Valve's Design Process for Creating Half-Life 2

Published 2021-02-01
GDC 2006 talk by Valve Software developers Brian Jacobson and David Speyrer.


Audio taken and slighlty remastered from GDC Vault : www.gdcvault.com/play/1013237/Valve-s-Design-Proce…


I made some efforts to synchronize the slides with the talk.



Description from GDC Vault:


Valve used a method of decentralized design, the Cabal process, to create HALF-LIFE. For HALF-LIFE 2, owing to the larger scope and scale of the project, they changed that process into an even more decentralized method employing three nearly-independent design teams (each responsible for roughly a third of the game), an art team, a sound team, and a story/acting team. This process introduced some interesting challenges: How to manage and reduce the cost of interdependencies among the six teams? How to allow each team to apply important constraints to the design? How to create a consistent design of high quality? The talk covers the answers to these questions and how Valve made this unique design process work.

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