When I put up my first post, back in April, I was immediately buried in email. Over the next few months, I gradually dug out from under the pile, responding to most of the people who had written. However, there were a few hundred that I put in a folder for later, and there they sat until it seemed too late to respond. A lot of those emails were from people asking how they could get into the game industry, or what they should do to get hired at Valve, and for them, the best answers I can give are in this post and the Valve Handbook. If you mailed me back in April, and if after reading the above links and the blog to this point your question or topic remains unaddressed, please send your mail again – my turnaround time is much better these days.
I'll post here whenever there's something about what I'm doing or about Valve that seems worth sharing. The initial post is an unusual one - it's long, my attempt to distill the experience of my first year and a half at Valve - but I think it's well worth reading to understand what I'm doing, why I'm doing it, and the context in which it's happening, and just to understand more about Valve in general.
Michael Abrash is the author of several books, including Zen of Code Optimization and Michael Abrash's Graphics Programming Black Book, and has written columns on graphics and performance programming for several magazines, including Dr. Dobb's Journal and PC Techniques. He was the GDI programming lead for the original version of Windows NT, coauthored Quake at Id Software with John Carmack, and worked on the first two versions of Xbox. He is currently working on R&D projects, including wearable computing, at Valve. He can be reached here.
Why virtual isn’t real to your brain
May. 15 2013
Slides from my Game Developers Conference talk
Mar. 30 2013
Game Developers Conference and space-time diagrams
Mar. 20 2013
A Good Post by John Carmack about Latency
Feb. 23 2013
Raster-Scan Displays: More Than Meets The Eye
Jan. 28 2013
Latency – the sine qua non of AR and VR
Dec. 29 2012
A bit of housekeeping
Dec. 2 2012
When it comes to resolution, it’s all relative
Nov. 27 2012
Valve in the New York Times
Sep. 11 2012
Virtual Insanity at QuakeCon
Aug. 10 2012
An Interview from QuakeCon
Aug. 9 2012
Why You Won’t See Hard AR Anytime Soon
Jul. 20 2012
The New Valve Economics Blog
Jun. 15 2012
Do What You Love
Jun. 7 2012
What Valve Looks for When it Hires
Apr. 27 2012
I’m Not Dead, Just Buried
Apr. 19 2012
With all the stories I’ve heard about Valve and how they run their business, I would NEVER want to work there.
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..
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No, just ‘working’ wouldn’t cut it for me. I would want to LIVE there instead. 8:)
The handbook is classic Valve. Hey, congrats to you and the crew on BIG PICTURE MODE! You guys don’t ever sit still, do ya? (I know the feeling, I hate sitting still)
For the people who wanted to get in the games industry,
I have a sure fire method for getting in (worked for me):
1) Learn programming and love programming for programming’s sake.
2)Make games… if you managed a bit of simple console programming and you can’t see ways of leveraging that skill to make a game then you have already failed.
That’s all you really need. but here is a few more steps you can take to help you along:
3) Learn mathematical subjects covering(but not limited too)
vectors!, radians , trigonometry, matrices and quaternion’s.
4) Learn about the development cycles for games from the artists to the programmers.
5) If you have the option to go to university then GO! these days it’s like a mandatory hall pass.
6) Everything you make will suck… to you, show your work to everyone! they can tell you if you are right.
7) “Ok programming is all well and good but I’m more of an idea guy…” we all are, my mum is as well. All good designers know a discipline or two. You have to start somewhere, and programming is the best place.
8)To indie or not to indie? well consider this: being an indie game dev is like gambling you could score big much bigger than any studio guy would earn but most of the time that doesn’t happen and you barely scratch a living. it’s something best left for when you have some spare time and cash.
9)Be VERY nice to people in the games industry, you would be surprised how small a world it is, something you will find out quite quickly if you upset the wrong person.
10) Make games, did I say this already? well it bears repeating if you are not making games or tech demos then you are missing the point, it’s not about the destination is about the journey.
If any of that discouraged you from trying… well that is probably a good thing.