Valve: A top game company with 100% "Go Boss"

A 300-man company, how can it be done without the CEO but well run and innovative? The valve you are about to introduce today may not be as familiar to you as it is-it doesn't even have a Chinese name. But even if you do not play the game, I probably heard of "counter-Strike" This game!—— this is the world's most popular for many years the first visual angle shooting game. It comes from valve. Valve is a gaming company based in Washington State, USA. 1996 was founded by two Microsoft turnover staff. Its uniqueness lies not only in its ability to be the world's top game developer, but also in the fact that it has the largest digital distribution platform for PC games (like itunes, 40 million active users), and that its unique innovation culture has not changed for 16 years: Any position without a CEO, stem No job promotion, everyone to vote for other colleagues to determine the remuneration of others, everyone involved in recruitment and dismissal. Flat to the extreme. One of the disadvantages of this operation is: Valve has an employee handbook that explains the company's business philosophy and workflow, which says that it may take a long time to find out. In Monday, Valve will begin testing a new TV-operating interface publicly. In this way, users can buy the game from the steam, run on the computer, enjoy in the living room. This is just one small step valve into the living room. A few months ago, Apple CEO Cook's visit to Valve's headquarters had sparked speculation that Apple would co-operate with the game company. In the development of related hardware, there is no answer. But whether it's working with Apple, anyway, valve is going to turn on the hardware. "We are frustrated with the lack of innovation in the computer hardware market, so we want to join the market," Valve wrote in a blog post in early September. "But Valve didn't make it clear what it was going to do, but said," even in basic input, the keyboard and mouse haven't changed much in the past few years ... This is still a blank market, and we will create opportunities to guide the user experience-something that has been overlooked before. "Google Glasses" as the representative, the U.S. scientific and technological community in the lead to a combination of hard software first. Valve to the hardware field of the move, is also the trend of a. Its action, will bring to the game, the entertainment industry what kind of change, attracts attention. And it was an impressive innovation that underpinned its 16 in the competitive gaming world, always one step ahead (in 2003 it did the stem platform and the itunes store opened in the same year). If Google keeps 20% of its working hours to give employees a personal verdict on what has been admirable enough, the figure is 100% valve. Valve is an easily overlooked innovation company, and its founder Guebot Newville (Gabe Newell) is an undervalued, rare game geek. When we were in New YorkIn a recent report on Valve, the new part of the paper, which has been picked up by the Tiger, is a "rogue player": This is not an Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3. Each direction, the scene is changing, the battle is unfolding. I had a weird device strapped to my head: a 22nd Century version of Viewmaster (a photo player on the head) that got me into the virtual world all of a sudden. I looked back and I found that the zombie was going to bite my meat, and in the other direction I was hoping for another nightmare to come. Watch the future of video games. This is the vision of the future for me from the players, programmers, artisans and dreamers from Valve. This is the company that has brought us the first-person perspective of the masterpiece "Half Life" series. The company was founded by a team of people who left Microsoft 16 years ago, and now Valve's game allows the hardcore players to play with their finger aches overnight. What really distinguishes Valve is their forward-looking and technical prowess. Ten years ago, Valve launched an online service called steam when no media executive realised that downloading was the next trend. The service's status as a game is like ITunes's music-it's a huge distribution center with more than 40 million active users, a figure that accounts for about 70% of the PC game Web Steam downloads. By Steam,valve actually charging for online game sales to other companies, in addition to selling their own game products on top of the profit. "These guys stand at the forefront of the future of the gaming industry," said Peter Moore, chief operating officer of Electronic Arts (EA). Electronic Arts is also a large game company, but also Valve opponents and partners. Wear equipment Now Valve's leaders believe they are embarking on the next breakout point in the gaming industry: wearable computing devices. The spectacle device I'm wearing--reminiscent of Google's recent blockbuster product--is a technology that allows players to immerse themselves in virtual reality and achieve a mix of games and real-world images. It's one thing to invest in Google Glasses (Project Glass) for a company like Google, but for a 300-person software company like Valve, it looks a bit ambitious to develop a visual computing device-some might say it's stupid. The exploration of Valve in the form of new computing equipment originates from the changing trend of PC platform market, the company's business all along has to rely on this platform, but the trend is not optimistic. The new operating system, Windows 8, will be launched in October, and Microsoft will have a network platform in which to buy software, including games. It's probably going to take St.Part of the market share of EAM. The ultimate goal of hardware is to share the design of a team of valve front-end hardware projects for wearable computing equipment, led by Michael Abrash, a veteran of the tech industry who passed his employer ID Software to valve an important game product licensing, to help Valve's business in the 1990 's Soar. For Mr Abrash, the glasses that cast the game screen in front of the player are no doubt the next hot spot to wear computing devices, smartphones and tablets. Google glasses will be able to display text content and video conferencing, and valve is facing a greater technical challenge in displaying realistic enhancements (augmented-reality) effects. The problem it has to solve is how to keep the image of a virtual object (for example, an outdoor billboard) stable, which means that when the player is moving, it must be tied to the object in the real world (the edge of the building). Otherwise, the visual effect disappears. Although Mr Abrash said that virtual reality glasses would come soon, he also pointed out that it might take another 3-5 years for the appearance of reliable glasses that fit the augmented reality game. He said Valve did not decide whether to make the glasses himself. But Valve's ultimate goal is to share the design for free so other hardware companies can make it. "Newell has a famous saying ' We're going to do what we need to do '. "We're not particularly interested in being a mass-produced hardware company," Abrash said. We're not doing this. "100%" to the boss of the Valve team to encourage the extraordinary way of thinking, its corporate culture with the technology company's standard evaluation also appear unique. Many startups are just talking, saying they want to flatten the company structure, only valve working environment is really "go Boss". "We don't want any management, no one needs to report to who," Valve's new employee handbook says. This year's revelations have sparked a flurry of internet exposure. Forget the silly Silicon Valley titles, the Jedi Code Jedi or the Chief Listener (figuratively listener). Valve has no formal employee title, and few employees print titles on business cards, just to keep outsiders from worrying about working with people who don't have jobs. For Guebot Newville, he was the founder of Valve. "I think he's the CEO in theory, but the funny thing is I'm not sure about that," says Greg Coomer, the company's first employee, art designer. To spark Innovation, Google's managers designed the concept of "20% time" to allow employees to spend their time in the work of their own-led projects. In Valve, this number becomes100%. No one even tells the new employees where to work in the company, but is expected to make their own decisions and go where they think they can play their best. Many Valve desks carry wheels. When you know where you want to go, the employee simply pushes the table to the team they want to join. In an interview with the Valve Headquarters conference room, Newell said there had been few staff departures in recent years. Many of the employees quit because they have sick parents to take care of. Valve has been able to get his parents to Seattle for an employee and to receive better cancer treatment. "I get mad when someone leaves me," Newell, with a beard and a John Lennon logo, "as if there was a bug in the system." "The encouragement of creativity extends even to the player, one of the leading companies in the gaming world, attracting the attention of many players and users." Valve has long won the trust of gamers because it can tolerate not only the player's own creative fine-tuning or "modification" of their own game, but also encouraging this behavior. This is the valve game has always adhered to the creativity, access to the player's unanimous approval. The "Gate 2" game is a difficult problem to solve, with a mysterious weapon called the "Door gun" as a prerequisite for the player to use it to penetrate the walls, floors and roofs of the entrance, as well as other places corresponding exports. The player opens the notch with the help of the gun and jumps vertically into a hole that can cross the canyon or rip and get out of the door position on the wall. The game inspires fans to create a series of entertainment videos that allow players to use homemade door guns, add a lot of special effects, cross busy streets and jump through the walls of their homes. Team Diversity Valve team members are rich and diverse. The company had hoped to hire an artist only because he had left a lot of paint graffiti art in the UK. The company recently recruited Reislieride (Leslie Redd), an administrator at a school where she used "gate games" to teach physics and other subjects, and he offered students a variety of ways to show terminology such as cosmic speed. More than 2000 teachers worldwide register to use the game to teach courses, Ms. Reed said. This year Mr Newell decided to hire the Greek economist because he had read an article in a personal blog published by Yanis Varoufakis. He has published an article on the European economic crisis on his blog, and he has added a lot of personal insights to Mr. Newell. Mr Varoufakis has never heard of valve before, because he is not a gamer. However, he is currently working on a virtual economy in the valve game, in which barter trades can be made and items such as hats and armor can be sold. He said he eventually chose to go there to work therePart of the reason is that he was amazed by Valve's "radical anti-authoritarian" culture, and he was surprised that the culture was playing a role. "What are the elements that valve have to add in order to influence our ideas about the future of corporate restructuring?" "Let's face it, this culture now has a lot of room for us to imagine and look forward to," he said in an interview with Skype chat software in Argini Island, Greece. "Valve also hired Jeri Ellsworth, an inventor and a self-taught chip designer, and the marble ball machine at valve office is his. Ellsworth recently visited the valve hardware lab, a member of the department who proudly showed her the 3D printer, which is one through the use of laser cutters and other manufacturing tools. Rather than sell to large companies valve by Newell Private Holding, so you can save a lot of company procedures. In 1996, he and Mack Har (Mike Harrington) co-founded Valve with the wealth accumulated earlier in Microsoft. Mike has left the company now. The company has never raised money from outside investors, so there is no pressure from the external environment for the sale or listing. Not that Mr. Newell had a chance to sell the company. Over the years, the electronics industry has sought to acquire valve, and after many private talks, it would have been very likely to be sold at a valuation price of $1 billion, according to two people familiar with the matter. Although Valve's financial position is not disclosed, Michael Pachter, an analyst with Wedbush Securities, predicts that today's valve market capitalisation is around $2.5 billion trillion. Compared to being sold, Newell said, the possibility of a valve "break-up" was greater because of the departure of independent thinking staff. "We are more likely to go down this direction. Instead of trying to ' find some big companies to cash in on our acquisitions and wait two or three years for the contract to expire '. ”