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VALVE specifications

Overview

Valve is an entertainment software company founded by Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington and based in Kirkland Washington. Valve's debut product, Half-Life, released in November, 1998, has won more than 30 Game of the Year honors worldwide and has been called "a smash hit" by the Wall Street Journal. Half-Life is published by Sierra Studios.

Products

Valve's debut game release is Half-Life™. Their next product will be Team Fortress 2.

team specifications

Members of the Valve staff come from the states of Florida, Virginia, California, Washington, and New York, and the countries of Texas, England and Australia. They collectively define sunlight as "that which makes a computer monitor difficult to see" and free time as "when we get to play games instead of making them."

Gabe Newell
Founder/Managing Director

Gabe held a number of positions in the Systems, Applications, and Advanced Technology divisions during his 13 years at Microsoft. His responsibilities included running program management for the first two releases of Windows, starting the company's multimedia division, and, most recently, leading the company's efforts on the Information Highway PC. His most significant contribution to Half-Life was his statement "C'mon, people, you can't show the player a really big bomb and not let them blow it up."

Mike Harrington
Founder/Director of Development

Mike's development career began at Dynamix, where he worked on a variety of sports titles for GameStar/Activision. He spent the last nine years at Microsoft working as a developer or lead developer on OS/2, Windows NT and Microsoft Bob v1 and as a development manager on Microsoft Bob v2 and Microsoft News Viewer. Mike was pleased to learn that resistance is not, in fact, futile.

Ken Birdwell
Senior Software Development Engineer

Ken has contributed to a wide range of projects in the last 15 years. These include in-circuit emulators (CodeTap), 3D surface reconstruction (Surfgen), 3D prosthetics design tools (Shapemaker), and satellite networking (Microsoft's Broadcast PC). He also wrote one of the first graphical shells for multiplayer on-line games for Compuserve's Sniper. Oddly enough, Ken has a BFA from Evergreen State University, where he studied painting, photography, and animation. Ken designed and implemented the skeletal animation system and many other engine components for Half-Life.

Monica Harrington
Director of Business Development

Monica has been in the software business for fourteen years, eleven of them at Microsoft, where she was most recently a senior marketing manager in the Interactive Media Group. At the time Mike and Gabe decided to start Valve, Monica had just taken a job as the group marketing manager for Microsoft's consumer software businesses, including games. She decided to change jobs so she could continue to pump Mike for inside information on head crabs, houndeyes, and alien slaves. Monica's maiden name is Harrington. She claims Mike changed his name.

Harry Teasley
Game Designer/Level Designer/Artist

Harry came to Valve from Shiny Entertainment, where he was working on the upcoming game Wild 9's. Prior to Shiny, Harry was at Williams Entertainment where he was lead artist and designer for PlayStation Doom, and was lead designer for Doom64. Before Williams, Harry worked with Sid Meier at Microprose on Civilization as well as Pirates Gold, among other projects.

Chuck Jones
Illustrator/3D Artist

Chuck joins Valve from Apogee/3D Realms where he was an artist and animator for Duke Nukem 3D, Rise of the Triad, Shadow Warrior and, most recently, the Duke Nukem Plutonium Pack. Formerly a tattoo artist, Chuck tagged Jerry Cantrell of rock group Alice In Chains long before he created the space aliens who invaded Los Angeles.

Ted Backman
Art Director/Conceptual Artist/Illustrator/Animator

Ted has been a freelance artist and animator in the Seattle area for the last four years. Ted developed many of the more unusual monsters for Half-Life, including the Head Crab, Mr. Friendly and Big Momma. He is also a black-belt karate instructor.

Kelly Bailey
Senior Game Designer, Sound, Music

Kelly did all of the music and sound effects for Half-Life, and wrote sound code to create character speech and DSP reverb effects. He spent last Summer and Fall working primarily on Half-Life game design. (Translation: spent 6 months in a big, trashed corner office, all day & night with Guthrie, Casali & Riller eating bad food, making bad jokes, working out tons-o-puzzles, and never ever seeing the sun. It was great.) There is a vicious rumor that at one time he was an engineering manager at "a large software company in the Pacific Northwest." However, he has long since had the Borg implants removed, and is feeling just fine now.

Dario Casali
Level Designer

Joining Valve from England, Dario is a world-famous level designer. His work includes some of the most popular deathmatch levels on the Internet, as well as Final Doom, published by id Software.

Steve Bond
Game Designer/Engineer

Having made the great trek westward from Fort Walton Beach, Florida, Steve is responsible for much of Half-Life's sophisticated monster and entity behaviors, of which the squad-level AI is his favorite. Steve worked with John Guthrie on several projects that demonstrated the power and flexibility of the QuakeC development environment, which caught John Carmack's attention, who in turn referred him to us. Before that, Steve worked at a local Internet service provider and delivered pizza, a fact that we rarely let him forget, even in his corporate bio.

John Guthrie
Game and Level Designer

Along with Steve Bond, John started the influential and popular Internet gaming site, Quake Command. John was also the co-creator of Quake Airplane and Quake Kart and constructed many of the chambers and corridors in the Black Mesa Research Center.

Brett Johnson
Level Designer

Brett's craftsmanship as a musician is matched only by his ability to create traps which snare, snag and frag unwary explorers in 3D environments. Valve™ lured Brett mid-way through his final year at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a promising career in biochemistry. A hard-assed New Yorker, Brett continues to deny Seattle's claim to being the birthplace of espresso.

Karen Laur
Illustrator/Texture-Maker/Artist at Large

Karen has contributed to Starwave Corporation's Castle Infinty and Eastwood, and Activision's Zork Nemesis. She was the sole creator of Materia Prima, a texture collection published by the Valis Group, and was head designer for Maya Romanoff, a prestigious producer of hand-made wallpaper. Karen was also owner/operator of the Washington DC restaurant, Dante's.

Randy Lundeen
Level Designer/Graphic Designer

Randy comes to Valve by way of Microsoft, where he worked as an interface designer for the Internet Gaming Zone. Randy designs some of the most unusual and original levels in the company; he also is the most likely person to be pushing the polygon and memory limits of our engine. In his distant past, he was a key staff member at a potato processing plant (his responsibilities including peeling and potato quality oversite).

Dave Riller
Level Designer

Prior to joining Valve, Dave was an active developer in the on-line Quake community, and worked with id Software on the deployment of Quake World. For his day job, Dave was a program designer/analyst at MSI, a Windows software developer located on the East Coast. He also ran their website. Dave has been a beta tester for Doom 2, Hexen, Quake, and Warcraft II. In his virtually non-existent spare time, Dave is a pilot and musician.

Marc Laidlaw
Writer/Game Designer

Marc Laidlaw is the author of half a dozen strange novels, including Dad's Nuke and The 37th Mandala. He is also the person most responsible for making sure the edgy and intense Half-Life storyline worked in the game. While writing a cover-story about Quake for Wired Magazine, he determined that level designers had the coolest jobs on earth--although the fact that he'd been working as a legal secretary for 10 years might have warped his perceptions very slightly. Oddly, he refuses to do anyone else's typing.

Jay Stelly
Senior Software Development Engineer

Jay joined Valve from Tetragon where he was lead engineer and 3D engine developer of Virgin's Nanotek Warrior. Before that, he developed titles for Sony Playstation & 3DO. Way before that, he wrote his first computer game (at age 9) and had a game published in a magazine (at age 15). A native of Cajun Country, Jay finds Northwest buildings too hot (what, no air conditioning?) and the food not hot enough.

Douglas R. Wood
Animator/Modeler/2D Artist

Doug joins us from Apogee/3DRealms where he worked on projects such as Duke Nukem3d, Shadow Warrior, Prey (before everyone left) and the Plutonium/Atomic Edition for Duke. Before 3DRealms, he worked for Origin down in Austin. As far as we know, Doug is the only member of Valve who has ever been a Guardian Angel in New York City. Doug is responsible for many of Half-Life's scripted sequences, including tentacles that pull unsuspecting scientists through the ceiling.

Steve Theodore
Game Designer/Animator

Steve Theodore comes to Valve from FASA Interactive in Chicago, where he made BattleMechs (tm) for FASA Interactive's MechCommander and the ill-fated MechWarrior III. He's probably the only animator you'll ever meet with a degree in Roman History and a reading knowledge of ancient Greek. Despite his professorial manner, Steve was a member of Chicago's famous art-rock trio, "The Chimps" and was feared and hated by his former landlady.

Yahn Bernier
Software Development Engineer

Yahn was an Atlanta patent lawyer with a degree in chemistry from Harvard. So obviously he ended up in Seattle developing computer games. He taught himself to program at the age of 12 and, more recently, developed what we at Valve have called "that other level editor," BSP. Now that he's getting paid to make games, he figures he'll practice law in his spare time (little does he know). Yahn is working on Half-Life's multiplayer code, and is currently hard at work on Team Fortress 2. His favorite phrase, when imbibing too freely, is "Yucca will assimilate you."

Robin Walker
Game Designer/Development Engineer

Robin co-wrote the popular Quake mod TeamFortress with John Cook and Ian Caughley, before being assimilated when Valve acquired TeamFortress Software. He's now hard at work on the TeamFortress 2 design and game code, and has no time to answer email, so please don't send him any. Easily identified by the large inflatable kangaroo mounted on his monitor, Robin has no idea how to relax now that his hobby has become his job.

John Cook
Software Development Engineer

Formerly of TeamFortress software, John is lead programmer on the TeamFortress 2 project. Before that, John studied computer science at RMIT in Australia. John is apparently still suffering jetlag from the move to Seattle, as he doesn't seem to be able to make it in to work until past noon.

Charlie Brown
Software Developer

Charlie earned his reputation within the gaming industry while working for 3Dfx Interactive and later Ritual. A Ft. Walton Beach, Florida native, Charlie graduated from the University of Florida in the summer of 1994 and then headed for California and 3Dfx. His responsibilities there included developer support, ports of products to hardware, sample code and simple demos, and ultimately working with 3Dfx Developer Relations managing the engineering game porting effort. After a 2-year stint, Charlie left 3Dfx with college-friend Gary McTaggart to create the Uber(tm) Engine at Ritual Entertainment in Dallas, Texas. Shortly thereafter, Charlie and Gary left Ritual to start their own company. Valve subsequently contacted Charlie (and his friend Gary) with an offer "they couldn't refuse."

Gary McTaggart
Software Developer

Gary left the University of Florida in 1995 to pursue a career in programming at 3Dfx Interactive as employee number 11. While there, he created demos that were used to show the potential of Voodoo Graphics hardware. The most notable of these demos are the Valley of Ra and Wizard's Tower. Additionally Gary worked as developer support for other game companies wanting to get the most out of 3dfx's hardware. Gary left 3Dfx with Charlie Brown for a short stint at Ritual Entertainment. After working at Ritual, Gary and Charlie decided to start a new company and do contract work for Electronic Arts. Later, Gary decided that Valve would be the ideal place for him to be able to work on great games and technology without having to worry about the day-to-day operations of a business.

David Speyrer
Software Developer

David has a BSEE from Louisiana and six years of experience in network and serial communications software development and project management. PC games have been David's passion since he started programming at the age of 11. David was living and working in Boulder, Colorado, when he played through "Half-Life: Day One." Soon he was packing his belongings and putting his house up for sale. David now says that Valve was about the only thing capable of compelling him to leave Boulder's rock climbing and 300 days of sun per year. An eternal optimist, David is convinced that the sun will come out "any day now" so that he can go climbing.

Dhabih Eng (pronounced ZA-bee)
Artist

Dhabih, who's been playing games since he was six years old, has a degree in Interdisciplinary Art from the University of Washington. He started making a name for himself by doing freelance design work for gaming magazines (Electronic Gaming Monthly, Official Playstation Magazine, PC Gaming World) while still in school. Dhabih has also done web design and worked on the Quake2 TC pack "Zaero" from Team Evolve. He started at Valve by doing freelance work in mid-1998, and signed on full-time in early February of this year. Dhabih is truly a world citizen, having grown up in six different countries (Australia, Macau, Canada, China, Taiwan, and the USA). You can find out more about Dhabih and check out some of his work by visiting his website, www.sijun.com.

Jenni Grant
Community Liason

Jenni joined Valve after working as the director of marketing for Monolith Productions, the developers of Blood, Blood 2 and Shogo: Mobile Armor Division. Prior to Monolith Jenni worked in project management, marketing and international development for Aldus (before the company was acquired by Adobe Software), managing projects such as FreeHand 3.0 and the first localization of PC PageMaker into Brazilian Portuguese. She was the director of educational marketing for Edmark, a children's software company, for four years, and also spent six years as a high school French and Spanish teacher.

Aaron Stackpole
Network/Systems Administrator

Aaron magically appears whenever there are computer problems. With a background in game and level design, Aaron's status as a Microsoft Certified Professional with over eight years of computer software and network support experience makes him a valued ghost around the offices. His work for the Gunman TC has brought him acclaim in what he laughingly calls his spare time... Aaron also became the proud father of twin baby girls on September 14, 1998.

Mona Lisa Guthrie
Office Manager

Mona comes to us by way of Florida. She spends her time pretending to work at the front desk, ICQ'ing the entire development staff, and forgetting to send faxes. She has a nice haircut, so we forgive her.

Collectively, the Half-Life™ team has contributed to the creation of the following titles:

Aces of the Pacific Bat's Entertainment Castle Infinity Civilization Countdown DCK (Doom Construction Kit) Doom Special Playstation Edition Doom 64 Double Dragon V Dr. Floyd's Desktop Toys Duke Nukem 3D Duke Nukem Plutonium Pack Eastwood F-15 Strike Eagle F-15 II Final Doom Fling! Fun 'N' Games Gunship 2000 Internet Gaming Zone Magic: BattleMage Materia Prima Texture Library Microsoft Access Microsoft Bob

Microsoft Excel Microsoft Windows Microsoft Windows NT Microsoft Word MSN Muppets Inside Nintendo Power Magazine OS/2 Pirate's Gold Quake Command Rex Nebular Rise of the Triad Shadow Warrior Sidewalk.com Sniper Star League Baseball Star League Basketball Stellar Fire Sting: All This Time Take-A-Break Pinball Wild 9's WorldCraft Zork Nemesis