The Number One Educational Resource for the Game Industry
| Session Name: | Valve's Design Process for Creating Half-Life 2 |
| Speaker(s): | Brian Jacobson, David Speyrer |
| Company Name(s): | Valve Software, Valve Software |
| Track / Format: | Production |
| Overview: | Valve used a method of decentralized design, the Cabal process, to create HALF-LIFE. For HALF-LIFE 2, owing to the larger scope and scale of the project, they changed that process into an even more decentralized method employing three nearly-independent design teams (each responsible for roughly a third of the game), an art team, a sound team, and a story/acting team. This process introduced some interesting challenges: How to manage and reduce the cost of interdependencies among the six teams? How to allow each team to apply important constraints to the design? How to create a consistent design of high quality? The talk covers the answers to these questions and how Valve made this unique design process work. |
Recommended
