Valve Unveils "Pipeline", Training Teens to Develop Games

[Gahars]

Valve is beloved for its quality titles and excellent games distribution service (Steam, if you're not hip and in the know like me), but they're also infamous for constant delays and excruciatingly long development cycles. They're also incredibly secretive, so while we may know they have some serious stuff in the works, we can't be certain of exactly what it is.

Well, as it turns out, one of the projects Valve had in the pipeline was... well, Pipeline.

Valve Pipeline is a new project from the company to help those students who want to make games, but haven't really started their professional journey yet. A handful of teenage students will be working at Valve to create a website for aspiring developers, while learning the ropes of basic development from some of the best in the industry.

Pipeline itself seems to be an online guide to getting into the game development industry. At the bare minimum it will include FAQs and a forum for discussing routes into the industry and how to prepare for a career making games. The twist is that the entire site is being built from the ground up by the very people it's targeting - with some help and mentoring from the staff at Valve, of course. Valve has never spent much effort training industry newcomers, so the project is also an experiment on its part to see just what this younger generation can do.

Read more at The Escapist

Idealistic project to encourage young people towards video game development, or a sinister front for the ritualistic sacrifices fueling Half Life 3's development? You decide.

Valve is known for hiring only the best and brightest in the industry; getting the chance to "work" in the company's offices is a serious privilege and an honor. This is a huge opportunity for these kids; I must admit, I am most "jelly" at this moment.

I do have to say that I'm a bit skeptical. I mean, it's a nice thought, Gabe, but I think the youngsters of today are into a different sort of "pipe line", if you know what I am saying.

 

[Deleted User]

Valve now has an excuse if Half-Life 3 is shit.

 

[nukeboy95]

url for the site http://pipeline.valvesoftware.com/

 

[ilman]

I wonder what they'll teach. If it's free, I'd gladly go down the Pipeline.

 

[FAST6191]

Valve makes steamship internship and gives them busywork that has already been done and it amounts to news*?

*If it was not I would have moved it already.

 

[TyBlood13]

So that's where HL3 is...


Stuck in the pipeline

 

[Taleweaver]

I do have to say that I'm a bit skeptical. I mean, it's a nice thought, Gabe, but I think the youngsters of today are into a different sort of "pipe line", if you know what I am saying.

...and those youngsters of today will be the gamers of tomorrow (insofar that they aren't already the gamers of today, that is). It could very well be a good learning process for valve as well.

I wonder what they'll teach.

I would think they expand on the technical side of what extra creditz is taking a stand on each week. Probably (and in fact: hopefully) they don't get into actually learning programming code - that should be basic entry stuff - but more on what comes to the daily life. Learning to work with others, how to get your game greenlighted (yeah: that's obviously a given), standards that has to be followed for a game to be good, how to make a name for it, what to do if you want to publish it to one of the big three, game theory...it's a huge-ass profession if you look at it from afar.

 

[Clydefrosch]

I'd guess they somehow save millions doing this.

 

[FAST6191]

I'd guess they somehow save millions doing this.

There are reasons other than cheap/subsidised labour to hire interns?

 

[Sop]

what the fuck is that black ide I always see in these sorts of videos

 

[shakirmoledina]

with scratch and app inventor from MIT, can these guys beat the simplicity and 'funness' that they have?

OKAY after looking at the video, its just going to teach you how games are made... theoretically

PS - why is everyone just talking about half life 3

 

[Clydefrosch]

There are reasons other than cheap/subsidised labour to hire interns?

While I'm not strictly thinking about labor costs, I don't think there's any other reason than saving money here. But enlighten me if you got a good idea.

 

[Taleweaver]

While I'm not strictly thinking about labor costs, I don't think there's any other reason than saving money here. But enlighten me if you got a good idea.

Erm...no. Sorry. I honestly try to follow that train of thought, but I can't catch on. Why don't you enlighten us on that idea?

See...most jobs have routine, administration and certain routines that could be outsourced so the ones working it could focus on their task more. But unless you're talking bureaucratic sorts of jobs (like the ones governments sometimes tend to have), that side of the job is pretty minimal. You claim it to be millions. That would, in effect, mean that valve is currently wasting millions of dollars by having inefficient processes. It would also mean that those interns are NOT learning about making games, but to actually do the dull, tedious work of bug fixing, stack pointer localisations, version checks and that sort of things.

Now...I do NOT believe that is the case. And I do not believe that on the reason that they are hiring teens. The average teen today has a knack with technology and social networks (ESPECIALLY the ones they're aiming to recruit). If Valve is really using a sort of propaganda to lure in youngsters to do the "down and dirty work" of gaming...correction: to do JUST the "down and dirty work" of gaming*...then the world will know this soon enough.

And even then...millions? Jeez...talk about exaggeration. I'd actually be amazed if they can get the effort valve has put into creating those lessons into an actual profit somehow (after all: most if not the only part of their income is in revenue from games).






*of course there will be bug fixing, planning, meetings on art style and distributors and everything else that isn't designing or coding the actual game. But there's a huge difference if you're doing it for you own game, or if you're doing it because some senior programmer has thrown it your way.

 

[The Milkman]

with scratch and app inventor from MIT, can these guys beat the simplicity and 'funness' that they have?

OKAY after looking at the video, its just going to teach you how games are made... theoretically

PS - why is everyone just talking about half life 3

Because nobody on GBAtemp PC games enough to know anything about Valve other than HL3.

 

[Jaems]

what the fuck is that black ide I always see in these sorts of videos

From most of the shots it's hard to tell, but they look like they're using regular text editors with syntax highlighting and the color schemes changed to dark.
At 1:10 he's using Sublime Text for sure. Not an IDE, but a nice text editor for editing single files.

Kinda amusing how this video is all about Valve and game development/programming, but you can see in that shot they were just doing the CSS for the Pipeline website.

 

[Ericthegreat]

Valve is beloved for its quality titles and excellent games distribution service (Steam, if you're not hip and in the know like me), but they're also infamous for constant delays and excruciatingly long development cycles. They're also incredibly secretive, so while we may know they have some serious stuff in the works, we can't be certain of exactly what it is.

Well, as it turns out, one of the projects Valve had in the pipeline was... well, Pipeline.

Read more at The Escapist

Idealistic project to encourage young people towards video game development, or a sinister front for the ritualistic sacrifices fueling Half Life 3's development? You decide.

Valve is known for hiring only the best and brightest in the industry; getting the chance to "work" in the company's offices is a serious privilege and an honor. This is a huge opportunity for these kids; I must admit, I am most "jelly" at this moment.

I do have to say that I'm a bit skeptical. I mean, it's a nice thought, Gabe, but I think the youngsters of today are into a different sort of "pipe line", if you know what I am saying.

I like the idea, but I wonder if they are just teaching them web development.... I have seen many places say that people should at least know html/javascript before going into somthing like java, or c++ but in the end there is a big difference between web development/design and programming in general. For game development I find it much better to get the students and let them create a small game together. As then they learn how to debug program, and the idea behind taking a concept to reality. Tho it does say that they will learn game design concepts from the best, so maybe.

 

[Jaems]

I like the idea, but I wonder if they are just teaching them web development.... I have seen many places say that people should at least know html/javascript before going into somthing like java, or c++ but in the end there is a big difference between web development/design and programming in general. For game development I find it much better to get the students and let them create a small game together. As then they learn how to debug program, and the idea behind taking a concept to reality. Tho it does say that they will learn game design concepts from the best, so maybe.

I sincerely doubt Valve would attract young students under the guise of preparing them for working in the gaming industry and then just teach them... web development. That would seem counter-productive.

Anyway, it's not necessary at all to learn web markup prior to getting into programming/game development. As you said, they are completely different fields.

 

[Enchilada]

Valve is full of surprises...

 

[McHaggis]

I wish Team17 (local to me) had done something like this when I was a kid trying to code in AmigaBasic... sadly, the closest I got to working with them was securely wiping data from one of their laptops before sending it away for repair. Not that they've done anything good lately, but I always thought it would be an easy route into games development.

 

[nukeboy95]

After reading the new employee handbook it looks like it would be fun to work there
I might try to get in after college