I might be an outlier, but I'm extremely attached to the Half-Life series and while it's difficult to not get HL3, I'm also not currently disappointed in any game in the series. If the only thing I have to be disappointed in is the release cadence, then I'm probably okay with that?

Someone in a Reddit thread pointed how Valve's structure reduces the fragility of a product by not basing it on one vision and that their games are based on a pretty pure collaborative effort. A writer becomes inherently less influential on the final product, but their individual contribution is more passionate and worked. One could argue for hours about the approach, but I think the results speak for themselves.

There's plenty of other counterexamples of that though – visionaries with a singular vision being able to get a team to help them create something amazing. Not saying one is better than the other, but it'd be a damn shame if amazing stories like Portal don't get more airtime because of collective lethargy. It's too good to let flounder!

I'd suggest checking out "Half-Life 2: Raising the Bar" to learn about their design process. It's fascinating. There can absolutely be visionaries out there... Miyazaki, Kojima, Miyamoto are probably the top three right now. But there's a ton that are kinda went out with a whimper such as Molyneux, Wright, Carmack, Romero, the Housers, Schafer, Sweeney.

I think abstraction is key. There's gotta be a happy medium between absolute control or almost a sense of worship and not allowing a singular person to guide the ship.

The key is not about how many people are guiding the ship, it is about their overall abilities.

A BDFL is great if the dictator is competent. A committee is also great if the committee is competent (overall).

Most people don't have what it takes to be a BDFL. But a few do. And for those people, the answer is to take good notes and get the hell out of their way.

Perhaps with a leader structure Valve might grow more to accommodate such projects?

Seems like a remarkably valuable piece of IP to not regularly exploit.

I kind of respect that valve isn't just a sequel farm pumping out Portal games.

I would like a new Left 4 Dead though...

A huge number of clues point to L4D3 being developed at Valve for many years now. The question is whether that effort is actually still progressing and whether there's a chance to have it finished anytime soon.

Please let this be true! L4D is such an amazing party game!

Isn't that the whole point? How do you get priority at a company changed to do what you want without ordering or paying your coworkers? This isn't 1997 were you could make videogames with 20 people.

> This isn't 1997 were you could make videogames with 20 people

With recent advancements in design and tooling, this could be a possibility again.

You most certainly can make videogames with 20 people or less. You cannot make AAA videogames with 20 people or less.

The current best example of this small team methodology is Stardew Valley.

I think stardew was made by a sole person, not a team.

It had one main developer with outsourcing of some asset creation. He may have added help as time went on.

But 1 < 20.

The flat structure is probably a double edged sword when it comes to getting traction.

You're ideas are less likely to be vetoed, but good like finding a champion other than yourself.

But I think that it's probably exaggerated - there are always hierarchies, but in this case no attempt has been made to define or force the structure.

I think that the bigger issue is this: Valve is a platform and distribution company, not a games company.

As the platform became the primary product, broad artistic creativity took a backseat.

I don't see it coming back, which is a pity - The Orange Box was exquisite.

Only anecdotal, but there may be cultural problems stemming from the flat structure at Valve that make organizing around products difficult. This video came out 4 years ago so I don't know if anything's changed since then, but it's one ex-employee's experience of their work culture at the time.

Basically he claims that even though there's a flat corporate structure within Valve, in practice an implicit management structure arose in which those with the most political clout controlled others without it. Plus they used stack ranking at the time.

https://youtu.be/41XgkLKYuic

This happened at a place i used to worked at as well, a supposedly "flat company" without hierarchies.

The implicit hidden hierarchies - based partly on charisma and friendship - increased the effort to do anything, and especially the mental stress of having to keep the double-think alive.

I think for less socially adept people these companies are a nightmare. The entire direction of the company was decided by a cliquie implicit power holders with no accountability, as these could always play on the "flat structure and we all share responsibility and accountability"