Recently at GDC I got to try out Valve’s new collection of VR game vignettes, The Lab. It was cool. It was also... another set of scattered ideas. It’s been years since Valve released a big game.
There’s a growing chorus of discord among fans that basically amounts to, “Valve doesn’t make games anymore,” backed up by the fact that Valve seems more interested in releasing VR demos, hardware, controllers, and updates to existing software than big new games these days. I tried to get Valve’s Jeep Barnett to talk about... any of that. It was a process.
Kotaku: Are you guys working on more traditional, larger-scale experiences for VR? More singularly focused games?
Jeep Barnett: We’re super focused on getting this shipped. The whole team is focused on that right now. Going forward in the future, there’s gonna be all types of VR games, and we’ll definitely continue to do new types of stuff.
Kotaku: This sort of continues a theme, though. You’ve been releasing small VR experiments and other little things. Meanwhile, a number of high-profile video game designers have left Valve (or, in the case of Erik Wolpaw, are working on projects with other companies). It’s kind of a facetious question that a lot of your more cynical fans throw around, but... does Valve still make games?
Jeep Barnett: What did you think about The Lab? Did it feel like a game to you?
Kotaku: It was a fun series of smaller interactions, but it felt like a sampler of ideas that could go into any number of more focused games. It’s a good and useful introduction to VR, but I’m not sure if it feels like The Next Big Valve Thing, you know?
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