Now, the founder of Valve Software, makers of the acclaimed “Half-Life” series and Steam digital distribution system, says he believes Apple could make Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo’s consoles irrelevant at some point in the future.

Read more at Variety’s Technotainment blog

To be honest, I’ve had a hard time thinking about what I could say about this game that hasn’t already been said. Team Fortress 2 has a huge following, has reached above and beyond meme status, and has it’s own Wiki. I highly recommend looking up the TF2 wiki and reading a bit about the different characters/roles and about the game play.

There are two teams of combatants made up from a mixture of the following roles: Soldier (who’s pretty tough and carries a rocket launcher), Scout (the fastest moving of all the roles), Pyro (burns everything with a flamethrower), Engineer (builds health/ammo dispensers and turrets), Medic (heals teammates), Spy (turns invisible and disguises as the enemy), Sniper (kills you from far,far, away), Heavy (slow moving tank with a minigun), Demoman ( grenade launcher and explosions galore!)
Using the awesome power of teamwork (hopefully), your team accomplishes a set goal depending on the style of play you’ve selected. The three main types of play are Capture the Flag, Control Points (holding key points on the map), and the Cart Push (which is one team pushing a bomb across the map and the other team trying to stop them).

What’s awesome about this game isn’t that it’s free, or that the first person shooter style of online multi-player is intense and addictive, or that it’s beautifully rendered in a Norman Rockwell meets Dexter’s Laboratory way, it’s that the focus is on teamwork. Team it’s right there in the name of the game, and without it, without that teamwork you’ll fail again and again. The characters you can choose from all have very specific strengths and weaknesses which cause them to rely on each other for support. This built in “buddy system” makes you care about these funny cartoon bad-asses and their friends. The most obvious match-up is the Heavy and Medic characters.

By knowing what the different strengths and weaknesses of the roles are, you can place yourself in a position that covers the weakness of another player and your own at the same time. The classic pairing of the Medic and Heavy that I mentioned for example, has the Medic watching the slow moving Heavy’s back for spies while healing his injuries. In exchange, the Medic gets front row seats to the gun show. With a Medic behind him, the Heavy is a near unkillable walking mountain of death, and is more than capable of defending his little Medic friend.

Much like Chess, the pieces (or players in this case) are used as a part of a strategy and are ultimately expendable as long as the main goal is reached. Killing, while it is part of the game, is not the main focus. Even while playing on team RED and defending capture points or keeping BLU from pushing the cart, it’s about running out the clock and preventing them from achieving their goal. I played a “Push the Cart” game on team RED as an Engineer and got three guys on team BLU to chase after me for thirty seconds while I ran way from the cart. Yeah, they killed the Hell out of me, but I kept three players from doing anything useful for thirty seconds and RED won when time ran out.

Yes, there will be plenty of times that you’ll play this game and your team won’t work together, or they’ll all run off to kill the other team when they should be pushing the cart, or whatever. It happens. It’s not easy to get a group of people to work together, but when it happens it’s fantastic. There will be times when all you want to do is shoot the other team, but then you’ll see that your team is all Heavys and Soldiers crying out for a Medic. You run out there and start saving lives as the battle turns in your teams favor. Hell, that may have been the final push you needed to win the game, and it’s all thanks to you pal. Congratulations, you’ve been named MVP just by showing up.

I’ve included a replay of me playing a Pyro during a Point Capture match. That flare gun I keep using isn’t standard equipment, but it’s one of the first unlockable items you’ll get for the Pyro.

Now strange as it seems, the Wiki definition of Cabal is far more sinister than how Valve put it to work. In fact, over ten years ago, while we were all fuddling about drawing process maps to the nth degree here we have the Gaming Industry version of Social enterprise restructuring and internal collaboration in action in 1999 !

“The first few months of the Cabal process were somewhat nerve wracking for those outside the process. It wasn’t clear that egos could be suppressed enough to get anything done, or that a vision of the game filtered through a large number of people would be anything other than bland. As it turned out, the opposite was true; the people involved were tired of working in isolation and were energized by the collaborative process, and the resulting designs had a consistent level of polish and depth that hadn’t been seen before.

Internally, once the success of the Cabal process was obvious, mini-Cabals were formed to come up with answers to a variety of design problems. These mini-Cabals would typically include people most effected by the decision, as well as try to include people completely outside the problem being addressed in order to keep a fresh perspective on things. We also kept membership in the initial Cabal somewhat flexible and we quickly started to rotate people through the process every month or so, always including a few people from the last time, and always making sure we had a cross section of the company. This helped to prevent burn out, and ensured that everyone involved in the process had experience using the results of Cabal decisions.”

What was interesting was that when they created the Cabal Process they threw out job descriptions because they found them too constraining (and couldn’t hire externally the people they required because of them).

“Instead, we would create our own ideal by combining the strengths of a cross section of the company, putting them together in a group we called the “Cabal.”

This concept supports my own ideas about losing traditional hierarchical structures in an organisation and using community models instead.

Read the full article, whether you’re a gamer or not, because it’s an eye opening parallel. But more importantly it’s been proven to work and shows that we are in fact latecomers to the Social scene.

When Valve created Half-Life they adopted the Cabal, which according to Gabe Newell, President and owner of Valve Software, stated “the people involved were tired of working in isolation and were energized by the collaborative process, and the resulting designs had a consistent level of polish and depth that hadn’t been seen before.”

“The simple answer is that hierarchy is good for repeatability and measurability, whereas self-organizing networks are better at invention,” Gabe said, “There are a lot of side effects and consequences. The lack of titles (roles) is primarily an internal signaling tool.”

Central to the game’s premise is the concept of a device that can create “portals” between locations, enabling you to walk through one magical hole and emerge anywhere else. Add a physics engine and some crafty puzzles to that idea and it becomes an engaging, addictive adventure that’s strikingly different from normal first-person-shooter fare.

It also becomes fodder for the imagination of fans — including director and Totally Rad Show co-host Dan Trachtenberg, who began shooting a short film inspired by the franchise two years ago. Following a premiere for TRS fans at Comic-Con, he posted it to YouTube (s GOOG) this week.

Using, among other things, Terminator 2 as an inspiration, Trachtenberg’s take on Portal strips the franchise down to its central elements — a girl and her portal-making gun. This means that No Escape lacks the whimsical humor of the original games, which is the primary criticism of the short, based on Twitter and Facebook commentary that I saw. Instead it has flawless visual effects that capture perfectly the potential of the Portal gun in a film context. For the first time, I believed that Portal as a movie could actually work.

I’m not the only one who feels that way. The film caught fire upon its release on Tuesday, receiving huge blog coverage, massive amounts of retweeting and a YouTube front page feature. It was even aired in full on cable channel G4′s Attack of the Show (I am currently a writer for the show but had no involvement in the decision to air it). As of writing, it had over 3.5 million views and nearly 150,000 thumbs-up ratings.

Most of the commentary surrounding No Escape‘s release online has taken the form of “Someone just give Trachtenberg a whole bunch of money and let him make a real Portal movie already.” And these days, that’s not such a strange idea — indeed, there’s some precedent for that path, the most recent example being Kevin Tanchareon’s take on Mortal Kombat.

Mortal Kombat: Legacy started off as what would technically be a fan film (despite the participation of Star Trek: Voyager’s Jeri Ryan and Michael Jai White) and then was picked up as a 10-episode web series by Warner Bros. And sure, a web series isn’t a feature film. But Mortal Kombat: Legacy, which was distributed by Machinima, has received more than 46 million views, according to a Machinima spokesperson.

The question is, though, Is it really possible for Portal to get the same treatment?

In an interview with the blog Very Aware, Trachtenberg not only mentioned his inspirations but also addressed that criticism I mentioned earlier, about No Escape’s lacking the Portal games’ quirky humor:

Well it’s certainly redundant to say I love the game and its universe, but to be honest, I was more excited about seeing the technology in the game in a different world. The video game is very whimsical and somewhat cartoony — I really wanted to explore the idea of taking the fundamentals of Portal and placing it in a much grittier, serious place.

Going gritty was also part of what impressed Warner Bros. about Tanchareon’s take on the Mortal Kombat franchise. But what was truly key to the web series’ getting greenlit was the fact that Tanchareon brought a fresh approach to the concept. There will be those who argue that it’s not really Portal without an insane AI playfully threatening to murder you at the start of every level. Those people might include the folks at Valve, which appear to retain the film rights for the franchise. But with No Escape, Trachtenberg has shown Valve that if it wants someone with an original voice to adapt the franchise, he’s probably the right man for the job.

Really, my views on the first amendment are simple. Don’t touch it. Ever. If someone does something idiotic like the pastor that burned to Quran, either use voluntary media silence or find something else to punish him for. Idiocy, maybe. It’s tough for me to care about these revolutions happening on the other side of the world, and I don’t have much to say about what they’re doing or how they’re doing it. I enjoyed listening to the Valve representative. I enjoy their products and I’ve seen firsthand the ideas he was talking about in action. I think other digital industries should follow suit. Stop suing college students and figure out a way to make your product better. The man publishing a slang dictionary admits himself that slang is very fleeting. I can’t help but think that because it’s so fleeting and, most of the time, trashy, it’s pointless to waste time assembling and researching the origins of each word. The psychology behind it and more broad aspects make sense, but cataloguing individual words seems pointless. I’m more in support of urban dictionary. It is less refined and seems not to take itself so seriously. Plus, its user generated, so I don’t think it’s such a waste of resources while being just as useful.

In May Valve has made available the first part of the Portal 2 soundtrack, now the fans can download the second part of the soundtrack for free. The third part will be available soon.

Fortunately, my little brother’s friend brought his copy of the game over for Xbox 360, and we delved into the first story campaign.  It took a mere ten minutes to be reminded how great the first Left 4 Dead game was.  After twenty minutes I put the controller down and drove to Electronics Boutique to buy the game.

Double-Take

I played the first Left 4 Dead on PC and it looked fantastic.  Let it be known that the sequel on Xbox 360 doesn’t look nearly as good as the first one did on my PC.  The Source Engine is finally starting to show its age, and to some 360 gamers this will be a fatal flaw.  Despite the graphics not making the greatest first impression, the game functions perfectly on a mechanical level.  Valve and Turtle Rock also manage to keep the core gameplay elements the same, while improving on almost every other aspect of the first game.  New weapons, more options, wider branching paths, and additional enemy types all add new dynamics to the relentlessly paced campaigns in Left 4 Dead 2.

When I sat down and tried to figure out what it was that made Left 4 Dead 2 different than other games, I factored out all of the minor improvements to the mechanics.  The improvements help justify the price tag, but Left 4 Dead 2 (just like its predecessor) is about the cooperative experience.  It really does feel like your team mates are counting on you with life and death at stake.  It’s more intense than any other cooperative gaming experience I’ve had up to this point, and that intensity almost makes you forget you are playing a video game.

Left 4 Dead 2 = Portal 2?

It is important to remain skeptical of quick sequels (think of Tony Hawk), but sometimes studios do rush out a follow-up that’s worthy of your money.  If you are like I was and still haven’t given L4D2 a chance, compare the L4D sequel with the Portal sequel.

Portal 2 came out 4 years after the first game (compared to the one-year difference with L4D).  One could make a somewhat objective argument (although I won’t do it here) that L4D2 introduced as many new mechanics as Portal 2.  I also found Portal 2’s story to be weaker than the first game, whereas L4D2’s stories were much better than in the first game.  Don’t get me wrong, at this point Portal 2 is my game of the year 2011, but the argument could be effectively made.

Left 4 Dead 2 has officially won me over, and I haven’t even jumped into the online features yet, which I’m sure will only heighten my respect for Valve.  If you skipped over this game when it was released in 2009, but were a fan of the first Left 4 Dead, I strongly suggest picking it up ($20 at EB/Gamestop) and giving it a second chance.  It’s definitely proven to me that my skepticism was unfounded and that Valve will continue to put out only high-quality titles.

Whether you’re a mega-science corporation with decades of test experience, or a young start-up liberating your first test subject from non-testing with a chloroform-soaked rag, Aperture guarantees results. Wake up your test subject, open the chamber door, and press play–let Aperture’s patent-pending rhythmic compliance enhancers do the rest.

The sound track can be downloaded free from the official site.

The first game is Left 4 Dead (and its creatively titled sequel Left 4 Dead 2) by Valve. I play with my friends some of the time, some of the time solo. Playing with random strangers online isn’t really my thing. Aside from getting kicked whenever they feel I’m slowing them down by not knowing every map by heart, it just doesn’t feel the same to play with some random ppl I probably won’t and wouldn’t even like to play with again. But the gameplay itself is great. Hordes of fast zombies, melee weapons, explosions. If only there was more destructible terrain and different routes through the levels…

The other game is an online thing I found on Kongregate, called Rebuild; it’s a mid-zombie apocalypse game where you… rebuild. Colorful graphics and named population, missions to slowly retake the city. Turns into a lot of tedious micromanaging towards the end of the game, but as I often play this kind of games to keep my hands and eyes occupied while listening to ted talks or watching movies or something, it’s not that big a deal for me.

But these games got me thinking… What if there was a game where we band together, some random ppl from the same online community, irl friends, whatever – and retake a city, block by block, from zombies? This would mean going into buildings and clearing out any zombies, fending off attacking hordes, and stuff. New, strange zombies that jump over the fences and palisades? Sickness among the humans, need to raid a hospital or pharmacy outside the safe zone? Find some people while exploring outside the safe zone, zombies or survivors? Human population need to expand beyond the safe zone? Need more ammo?

As I envision it, it’d feature a city map akin to that in Rebuild, and whenever someone decides the survivors need to get something from the outside, a mission is marked on the screen. Anyone interested and agreeing with the mission may join. Think of the map as a lobby for individual games. Those games, on the other hand, would be more L4D-style. Find medicine X, bring it back. Kill as many zombies as you can, get back alive. If we wanna go by the L4D rules, we could even pit different communities against each other, one always playing as the zombies vs another community’s survivors. And by zombies I mean something akin to the special infected of L4D, tho preferably with the option of playing as a group of regular zombies (or a clown leading a bunch of them as in L4D2).

That would be cool. Actual mechanics of expanding the safe zone, determining non-mission events (like the need for medicine), character handling, research, and whatever else would up to whoever would make such a game, but I’d be interested in playing it. Why is the end of the world as we know it so appealing to a computer-addict like me?

On a related note, the first season of The Colony is pretty cool (didn’t get into the second season), and the occasional episode of Worst Case Scenario I’ve seen has been interesting.

Never again will you have to resort to grunts and potentially lewd hand gestures. Replay-enabled servers record every round of the action, allowing you to make movies of your awesome performance (and the embarrassing performances of others) in the Replay Editor, using different camera angles, sexy motion blur and antialiasing.

You can even upload your opus to YouTube™ from within the game, and share your uploaded movies on Steam. At long last, you can give conclusive proof to your Steam friends that their suspicions were right on the money and you are terrible at video games.

Download: [MP3]
Subscribe: [iTunes]  [RSS]

I am rather annoyed at the whole situation, annoyed at both sides of this ridiculous battle and the consumers who just wanted to enjoy their copies of some big titles that saw release. I bought Portal 2 after a rather hefty price slash across several retailers across the board, including Amazon; the same with the new Mortal Kombat (I ordered the Xbox 360 version). Hell, this should have been the time for SOCOM 4 to bring down the PlayStation Network servers, not a bunch of hackers who have it in their heads that they’re doing something right in the name of one of their own. When that affects consumers who wanted nothing to do with this argument, and can’t get the full service that they paid for with their console, all that goes out the window.

Of course, Sony has fumbled around, running like chickens with their heads cut off and not keeping anybody updated right away. I’m addressing this now as there is now rumor of yet another attack. Honestly, as an Xbox 360 owner the Sony issue didn’t affect me too much. I am in the camp that extensively purchases the Xbox 360 version of games with a co-op or competitive mode, but the whole Steam connect is what drew me to the PS3 copy of Portal 2. Now that I am technically now affected by this outage, the attacks, the nonsense on both sides, I just want to yell for everyone to get their act together. I have little sympathy for Sony, to be honest, but the hackers acted as if their actions weren’t going to have consequences in the end and negates their cries of “We never meant to hurt the users.” Yeah. Great ball-handling there and astuteness of seeing the big picture, you idiots.

Ridiculous. All of it.

I’ve been looking forward to talking about this interview (which I posted about yesterday), because it was such a fun one for me to have to opportunity to conduct. Peter Konig is a charming and delightful guy, in addition to being an amazing talent. He’s a conceptual designer, visual effects artist and animator who’s contributed to such films as Dragonheart (1996), Starship Troopers (1997), Enchanted (2007), Cloverfield (2008) and Splice (2009), as well as the video games Portal 2 and Left 4 Dead 2. Peter is also an accomplished fine artist, and it was wonderful to learn a little more about that side of his work. Especially if you’re an artist, sculptor or interested in film effects or creature design, check the interview out here on The Idler – Interview: Visual effects artist, conceptual designer and animator Peter Konig

I think people are surprised or skeptical that I get such a proverbial boner from doing interviews. But talking with creative people about their work and process is one of my favorite things to do, so doing it within a structured setting where I can tunnel a bit into aspects of the subject’s work that are maybe underexposed or not thoroughly covered elsewhere is something I kind of relish. I find that in online interviews there can be a tendency toward laziness on the part of the interviewer, because the online format creates this illusion of casualness, making interviewers sometimes rattle off generic questions to really fantastic people who deserve more in-depth treatment in an interview forum.

The best types of interview questions don’t just ask for the same basic information that anyone could access by looking up a subject on Wikipedia. A thoughtful interviewer should offer that very basic information already in the question (or intro), and then use that as a springboard to a more complex question tailored to their subject and his or her works. All creative people have fascinating things to say about craft if you give them the platform and opportunity to share it. Additionally, interviews with artists and writers are often going to be read by other artists and writers—both established and aspiring—so thinking up a couple questions that other, mindful creative people might ask if they had the opportunity is a nice way of making sure the interview will reach an audience.