Several bright young engineers have been swiped up to work for Valve. Yes, that Valve, the game company. Amongst them are [Jeff Keyser] aka [Mighty ohm] and [Jeri Ellsworth], both names that we have seen on these pages many times. We’ve heard that Valve is a fun and very unique company to work for. Apparently there’s no solid hierarchy.
What we, and everyone else in the universe wants to know is what they are building! There were rumors and speculation of a game console that were quickly squashed. [Michael Abrash] let out some information in an interview that he was doing R&D into wearable computing. He also points out that he was not making a product. So, let the speculation begin!
We asked [Jeri] if this meant she couldn’t publish her own hacks anymore due to contractual agreements, but she said that she can still do them and has some cool stuff coming out soon.
“What we, and everyone else in the universe wants to know is what they are building!”
Fingers crossed they’re making real Portal guns!
Hopefully nothing evil is really going on here, but when I try to view the video, I get this:
Potential Clickjacking / UI Redressing Attempt!
NoScript intercepted a mouse or keyboard interaction with a partially hidden element.
I think this would have been the more appropriate video to link to, given the topic. ^_^
What’s he building in there?
WTF, is Valve really this mistical company hiring bright people and just telling them to spend time doing stuff they love? Sounds like Patronage.
Its straight out of my “what would I do if I had bajillion dollars” handbook.
Jeri is very talented – nice to see her efforts will not be hidden under a NDA. *fingers crossed*
Does anyone know if they are still hiring?
I doubt they are ever “not hiring”.
Haha true. I was wondering about the hardware position that Jeri and others were hired for. They must have got a thousand applicants after it was blogged everywhere that Valve is doing hardware.
Well, this is my new life goal.
Have a look at this valve publication on biofeedback in gameplay: http://www.valvesoftware.com/publications/2011/ValveBiofeedback-Ambinder.pdf
This should give you a good idea as to what sort of hardware they’re looking to develop.
So THIS is what they were talking about while mentioning diferent prices for games depending on if you are a nice person :o :)
They NEED to be working on Half-Life 3.
I saw the source code for half-life 3 yesterday… :)
Nobody disputes that source code exists for HL3 (or Ep3).
Ellsworth + Valve? This is going to be good.
We know one thing they’re not building: anything ending in 3.
Reading down the required skill set, ARM/x86 system bring up, FPGA for ASIC prototyping, RF layout all kinda stand out as indicators that they might be building a console of some sort. I was stumped by HDMI input though.
Passing though video from a regular console? Could be just some kind of anti-piracy dongle or it could be some totally awesome kind of haptic feedback that needs a ton of data bandwidth that bluetooth or usb can’t manage.
Or could be a high-resolution video camera input. Like 1080p60.
Yes, I think your assumption is spot on.
– Robot
They also hired Ben Krasnow. http://benkrasnow.blogspot.ca/
http://www.youtube.com/user/bkraz333
He’s the genius who built his own electronic microscope. I’ve been following his channel ever since and am still impressed by what he can come up with. He’s an information sponge! He’s knowledgeable in electronics, chemistry and physics. I’m really curious as to what he’s doing at Valve! In the comments of one of his videos, he once said that he wasn’t working on software, but that he couldn’t say more.
“. He’s an information sponge! He’s knowledgeable in electronics, chemistry and physics”
Well then… Portal guns are still a possibility :P
Where did you get the graphic used for this post? Do you have a version that’s readable? It looks amusing.