Too Big to Fail (Gaming)

by Cody Miller , Music of the Spheres - Never Forgot, Wednesday, April 06, 2016, 14:09 (3160 days ago) @ dogcow

Portal was conceived and developed as a final project in a college by IIRC 4 people. Gabe newell interviewed them, had them show it off, and hired them all on the spot. Then they re-made it into what is now the first portal.

And did you play narbacular drop? It was shitty and primitive (which is fine, they were students). So Valve took them in, and used its resources to make what is now a classic.

That four person team didn't even get the mechanics right. You could shoot portals through portals rendering the game stupidly easy. Valve decided to make it so you couldn't, thus actually making the game a challenge.

Yup, I played narbacular drop. It was a lot of fun, and yes, it needed spit & polish. The innovation didn't come from Valve, the spit & polish came from Valve, the innovation came from a small number of people with the initial concept.

I mean, the only reason anyone has even heard of it is because of Valve. It's not a classic, but a footnote. Without Valve it'd just have been forgotten. Precisely because they had an idea, but not the resources to properly execute. I am not diminishing their creativity, but simply acknowledging you also need a great deal of money plus great ideas to make a cutting edge game.