Valve Studio Tour: From Old To New

[Schlup]

Over the last decade, Valve's reputation and sales numbers have grown by leaps and bounds. Franchises like Left 4 Dead and Portal have been introduced to fantastic critical and commercial reaction, resulting in the company as a whole growing in size. As such, they started to outgrow their 38,000 sq. ft. studio in Bellevue, Washington. This month, the entire studio packed up and moved down the road a bit to a brand-new location that will be almost three times as big when it's all said and done.

Check out our video below to see the old studio pre-move, the new studio under construction, and finally, the finished product.

Video @ this link...
http://gameinformer.com/games/portal_2/m/portal_2_media/272494.aspx

[tehfunk101]

lol @ Gabe.  Sittin 2 feet away from a 50" screen, that guy is awesome lol

[Schlup]

I know...that screen was awesome...I have to get one!

[NavyChief]

Did you see the beanbag chair he was sitting on? Looked comfortable. 

[Monkey_Grill]

Portal 2!

I wish I could work at a place like that :/

[NavyChief]

I would gain too much weight. Did you see that fully stocked snack room!! 

Heaven!!

[Schlup]

Yeah it would be alright, but it's not all fun and games, they actually have to work and program code and stuff!

[cygnus]

Ya, sure they do!  Eat, drink, and test video games.....man, I would rather be unemployed......NOT!!  

[Schlup]

There's only a few that test video games.  There are many many more that are coders for video games, they have to manually enter code, then figure out how to fix bugs when they pop up, it would be rather monotonous in my opinion.

[cygnus]

There's only a few that test video games.  There are many many more that are coders for video games, they have to manually enter code, then figure out how to fix bugs when they pop up, it would be rather monotonous in my opinion.

Oh it is, believe me!  I took programming in College.  I used to hate staring at pages and pages pf code, spend hours tearing hair out trying to figure out where I put an extra apostrophe or colon....I certainly do miss COBOL    (no, that is not a type of meat!)

Still, at least they get to try the games out I am sure......before anyone else does - that's a cool perk!!

[Schlup]

Yeah, I used to take programming in college too.  In fact that was my major for some reason (my advisor was an idiot).  I remember sitting in my RPG-400 class getting pretty close to the end of the semester and one day I just asked the teacher, "Why am I in here?", and she was like, you want to be a programmer, and I said, "No I don't, especially not in a language that was written in 1950 and is already extinct (my teacher was very old, although very good at RPG-400)", long story short, I never went back to that class and I had words with my advisor as well.  I wanted to do networking and he was putting me in programming classes telling me they were required when they really weren't, unless I wanted to be a programming major.  But yeah, back to RPG-400, we did our coding on sheets of paper, we didn't even use a computer in the class until over half way through the semester.  Even then we had to go to the computer lab because there wasn't one single computer in our classroom.  And the RPG-400 programming had to be done into the AS-400 system!

[cygnus]

AS/400!!  I used to service those boxes @ IBM!!  Great machine I must say. 

I never heard of RPG-400, sounds like a gun or something  .  I was doing cobol, Rexx, Objectect Oriented and some other programs that I just don;t want to remember.

I pretty much did the same thing.  I got a summer co-op term at IBM running the Customer Carry-in shop and doing service calls...much more enjoyable so I never went back for my last term of programming.  Let someone else pull their hair out. Although today's code is a lot more user friendly by far, I do not miss it at all.

[Schlup]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_RPG

[Mr.Wood]

I THINK i just got a new dream job. I'd never EVER call in sick! Stomach flue, screw that.. WORK!