Smart words.

Valve is not just best known for one thing - they're known for a lot of things, among them their lengthy development times, Half-Life's bar-setting quality, and hosting the most profitable and useful digital distribution service ever. Naturally, questions will come up, such as, "How do you get into the game development industry?" Chet Faliszek, one of the lead writers for Left 4 Dead, Half-Life, and Portal, had a fairly simple answer at Eurogamer Expo yesterday; "Create something. There you go. And that's it. It's that easy. I'm being serious - there are no gatekeepers. There are no requirements. There is no prior experience that you need. Just make something." 

The question was asked again, in different ways, and he kept falling back to the same answer.

At Valve we've been thinking about this a lot. We get asked this all the time. Our simple answer used to be: just go make something. But really you want to do more than that. You want to create something, then you want to release it, you want feedback on it and you want to keep getting better. And then today, when you get home, take what ever ideas you have and whatever computer you have, whatever software you have, scope it down to something you can ship. Start working on it. Every day you come home from work, work on it some more. Show it to your friends. Talk about it. Get feedback on it. Play test it. And when it's ready, release it. There, you just gave yourself a job in the game industry.

The full video at Eurogamer behind the jump covers his whole talk. 

Julian "Mirai" Williams