Will Valve Start Making Facebook Games?
Valve president and co-founder Gabe Newell is paying close attention to the mobile and social gaming spaces. In an interview with Develop Magazine, the gaming veteran said there's "a lot to draw on," and that the company is looking at both spaces as "pieces of a bigger puzzle."
"We tend to think of things in terms of our customers, so if our customer is a heavy Facebook user, we have to think about how Team Fortress 2 or Portal 2 can be better for that customer," said Newell. "The point is, too many of our customers use Facebook for us to ignore it. The same way too many of our customers have iPhones and Android phones for us to ignore it."
Newell also said there was value in examining the big Facebook game developers, like Zynga, and determining how they can reach such a massive audience.
"It's amazing what the Zynga guys have done, and some of it seems so un-examined. Just their ability to reach 84 million users in a month!? Just compare that to the total size of an entire console platform over its lifetime. Clearly there's something valuable there, there's something to learn in that fact."
Newell went on to say that he feels Valve has some catching up to do in the space.
"We honestly felt, with Steam, we were actually really late in responding to the way our customers were using the internet. Now that I look at mobile and social, I think we're late again."
Valve isn't the only respected developer looking at the space. Insomniac Games announced that it was going to start making Facebook games, and BioWare and EA have already embraced the space.
"We tend to think of things in terms of our customers, so if our customer is a heavy Facebook user, we have to think about how Team Fortress 2 or Portal 2 can be better for that customer," said Newell. "The point is, too many of our customers use Facebook for us to ignore it. The same way too many of our customers have iPhones and Android phones for us to ignore it."
Newell also said there was value in examining the big Facebook game developers, like Zynga, and determining how they can reach such a massive audience.
"It's amazing what the Zynga guys have done, and some of it seems so un-examined. Just their ability to reach 84 million users in a month!? Just compare that to the total size of an entire console platform over its lifetime. Clearly there's something valuable there, there's something to learn in that fact."
Newell went on to say that he feels Valve has some catching up to do in the space.
"We honestly felt, with Steam, we were actually really late in responding to the way our customers were using the internet. Now that I look at mobile and social, I think we're late again."
Valve isn't the only respected developer looking at the space. Insomniac Games announced that it was going to start making Facebook games, and BioWare and EA have already embraced the space.