fame. This was a and Carmack and A
Speaker 1: Brash started talking about networked persistent Internet game servers, and
Speaker 1: Carmack had already tried to lure A Brash away from
Speaker 1: Microsoft a couple of times in the past, but A
Speaker 1: Bresh had always resisted this because Microsoft was a stable
Speaker 1: and lucrative gig. Those stock options were no joke. A
Speaker 1: Bresh would be leaving a guaranteed job with security to
Speaker 1: go work for ID software, and he had never really
Speaker 1: been tempted to seriously consider it before. But with this
Speaker 1: conversation about these persistent game engines and the fact that
Speaker 1: that seemed to be a step toward what A Bresh
Speaker 1: envisioned as the future of the Internet, this future that
Speaker 1: was envisioned in Neil stevenson snow Crash, A Brash felt
Speaker 1: the sirens call and decided to go join in Software
Speaker 1: finally after all those other failed attempts to lure him away.
Speaker 1: So he was eager to try and create this metaverse
Speaker 1: like the one in Stevenson's book, and he felt that
Speaker 1: CarMax approach might be the right way to try this.
Speaker 1: His departure from Microsoft to work for a game studio
Speaker 1: we kind of serve as a sort of inspiration for
Speaker 1: Newell and Harrington, they would not consider leaving for another
Speaker 1: couple of years, So a brash leaves in n in
Speaker 1: ninety six. That's when Harrington and Newell started to consider
Speaker 1: doing something similar. Uh. Now, Abresh would later on become
Speaker 1: an important liaison and even later still an employee over
Speaker 1: at Valve Software. But that's getting ahead of the story
Speaker 1: a bit. Let's talk about Harrington and Newell's decision to
Speaker 1: strike out on their own and leave Microsoft behind. Harrington
Speaker 1: was actually the one to make the first move, as
Speaker 1: he would say later on in interviews, I like developing software,
Speaker 1: good working environments, and games. I put all together and
Speaker 1: decided that I couldn't just leave Microsoft and do nothing.
Speaker 1: But he also knew he couldn't just do this by himself,
Speaker 1: so he started to search around and see if there
Speaker 1: was any interest among his co workers in striking out
Speaker 1: and trying to create a new company. But he wasn't
Speaker 1: meeting with a whole lot of enthusiasm. Most people were
Speaker 1: interested in just pursuing research projects, whether it was at
Speaker 1: Microsoft or striking out independently. But they didn't they didn't
Speaker 1: really want to develop software. They were wanting to to
Speaker 1: kind of push the envelope in finding out what you
Speaker 1: can do with code, which is kind of cool, but
Speaker 1: it wasn't really what Harrington was interested in. There was
Speaker 1: one notable exception, Gabe Newell. Newell seemed interested in this
Speaker 1: concept of going out and creating a game company. Harrington
Speaker 1: and Newell decided that they would fund the company themselves.
Speaker 1: They would cash in their stock options and fund this
Speaker 1: whole formation of their new company out of pocket, and
Speaker 1: they called the company Valve. Here's a fun bet of trivia.
Speaker 1: They had other names that they were considering before they
Speaker 1: settled on Valve. The next in line, the second most
Speaker 1: popular of the contenders was hollow Box, so Valve could
Speaker 1: have been called hollow Box had they gone a different way. Now.
Speaker 1: The two had agreed already that they wanted their company
Speaker 1: name to be something cool, but not be reflective of
Speaker 1: some sort of macho, testosterone driven bro version of gaming.
Speaker 1: They didn't want it to be you know, kicking the
Speaker 1: pants games or anything like that, or or you know, uh,
Speaker 1: biden nerd games. They didn't want something that had that
Speaker 1: sense to it. They wanted something a little less aggressive,
Speaker 1: I guess is the right word. They ended up signing
Speaker 1: the limited liability company agreement for Valve on August twenty four.
Speaker 1: That was a really big day for game Newell because
Speaker 1: it wasn't just the day that Valve Software was officially born,
Speaker 1: it was also his wedding day. He got married on
Speaker 1: that day, so he took some time out from his
Speaker 1: wedding day to sign the official papers to form this company.
Speaker 1: It was also a big day for Harrington as well.
Speaker 1: His wife, Monica was a little leery about this Elves
Speaker 1: Software venture. When she first heard that Harrington wanted to
Speaker 1: do this. She thought it was going to end up
Speaker 1: being some sort of modest little side project, that it
Speaker 1: was going to end up being a company run out
Speaker 1: of their garage, which wouldn't be unusual in Silicon Valley.
Speaker 1: If you've been listening to tech stuff, you know that
Speaker 1: in Silicon Valley, which granted isn't in Washington, it's in California,
Speaker 1: that it was a place where numerous companies got their
Speaker 1: start in garages. You had like Apple getting started in
Speaker 1: a garage, and HP and lots of other ones. Microsoft
Speaker 1: too got started in a garage, although that was in Washington,
Speaker 1: not in California. But it turns out this was not
Speaker 1: what Newell and Harrington had in mind. Instead, they signed
Speaker 1: a five year lease on an office space in Kirkland, Washington.
Speaker 1: So this was real business here, and Monica Harrington was
Speaker 1: a little bit nervous about it. She wasn't sure that
Speaker 1: this was going to pan out to be a good
Speaker 1: economic decision. Fortunately, her her worries were ultimately unfounded, although
Speaker 1: it wasn't exactly smooth sailing from the start. Now, the
Speaker 1: question then was what sort of game should they develop?
Speaker 1: And it might seem unusual that a couple of people
Speaker 1: would leave a very lucrative job to go form a
Speaker 1: company and not already have a firm idea of where
Speaker 1: they wanted to go, but that's kind of what was
Speaker 1: happening with Valve in those early days. Now, they were
Speaker 1: both interested in the burgeoning world of three D games,
Speaker 1: specifically first person shooters. Keep in mind, in the mid
Speaker 1: ninety nineties these were just starting to take off games
Speaker 1: like Wolfenstein three D and Doom. They were really creating
Speaker 1: a whole new genre of games for the PC. So
Speaker 1: they wanted to create a first person shooter in that
Speaker 1: Vein they wanted to have sort of a science fiction
Speaker 1: in horror motif, but rather than start completely from scratch,
Speaker 1: where they'd have to build everything from the ground up,
Speaker 1: they decided that they would take elements that already existed
Speaker 1: and then improve upon them, because that would be easier
Speaker 1: than just building a game engine from the ground up.
Speaker 1: That's enormously complicated, and they honestly didn't have any experience
Speaker 1: in developing game engines on that level at this point,
Speaker 1: So they decided that they would take the work out
Speaker 1: of creating those underlying physics of the game off of
Speaker 1: their plates. And they were able to get in touch
Speaker 1: with A Brash. Remember he had been working for Microsoft
Speaker 1: and then in ninety four he went to work for
Speaker 1: ID Software. Well, they touched Base with a Brash. They said, hey,
Speaker 1: we've decided we're going to create this game company. We
Speaker 1: know you went to work for ID Software. We wondered
Speaker 1: if maybe there was some way we could work with
Speaker 1: you guys to get the source code for your Quake
Speaker 1: engine and use that as the basis for our game
Speaker 1: engine for the game we want to create. And A.
Speaker 1: Bresh was able to secure for them a meeting for
Speaker 1: them to come over to ID Software and meet with
Speaker 1: the various executives over there and kind of pitch their idea. Now,
Speaker 1: in an interview, A Bresh would elaborate on this and
Speaker 1: he said, quote, I don't recall that when they came
Speaker 1: down to it, there was a lot of great chemistry.
Speaker 1: Let's put it this way. It wasn't like when nine
Speaker 1: inch Nails came to visit that was a cool thing.
Speaker 1: These were guys that worked on stuff like Microsoft, Bob
Speaker 1: and home automation. You're not going to walk into the
Speaker 1: coolest game company on the face of the earth and
Speaker 1: have the guys say, Wow, nice to hang out with you.
Speaker 1: End quote. Yikes. Nevertheless, they were able to secure this meeting,
Speaker 1: and through that they were able to get a licensing
Speaker 1: agreement for the Quake source code. And then they got
Speaker 1: to work, and that work involved modifying that Quake engine.
Speaker 1: So while they didn't have to build a physics engine
Speaker 1: from the ground up, they did seriously rework the Quake
Speaker 1: engine itself. Now. To do that, they looked for people
Speaker 1: in the Quake community, which was filled with enterprising coders
Speaker 1: who were bending quakes code to their will. So these
Speaker 1: weren't people who worked for ID Software. These were people
Speaker 1: who were using the Quake source code themselves. Are using
Speaker 1: the Quake Engine to create their own modified games and levels.
Speaker 1: So two of those developers who were in this world
Speaker 1: were John Guthrie and Steve Bond. The two of them
Speaker 1: were living out of Florida and they had launched a
Speaker 1: fan site called Quake Command, and they both received invitations
Speaker 1: from Gabe Newell to come to Washington and visit the
Speaker 1: Valve office. And they were both very skeptical of this offer.
Speaker 1: At first. They didn't think that this was really a
Speaker 1: serious at ump to get them to come look at
Speaker 1: a game development development company. They neither of them anticipated
Speaker 1: that ever becoming a reality, but Steve Bond eventually agreed
Speaker 1: to this and gave Newell flew him out to Seattle, Washington,
Speaker 1: and gave him a car rental and a hotel and
Speaker 1: had him stay for several days, and by the end
Speaker 1: of it, Bond was convinced that Valve was the place
Speaker 1: he wanted to work, and so he joined the company.
Speaker 1: A couple of like a week later, Guthrie would also
Speaker 1: join the company. He would drop out of college in
Speaker 1: order to do so, so the tradition would continue another
Speaker 1: college dropout to join Valve Software. Newell and Harrington. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: we're making other hires. They were luring people away from
Speaker 1: companies like three D Realms and Microsoft, and once they
Speaker 1: had their base team together, they began to work on
Speaker 1: modifying the Quake engine. According to some estimates, they ended
Speaker 1: up changing about seventy of that source code to create
Speaker 1: Half Life, and that game at the time didn't have
Speaker 1: that name. It wasn't called Half Life. It had a
Speaker 1: code name called Quiver. Part of that massive modification was
Speaker 1: the addition of skeletal animation valve, depended upon a developer
Speaker 1: named Ken Birdwell. Birdwell's background was a bit unusual for
Speaker 1: the video game industry. He had actually made a name
Speaker 1: for himself developing software that would scan a person's foot
Speaker 1: so that a custom shoe in Soul company could design
Speaker 1: an insul for that person. So he was looking at
Speaker 1: technology to actually look at the contours of a person's
Speaker 1: foot in order to design insuls that would support that
Speaker 1: person inside a shoe. It's kind of cool, but he
Speaker 1: was the developer who actually created the skeletal animation system
Speaker 1: that drastically simplified the animation process. So instead of having
Speaker 1: to control all the elements of a body so that
Speaker 1: at you could animate things on a very granular level,
Speaker 1: the body ends up being essentially a skin laid over
Speaker 1: top a digital skeleton which has various joints and points
Speaker 1: of articulation. The skeletal animation system would end up indicating
Speaker 1: how those skeletons could move, and that was developed by Birdwell.
Speaker 1: Birdwell was even able to solve the problem of talking
Speaker 1: characters by creating virtual bones around the mouths and then
Speaker 1: animating those virtual bones, which sounds both fascinating and super
Speaker 1: duper creepy. By the time all of these modifications were done,
Speaker 1: the team was really working on a new game engine.
Speaker 1: It really wasn't Quake anymore, so they gave it a
Speaker 1: new name. It was called gold Source or g O
Speaker 1: L D s r C. Now, an early challenge for
Speaker 1: the team ended up not being technical in nature. It
Speaker 1: was all on the business side. See Valve was set
Speaker 1: up as a game developer coup, but they were not
Speaker 1: a game publishing company. Remember I talked earlier about their
Speaker 1: being developers and publishers, so they needed to find someone
Speaker 1: out there who could publish their game. They just couldn't
Speaker 1: handle that side of the business on their own, especially
Speaker 1: not as a startup, So Newell and Harrington started looking around,
Speaker 1: but they encountered resistance from a lot of established game publishers.
Speaker 1: They found this really frustrating. Newell mentioned that it was
Speaker 1: particularly difficult for him. He's had achieved really great success
Speaker 1: and respect within the world of Microsoft, and yet he
Speaker 1: was getting trouble even landing a meeting with some of
Speaker 1: these game publishers. He said it was really kind of
Speaker 1: insulting in a way, although if you think about it,
Speaker 1: he was moving from developing operating system software to developing
Speaker 1: game software. So from a publisher's standpoint, they were saying, well,
Speaker 1: this is apples and oranges. You you haven't proved that
Speaker 1: you know what you're doing in this world, so I
Speaker 1: don't really think that it's a good use of our time.
Speaker 1: But then they got lucky. Newell would end up writing
Speaker 1: to Ken Williams, who was one of the real pioneers
Speaker 1: of PC games and the founder of Sierra Online. Williams
Speaker 1: had been looking for a game in that three D
Speaker 1: first person shooter genre, something similar to Quake. He had
Speaker 1: resisted getting into that field when it first started launching.
Speaker 1: He wasn't sure that it was going to be very popular,
Speaker 1: and then he really regretted the fact that he didn't
Speaker 1: jump on it earlier. So when he got this email,
Speaker 1: he got excited because he had already been thinking about
Speaker 1: possibly getting into that realm and here was a company
Speaker 1: saying we're creating a game in that realm, but we
Speaker 1: need a publisher. Could we maybe work with you? And
Speaker 1: so Williams said, it was the right email at the
Speaker 1: right time. Now, I have a lot more to say
Speaker 1: about the early days of Valve Software in the development
Speaker 1: of Half Life, but before I get into that, let's
Speaker 1: take a quick break and thank our sponsor. So game
Speaker 1: Newell was given the chance to bring a team to
Speaker 1: Sierra Online and present Valves pitch to Sierra and say, hey,
Speaker 1: will you publish our game the day that they got
Speaker 1: the invite, the or the day they were supposed to
Speaker 1: have the meeting. It's snowed in Seattle. Now, this is
Speaker 1: not something that commonly happens in Seattle. Despite the fact
Speaker 1: that it's in the Upper Northwest, they actually don't get
Speaker 1: that much snow in the city itself, and as a result,
Speaker 1: the city kind of shut down. It's sort of the
Speaker 1: way Atlanta shuts down whenever we get snow, or more frequently,
Speaker 1: when we get ice. So there was some issues here,
Speaker 1: but Newell was absolutely determined to make this meeting, so
Speaker 1: he and his team piled into a four wheel drive vehicle.
Speaker 1: They skidded their way across town and they got to
Speaker 1: Sierra Online's headquarters, where there was all of one employee
Speaker 1: in the building. Fortunately, that one employee was Ken Williams,
Speaker 1: the guy who really mattered in the case of this
Speaker 1: particular conversation. So Newell would later on say that kid
Speaker 1: Williams was sold on the pitch and shut the presentation
Speaker 1: down early before they could even deliver their big finish,
Speaker 1: like the big push to get Sierra Online support. That
Speaker 1: was a great sign they landed the agreement. While Williams
Speaker 1: was instrumental in getting things moving, he actually would not
Speaker 1: stick around. He would end up leaving Sierra not long
Speaker 1: after this meeting took place, and Scott Lynch would then
Speaker 1: become the head of Sierra Studios, which become the new
Speaker 1: incarnation of Sierra Online. I have to do a full
Speaker 1: episode about Sierra at some point, I'm sure, because they
Speaker 1: were very important in the early days of PC gaming. Also,
Speaker 1: the relationship between Sierra and Valve would not remain rosy forever,
Speaker 1: but that is something will really have to explore in
Speaker 1: a future episode on this topic because it happens after
Speaker 1: this one ends. Spoiler alert. Well, it would be two
Speaker 1: years before this game, code named Quiver, would launch, so
Speaker 1: from nine the game is in development, and that game
Speaker 1: would become one of the benchmarks for the first person
Speaker 1: shooter genre, and it was of course called Half Life.
Speaker 1: The thing that really set Half Life apart from other
Speaker 1: first person shooter games of the era was the fact
Speaker 1: that it was so dependent upon story. Now, in the
Speaker 1: nineteen nineties, the first person shooter games that were coming
Speaker 1: out were pretty light in the story department. Typically, the
Speaker 1: story was reduced to just a basic premise. So here's
Speaker 1: an example in the first episode of Wolfenstein three D,
Speaker 1: which had three episodes. In the original game, you would
Speaker 1: play as a World War two American soldier who was
Speaker 1: trying to escape a fortress that was held by Nazis.
Speaker 1: That's it. That was the extent of the story. In Doom,
Speaker 1: you're a space marine who's fighting off demonic creatures in
Speaker 1: a futuristic setting, and that was pretty much the extent
Speaker 1: of the story in the first Doom game. Neither of
Speaker 1: those games had really much of a narrative attached to them.
Speaker 1: It was really just a setting, kind of a flavor
Speaker 1: and atmosphere for you to play through, but there was
Speaker 1: no real story developing throughout the game. Newell and Harrington
Speaker 1: wanted to make Half Life a completely different experience. Now.
Speaker 1: They weren't sure that their approach was going to work out.
Speaker 1: It wasn't a proven thing at all. No one had
Speaker 1: really done it. In fact, Newell would say in later
Speaker 1: interviews that he was more than a little anxious about
Speaker 1: putting so much focus on the story of Half Life.
Speaker 1: I mean, keep in mind, the company Valve was being
Speaker 1: funded through Newell and Harrington's stock option sales. They weren't.
Speaker 1: They have never accepted money from outside investors. It was
Speaker 1: always self funded and always a private company. So Newell
Speaker 1: knew that the emphasis up to that point was just
Speaker 1: how can I blow stuff up? He said, you know,
Speaker 1: he would say that people were more concerned how can
Speaker 1: I fire a rocket launcher faster in this first person
Speaker 1: shooter game than I could in this other first person
Speaker 1: shooter game. They weren't looking for story because no one
Speaker 1: had really done it yet. Newell knew that Half Life
Speaker 1: would need to have all the cool gimmicks and weapons
Speaker 1: that the other first person shooters had, but he also
Speaker 1: wanted there to be more to the game than just
Speaker 1: great level design and challenging enemies. They took inspiration from
Speaker 1: a Stephen King novella. It's called The Mist. It's coincidentally
Speaker 1: one of my favorite works by Stephen King, partly because
Speaker 1: when he writes in novella form, he has to be
Speaker 1: much more concise than he is as a novelist, so
Speaker 1: it's not as rambly as some of his other work.
Speaker 1: The story follows a father and son as they try
Speaker 1: to survive when otherworldly Missed appears to creep out from
Speaker 1: a secret military installation and envelope a small New England community.
Speaker 1: The founders of Valve liked that idea, this idea of
Speaker 1: a secret military research project where something goes terribly wrong,
Speaker 1: and that would be the core of their games conflict,
Speaker 1: but neither Nwell or Harrington had any experience in world
Speaker 1: building on that scale. They wanted to bring someone in
Speaker 1: who could really help guide the story and invent it
Speaker 1: along with their vision and create a really realistic setting,
Speaker 1: a believable setting, if not realistic, at least believable, and
Speaker 1: populate that setting with interesting, complex characters, so they recruited
Speaker 1: Mark laid Law to join the team as the story
Speaker 1: developer and script writer for half Life. Laid Law was
Speaker 1: born in nineteen sixty in Los Angeles, and like Harrington,
Speaker 1: he had attended the University of Oregon quote for a
Speaker 1: bit in quote. According to his own website, he worked
Speaker 1: in administrative support and was writing fiction on the side,
Speaker 1: in both short and long forms. He would join Valve
Speaker 1: in nine seven as their head script writer for games,
Speaker 1: and he would stay on with Valve until two thousand sixteen. Now,
Speaker 1: some of you may not be familiar with half Life,
Speaker 1: and I have to confess personally, I have never played
Speaker 1: the half Life games. It's one of the more egregious
Speaker 1: gaps in my PC gaming history. I have played a
Speaker 1: game that ties into the half Life universe, but that
Speaker 1: as close as I ever got, and that's going to
Speaker 1: have to wait till the next episode anyway, But what
Speaker 1: the heck was the story behind Half Life. The player
Speaker 1: controls the game's protagonist, a physicist named Gordon Freeman, and
Speaker 1: Freeman sets off a catastrophic event when he places some
Speaker 1: material into an anti mass spectrometer in order to analyze it.
Speaker 1: This process causes the whole thing to go boom in
Speaker 1: scientific terms, and this opens up a rift into another dimension.
Speaker 1: That dimension is called Zen x e n. It is
Speaker 1: then Freeman's mission to escape the lab. The lab is
Speaker 1: called Black Mesa Research Facility, and he has to fight
Speaker 1: off Zen critters as well as human marines who have
Speaker 1: been sent in to cover up the disaster before anyone
Speaker 1: outside the research facility can learn of it. Freeman eventually
Speaker 1: discovers that Black Mesa had already actually made contact with
Speaker 1: the Zen dimension before the rift opened up, so it
Speaker 1: wasn't totally his fault. He also learns that there is
Speaker 1: a massively powerful entity in the dimension that is keeping
Speaker 1: the rift open from the other side and sending in
Speaker 1: critters and waves into our dimension, and so it becomes
Speaker 1: Freeman's job to travel to the Zen dimension and kill
Speaker 1: this being, known as the Nihalanth or Niehlenth. I apologize
Speaker 1: because I've not actually played the game, so I don't
Speaker 1: even know how it's pronounced within the world of Half Life,
Speaker 1: and I could be wrong in both of those attempts,
Speaker 1: and I probably am. At the end of the game,
Speaker 1: Freeman is visited by a mysterious government agent who offers
Speaker 1: Freeman a job, and if the player accepts the job,
Speaker 1: the agent puts Freeman into stasis, you know, kind of
Speaker 1: like a cryogenic freezing sort of thing, and if the
Speaker 1: player refuses, the agent transports Freeman into an area filled
Speaker 1: with zen critters who will eventually overwhelm you and kill you.
Speaker 1: Spoiler alert, I guess for a game that came out so,
Speaker 1: I think nineteen years is a good a speriod, I
Speaker 1: think we're past it now. Honestly, to make the game work,
Speaker 1: Valve needed to populate it with characters who could talk
Speaker 1: with the main character and flesh out the plot in stages.
Speaker 1: They wanted to reveal the story as you played the game,
Speaker 1: and not just have a big data dump at the
Speaker 1: very beginning, and then Freeman would just be reduced to
Speaker 1: the role of a walking weapon. They wanted more than that,
Speaker 1: so in the beginning they weren't even really sure that
Speaker 1: they would be able to do this. If they would
Speaker 1: have the technical technical ability to create a game where
Speaker 1: the story is parsed out in bits and pieces as
Speaker 1: you play, so that unfolds as you experience it, Bid
Speaker 1: Birdwell's skeletal animation software would end up helping out a
Speaker 1: lot but they still had plenty to do so. Another
Speaker 1: technical challenge they faced was creating AI models for the
Speaker 1: enemies the players would face. They wanted the game's adversaries
Speaker 1: to use realistic tactics and work together rather than just
Speaker 1: rushing mindlessly yet the player. If you've played other early
Speaker 1: first person shooter games, you know that frequently the monsters
Speaker 1: or enemies you face just start firing at you as
Speaker 1: soon as they have line of sight, and that's it.
Speaker 1: They just wherever they are, they move in a certain way,
Speaker 1: and they fire at you. They wanted something different for
Speaker 1: Half Life. They wanted to have a way for the
Speaker 1: AI to work together so that you had to make
Speaker 1: really strategic decisions as you played the game, and this
Speaker 1: would also set Half Life apart from its competitors. The
Speaker 1: level design for the game was done in stages. First,
Speaker 1: the team would develop a general outline for each level.
Speaker 1: Designers would then create the architecture for that level using
Speaker 1: the game engine, and then the team would reconvene to
Speaker 1: create interactive elements in each level. Laid Law said that
Speaker 1: the process was both inspiring and terrifying because they were
Speaker 1: making all of this up as they were going along.
Speaker 1: There was no other game to follow as model. They
Speaker 1: were having to be pioneers in this field. Valve would
Speaker 1: announce the game in nine, although of course it would
Speaker 1: be another year before it would actually be released. They
Speaker 1: did do an early demonstration in my hometown of Atlanta, Georgia,
Speaker 1: because that's where E three nine happened, over at the
Speaker 1: Georgia Dome. I wish that I had been in the
Speaker 1: industry back in those days because I might have gone
Speaker 1: to that, But that was years before I got into
Speaker 1: writing and podcasting about technology. You can still find the
Speaker 1: teaser trailer that they showed for Half Life at that
Speaker 1: E three presentation. It's on YouTube. It's pretty primitive compared
Speaker 1: to the actual Half Life game that was eventually published.
Speaker 1: The trailer promised that the game's publication date was going
Speaker 1: to be November nine, which would turn out to be
Speaker 1: more than a little ambitious by the tune of a
Speaker 1: full year. Still, the limited gameplay the team could show
Speaker 1: off at E three was enough to win Half Life
Speaker 1: the title of best Game at the show, even though
Speaker 1: the game itself was far from complete. They really were
Speaker 1: just showing concepts and some general gameplay elements. Ultimately, as
Speaker 1: they got back to work at Valve. Sometime around August,
Speaker 1: they decided that the game really was not going to
Speaker 1: be ready for that holiday release that they had planned.
Speaker 1: Not only that, but they didn't feel like they had
Speaker 1: really made the best decisions in developing the game. They
Speaker 1: had spent a lot of effort creating the tools necessary
Speaker 1: to build the game, but they were doing that at
Speaker 1: the same time that they were building the game itself.
Speaker 1: They realized that they had really done great work in
Speaker 1: creating the tools, but that the game was nowhere close
Speaker 1: to what they had envisioned when they first set out.
Speaker 1: So they made a super tough decision, which was to
Speaker 1: scrap everything that they had been building. The AI, the levels,
Speaker 1: everything had to oh. The general idea, the story was
Speaker 1: the same, but they were going to rebuild everything using
Speaker 1: the tools that they had developed over the past year.
Speaker 1: So year one Valve was creating the tools set needed
Speaker 1: to build Half Life, whereas year one was supposed to
Speaker 1: be the development and publication of Half Life. It pushed
Speaker 1: them back quite a bit. This also created a little
Speaker 1: bit of a strain with their relationship with Sierra. The
Speaker 1: company had been expecting to publish a game at the
Speaker 1: end of as it turns out the developers said, sorry,
Speaker 1: we're starting over. They used what they learned building the
Speaker 1: early version of the game to reinvent it. Birdwell would
Speaker 1: describe Half Life as really being half life to the
Speaker 1: game Half Life that published. Birdwell says, well, that's technically
Speaker 1: half life too, because it was so different from the
Speaker 1: original version we built and then ultimately scrapped. So they
Speaker 1: said that while they could have released the original game
Speaker 1: and it would have been playable, it just wasn't what
Speaker 1: they wanted to accomplish in the company focused solely on
Speaker 1: getting Half Life developed and out the door. They had
Speaker 1: begun development on a second title called Prospero I assume,
Speaker 1: named after the character from Shakespeare's classic The Tempest. Prospero
Speaker 1: is a great character. Oh brave new world to have
Speaker 1: such people in it. Actually it's Prospero's daughter who says that.
Speaker 1: But never mind that anyway. Prospero was never meant to be.
Speaker 1: It was suspended indefinitely, ultimately canceled in favor of completing
Speaker 1: Half Life. Valve would push the publishing date for Half
Speaker 1: Life back a quarter, then another quarter, then another. Nuell
Speaker 1: would later say that Valve had basically messed up Sierra's
Speaker 1: quarterly results for five quarters in a row because of
Speaker 1: these delays, and that it was a source of embarrassment
Speaker 1: for him. However, in September, Valve published how Off Life
Speaker 1: Day one. This was a demo version of the game.
Speaker 1: It was not the full game. It was about a
Speaker 1: fifth of what the final game would be, so around
Speaker 1: of what Half Life would be. It was meant to
Speaker 1: be a demo for audio card developers and graphics card developers,
Speaker 1: and that was all it was meant to be. It
Speaker 1: was just supposed to be within the industry. It wasn't
Speaker 1: meant to be released to the public. However, it ended
Speaker 1: up getting leaked on the internet, as these things tend
Speaker 1: to happen, and so lots of people began to download
Speaker 1: the demo version of Half Life. That leak ended up
Speaker 1: being an incredibly effective marketing tool for Valve and Sierra.
Speaker 1: Valve had been pretty secretive about Half Life. They had
Speaker 1: shown off Half Life twice at E three, once and once,
Speaker 1: but that was limited and no one was really sure
Speaker 1: what to expect. But this leak demo suddenly impressed everybody.
Speaker 1: It impressed the people who pirated copies of it online
Speaker 1: and then impressed people within the industry itself. In fact,
Speaker 1: peers in the gaming industry started to heap praise on
Speaker 1: Half Life, including people who had previously dismissed Valve, saying
Speaker 1: that it was an upstart company that was never going
Speaker 1: to have anything to show for its efforts. It was
Speaker 1: just gonna fizzle out before they ever had a chance
Speaker 1: to create an actual game. They came back and said,
Speaker 1: you know what we were wrong. Half Life is amazing.
Speaker 1: It was the closest thing to playing an interactive movie
Speaker 1: that had been developed up to that point, at least
Speaker 1: within the first person shooter genre, and this was stuff
Speaker 1: that people who were working on developing competing first person
Speaker 1: shooters were saying about Half Life. Meanwhile, work behind the
Speaker 1: scenes was still going on. The last bits of coding
Speaker 1: fell to Harrington himself and his small team of programmers.
Speaker 1: They were seeking out bugs that were duction stopping bugs,
Speaker 1: stuff that could not ship with the game. This was
Speaker 1: back in the day where you needed to make sure
Speaker 1: you solved all those bug problems, or as many as
Speaker 1: you possibly could, before you shipped the game, because there
Speaker 1: wasn't really an easy way to develop updates and send
Speaker 1: them out. This was pre patch days. These days, when
Speaker 1: you buy a game, frequently there's a day zero patch
Speaker 1: where you buy the game, you install it on your machine,
Speaker 1: and then you spend the next forty five minutes downloading
Speaker 1: an update so that the game is actually playable. Well,
Speaker 1: in those days, you couldn't really do that, so they
Speaker 1: had to make sure that any bugs that were show
Speaker 1: stoppers were worked out. And there was a bug that
Speaker 1: was sort of preventing multiplayer matches from launching reliably, so
Speaker 1: Harrington and his team had to figure this out. They
Speaker 1: eventually were able to track down the problem to a
Speaker 1: single line of code and fixed it, and it was
Speaker 1: a good thing too, was an enormous relief. They were
Speaker 1: already four days behind when they were supposed to have
Speaker 1: launched the game, and Harrington and his team were under
Speaker 1: tremendous amounts of stress to locate and fix that bug,
Speaker 1: so they had definitely been feeling a lot of pressure.
Speaker 1: On November seven, Half Life shipped. It had most of
Speaker 1: the features the team wanted to include, but not all
Speaker 1: of them. For example, originally they hoped to allow players
Speaker 1: to map their own faces onto multiplayer characters for the
Speaker 1: purposes of online competitive multiplayer, but that just didn't happen
Speaker 1: at launch. They also wanted to implement what they called
Speaker 1: pain models, which will reflect damage done to specific body
Speaker 1: parts as opposed to just general damage to the entire body,
Speaker 1: but that also did not make the final product either.
Speaker 1: The day the game went gold, the Valve team got
Speaker 1: together for a party. The center piece of the party
Speaker 1: was a pinata in the form of a head Crab,
Speaker 1: which is one of the monsters in Half Life. The
Speaker 1: team members would take turns smashing open the head Crab
Speaker 1: using a crowbar, which is an iconic weapon in the
Speaker 1: Half Life universe. They ended up breaking it open and
Speaker 1: getting Monopoly money and wind up figures of South Park characters.
Speaker 1: That's what was inside the head Crab. Newell also talked
Speaker 1: about the next project that Valve would work on, and
Speaker 1: that project was Team Fortress Too. And wait, I hear
Speaker 1: you say Team Fortress Too. What about the original Team Fortress?
Speaker 1: Why go straight to two? What what happened to the
Speaker 1: first game? Well, Team Fortress was not originally developed by Valve.
Speaker 1: That was instead a game created by the Quake mod community.
Speaker 1: And while Team Fortress was a Quake mod, Team Fortress
Speaker 1: Too would be based off the Half Life software developer
Speaker 1: hit and it would also be one of several mods
Speaker 1: of Half Life that would make a life of its
Speaker 1: own and take off in ways that Valve could not
Speaker 1: have anticipated. And it would also uh turn out that
Speaker 1: developing Team Fortress Too would become a much more difficult
Speaker 1: task than Newell had anticipated. Much like Half Life ended
Speaker 1: up being more difficult than they thought, Team Fortress Too
Speaker 1: also took way more time than they expected. It actually
Speaker 1: took years longer than they anticipated. While they were working
Speaker 1: on Team Fortress Too, they were also creating a remake
Speaker 1: of Team Fortress itself, the Quake mod, this time called
Speaker 1: Team Fortress Classic, and this was based off the gold
Speaker 1: source engine that they had used for Half Life. As
Speaker 1: for the game sales of Half Life, those did really well.
Speaker 1: It became the fifth best selling computer game in the
Speaker 1: United States in n That's pretty impressive for a game
Speaker 1: cup that had never put out a game before, and
Speaker 1: it was a brand new first person shooter intellectual property
Speaker 1: and had never there was no sequel. It was brand new.
Speaker 1: It was a brand new experiment in storytelling, so there's
Speaker 1: a lot of new stuff going on here. So for
Speaker 1: it to become a bestseller right out of the gate
Speaker 1: was pretty phenomenal. That year, it sold four twenty three copies.
Speaker 1: By today's standards, that's tiny, but keep in mind this
Speaker 1: isn't an era where PC gaming was a much smaller
Speaker 1: niche market, and it ended up bringing in about sixteen
Speaker 1: million dollars in revenues, so for the first time the
Speaker 1: company was making real money and not just being funded
Speaker 1: out of pocket by Newell and Harrington. The game received
Speaker 1: critical acclaim as well, amassing dozens of Game of the
Speaker 1: Year awards in the process. Over the years, sales have
Speaker 1: increased with various ports and re releases, so these days
Speaker 1: we're talking more than nine million copies of the game
Speaker 1: have been sold in one format or another, which is
Speaker 1: a pretty impressive number by any stretch of the imagination.
Speaker 1: Now I have more to say about these early days
Speaker 1: at Valve Software, but before I get into that, let's
Speaker 1: take another quick break and thank our sponsor. So Newell said,
Speaker 1: and and ask me anything or a m a on
Speaker 1: Reddit that he viewed Half Life as a series of regrets,
Speaker 1: insomuch as he was heavily involved in the game's development
Speaker 1: and in multiple stages they had to trade off on
Speaker 1: things they wanted to include in the game for the
Speaker 1: sake of expediency and stability. Specifically, he said, quote, the
Speaker 1: issue with Half Life for me is that I was
Speaker 1: involved in a much higher percentage of the decisions about
Speaker 1: the games, so it's hard for me to look at
Speaker 1: them as anything other than a series of things I regret.
Speaker 1: He went on to say that everything you see in
Speaker 1: the game is the res alt of something else being
Speaker 1: sacrificed so that that could be in the game, and
Speaker 1: that sometimes it was really hard to make those sacrifices,
Speaker 1: and that Newell felt that those sacrifices were more personally
Speaker 1: impactful because of his level of decision making in the
Speaker 1: development of that game. Specifically, now half Life secured valves
Speaker 1: place in the gaming world. They were clearly a dominant
Speaker 1: player as soon as Half Life shipped. But obviously this
Speaker 1: is not the end of their contributions. It was really
Speaker 1: just the beginning. So let's talk about a couple of
Speaker 1: other elements before I conclude part one of this series.
Speaker 1: As I mentioned, moments ago, Newell had announced that the
Speaker 1: next project would be Team Fortress, to a team based
Speaker 1: first person shooter game in which players compete in teams
Speaker 1: against other teams. A red team and a Blue team,
Speaker 1: and various game types like territorial control or Capture the Flag.
Speaker 1: Each player can choose one of nine classes, with each
Speaker 1: class having different abilities within the game, and strong teams
Speaker 1: would rely on classes that complement each other. Some of
Speaker 1: them would be more effective against enemy classes than others,
Speaker 1: which adds a bit of strategy on top of the
Speaker 1: twitch based skills necessary to perform well at first person
Speaker 1: shooters in general. Shortly after the release of Half Life,
Speaker 1: Valve acquired Team Fortress Software Limited, and they brought the
Speaker 1: Team Fortress creator team over to join Valve Software. These
Speaker 1: guys got on board at just the right time, because
Speaker 1: the company ended up holding its first of many company vacations.
Speaker 1: Gabe Newell had promised his employees that if Half Life
Speaker 1: was a success, there would be a full company vacation
Speaker 1: to someplace nice. That's someplace nice ended up being Cabos
Speaker 1: Son Lucas in Mexico, so thirty employees went on that
Speaker 1: vacation with zero children. This is actually from the official
Speaker 1: Valve Software Employee Handbook, which by the way, is a
Speaker 1: fascinating read, and that again was the first of many
Speaker 1: company vacations at Valve. Sounds like a pretty nice perk
Speaker 1: to me. Although you would be worked to death leading
Speaker 1: up to that vacation, it was a well earned vacation.
Speaker 1: People who stuck with Valve they deserved it, trust me.
Speaker 1: While the developers that Valve were hard at work on
Speaker 1: the next titles, the company was also paying attention to
Speaker 1: the mod community. Valve had decided that they were going
Speaker 1: to support mod communities, very much like other developers had,
Speaker 1: such as in Software and three D Realms. These were
Speaker 1: companies that knew that people who were modifying games were
Speaker 1: passionate about the gaming industry, and that supporting those players
Speaker 1: would end up creating loyal customers, and they kept an
Speaker 1: eye out for the best examples of mods that were
Speaker 1: on the community, because if they were really good, they
Speaker 1: would actually reach out and acquire those mods. They would
Speaker 1: pay money to the creators and say you did great work,
Speaker 1: and we appreciate it, and we would like to market
Speaker 1: this under our company name, and so we will purchase
Speaker 1: those rights from you, which is pretty cool, assuming, of course,
Speaker 1: that the deals were all on the up and up.
Speaker 1: I have no reason to assume otherwise. By the way,
Speaker 1: in Valve released an expansion pack for Half Life called
Speaker 1: Half Life Opposing Force. Now, I'm not gonna cover every
Speaker 1: single release that Valve created or all the different expansion packs,
Speaker 1: but this one I felt was particularly interesting. This game
Speaker 1: took a different approach to expanding that original material of
Speaker 1: Half Life. Rather than playing Gordon Freeman for an expansion pack,
Speaker 1: the player would take control of an invading soldier attempting
Speaker 1: to breach Black Mace Up and deal with the Zen problem.
Speaker 1: So this gave players even more story to explore and
Speaker 1: examine the events of Half Life from a completely new perspective.
Speaker 1: I think that's really cool that you can play a
Speaker 1: character who technically would be an antagonist in the realm
Speaker 1: of the original Half Life and learn what was going
Speaker 1: on from that side of the story and open up
Speaker 1: a whole new element to the mythology of Half Life. Again,
Speaker 1: very innovative compared to what a lot of the other
Speaker 1: first person shooters were doing at the time. Having learned
Speaker 1: from their experiences with Half Life and with the help
Speaker 1: of the original Team Fortress creators, Valve was able to
Speaker 1: release Team Fortress Classic near the end of n Now,
Speaker 1: as I make these notes, I have the Steam charts
Speaker 1: up on my computer. So the Steam charts is kind
Speaker 1: of an ongoing analysis of the games that players are
Speaker 1: playing using the Steam platform. So today, eighteen years after
Speaker 1: Team Fortress Classic debuted, there are on average about fifty
Speaker 1: seven people playing Team Fortress Classic online. Now, I know
Speaker 1: that fifty seven is a very small number, but it's
Speaker 1: also kind of incredible to think that a game that's
Speaker 1: nearly two decades old still has people playing it online
Speaker 1: to this very day. Also incredible is that Team Fortress
Speaker 1: two would be delayed until two thousand seven. So I
Speaker 1: remember I was talking about here Team Fortress, to which
Speaker 1: game Newell said was gonna be the next big project
Speaker 1: out of Valve, would not come out until two thousand
Speaker 1: and seven. But more on that in the next episode
Speaker 1: of this series. I think a really good place to
Speaker 1: kind of conclude this episode is in the beginning of
Speaker 1: two thousand, because that's when Mike Harrington, the co founder
Speaker 1: of the company, decided to step down from Valve Software.
Speaker 1: He dissolved his partnership with Gabe Newell, and this was
Speaker 1: not due to some sort of feud or problem between
Speaker 1: the co founders. According to everybody, this was an amicable partning.
Speaker 1: A major reason contributing to Harrington's decision to leave Valve
Speaker 1: was that the company was clearly going to move ahead
Speaker 1: and start to develop a sequel to Half Life. And
Speaker 1: the first game was a major success, and Harrington was
Speaker 1: really proud of it, but he wasn't sure if he
Speaker 1: wanted to devote so much of his time and effort
Speaker 1: and energy into developing a sequel, particularly when developing a
Speaker 1: sequel comes with added pressure you need to outperform your
Speaker 1: original title. Nobody wants a sequel that is less impressive
Speaker 1: than the original title, and unfortunately that happens more often
Speaker 1: than not. Harrington knew this, and he knew that it
Speaker 1: was possible to make a better game, to make a
Speaker 1: game worthy of being a sequel, but he wasn't sure
Speaker 1: that he was up to all of that effort after
Speaker 1: dedicating so many hours, sleepless hours, to getting Half Life
Speaker 1: out the door. So his first challenge really was to
Speaker 1: create a new type of first person shooter with an
Speaker 1: emphasis on story. His new challenge would be to do
Speaker 1: that again, but more betterer, so to speak, and he
Speaker 1: just wasn't sure that he was capable of that or
Speaker 1: if he really wanted to try, So he decided he
Speaker 1: would leave Valve and spend some time with his family.
Speaker 1: On January two thousand, Harrington left Valve Software. True to form.
Speaker 1: Earlier that day, he clocked out after checking his final
Speaker 1: line of code. He didn't just come in and resign.
Speaker 1: He actually finished up his full days of work day
Speaker 1: of work before he left the company. Harrington said later
Speaker 1: that this decision, while it was the right one for
Speaker 1: him at the time, still was not an easy one.
Speaker 1: It was emotionally difficult to let go of the company,
Speaker 1: but he felt that he had a amblished his goal
Speaker 1: and that was better to leave on a high note.
Speaker 1: For his co founder, A. Game Newell, it was also difficult.
Speaker 1: Valve would continue on after Harrington's departure, but Newell couldn't
Speaker 1: even dream of retiring. He said that he felt he
Speaker 1: needed to work in order to stay sane. He couldn't
Speaker 1: just stop and do nothing. Mike and Monica Harrington, on
Speaker 1: the other hand, commissioned a seventy seven ft boat they
Speaker 1: named the m V Meander, and they set forth to
Speaker 1: sail the world, which they did for the next few years.
Speaker 1: Harrington's story with Valve would end in two thousand, but
Speaker 1: Harrington himself would go on to do much more. So.
Speaker 1: Let's talk a little bit about what he then did
Speaker 1: after Valve and wrap up his part of this story.
Speaker 1: In two thousand five, he co founded the company bit Nick,
Speaker 1: which had a product called pic Nick, P I C
Speaker 1: and I K, an online photo editing tool. Harrington spent
Speaker 1: nearly five years there. He would move on to work
Speaker 1: for Google for a year as an engineering manager because
Speaker 1: Google would acquire the company Picnic, and in two thousand
Speaker 1: twelve he would leave to co found a new software
Speaker 1: company called cat Nip Labs, where he works as the
Speaker 1: chief Technology Officer. He's also the CTO for a Committee
Speaker 1: for Children in Seattle, which is I think pretty darn
Speaker 1: awesome to dedicate his talents to uh a an organization
Speaker 1: like Committee for Children. Now, in our next episode, we'll
Speaker 1: look at valves evolution in the post half life era,
Speaker 1: which will also include a discussion of the incredibly disruptive
Speaker 1: platform called Steam. In the meantime, if you guys have
Speaker 1: suggestions for things that you would like me to cover
Speaker 1: on future episodes of tech Stuff, whether it's a technology,
Speaker 1: a company, a personality. Maybe there's someone you want me
Speaker 1: to interview or a person you would love to have
Speaker 1: on as a guest on Tech Stuff, Let me know.
Speaker 1: Get in touch with me. My email address is tech
Speaker 1: Stuff at how stuff works dot com, or you can
Speaker 1: drop me a line on the social media platforms as
Speaker 1: long as they are Facebook or Twitter because of the
Speaker 1: two I use, and I use the same handle at
Speaker 1: both of those for this show, it's called text Stuff
Speaker 1: h s W. Also, you can join me at twitch
Speaker 1: dot tv slash tech stuff and watch me record these
Speaker 1: shows live. I record on Wednesdays and Fridays. The schedule
Speaker 1: is at twitch dot tv slash tech Stuff. Tune in.
Speaker 1: I chat with you guys in the chat room. I
Speaker 1: make mistakes, I fumble over things. Sometimes I yell at
Speaker 1: my producer you're missing out on all the fun. So
Speaker 1: join me, won't you, and I'll talk to you again
Speaker 1: really soon. One