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about the valve team
Members of the Valve staff come from numerous places around the globe, including Florida, Virginia, California, Washington, New York, and the countries of Texas, England, and Australia. They collectively define sunlight as "that which makes a computer monitor difficult to see" and free time as "when we get to play games instead of make them."
Gabe Newell - Founder/Managing Director
Gabe held a number of positions in the Systems, Applications, and Advanced Technology divisions during his 13 years at Microsoft. His responsibilities included running program management for the first two releases of Windows, starting the company's multimedia division, and, most recently, leading the company's efforts on the Information Highway PC. His most significant contribution to Half-Life was his statement "C'mon, people, you can't show the player a really big bomb and not let them blow it up."
Viktor Antonov - Art Director/Conceptual Designer
Viktor has been a conceptual designer for the videogame industry since 1996. He first joined Valve from Xatrix Entertainment where his responsibilities included designing environments, lighting and atmosphere on projects such as Kingpin. He holds a transportation design degree from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena and has also designed for commercials, animation and film in the USA and Europe. Viktor was born and spent his childhood in Sofia, Bulgaria after which he has been living in Paris France, Montreaux Switzerland, Los Angeles and Seattle. You can view some of his art at Vulkanbros.com.
Ted Backman - Art Director/Conceptual Artist/Illustrator/Animator
Ted has been a freelance artist and animator in the Seattle area for the last four years. Ted developed many of the more unusual monsters for Half-Life, including the Head Crab, Mr. Friendly, and Big Momma. He is also a black-belt karate instructor
Kelly Bailey - Senior Game Designer, Sound, Music
Kelly did all of the music and sound effects for Half-Life and wrote sound code to create character speech and DSP reverb effects. He spent last summer and fall working primarily on Half-Life game design. (Translation: spent 6 months in a big, trashed corner office, all day & night with Guthrie, Casali & Riller eating bad food, making bad jokes, working out tons-o-puzzles, and never, ever seeing the sun. It was great.) There is a vicious rumor that at one time he was an engineering manager at "a large software company in the Pacific Northwest." However, he has long since had the Borg implants removed, and is feeling just fine now.
Jeff Ballinger - Senior Artist
Jeff is responsible for creating Half-Life 2 world textures, prototyping levels, architectural studies and surface treatment. His background includes studying graphic design in college and working at Cavedog on the title Amen: The Awaking. In addition to working on world environments you can find him sketching, modeling, and always learning new software.
Aaron Barber - Level Designer/ 3D artist
While studying engineering at UCLA, Aaron got his first experience building 3d environments while constructing VRML websites for the University. During this time he was also actively involved in designing levels for Quake and Duke Nukem 3D with several internet mod groups. His level design eventually got him a position at Xatrix Entertainment working on titles such as Redneck Rampage, Quake 2, and Kingpin. After completing Kingpin, he took a senior design position at EA working on James Bond before coming to Valve. Outside the world of game and level design, Aaron also enjoys playing music locally around Seattle.
www.nineteen5.com.
Yahn Bernier - Software Development Engineer
Yahn was an Atlanta patent lawyer with a degree in chemistry from Harvard. So obviously he ended up in Seattle developing computer games. He taught himself to program at the age of 12 and, more recently, developed what we at Valve have called "that other level editor," BSP. Now that he’s getting paid to make games, he figures he’ll practice law in his spare time (little does he know). Yahn worked on Half-Life’s multiplayer code and is currently hard at work on Team Fortress 2. His favorite phrase, when imbibing too freely, is "Yucca will assimilate you."
Ken Birdwell - Senior Software Development Engineer
Ken has contributed to a wide range of projects in the last 15 years. These include in-circuit emulators (CodeTap), 3D surface reconstruction (Surfgen), 3D prosthetics design tools (Shapemaker), and satellite networking (Microsoft’s Broadcast PC). He also wrote one of the first graphical shells for multiplayer online games for Compuserve’s Sniper. Oddly enough, Ken has a BFA from Evergreen State University, where he studied painting, photography, and animation. Ken designed and implemented the skeletal animation system and many other engine components for Half-Life.
Steve Bond - Game Designer/Engineer
Having made the great trek westward from Fort Walton Beach, Florida, Steve is responsible for much of Half-Life’s sophisticated monster and entity behaviors, of which the squad-level AI is his favorite. Steve worked with John Guthrie on several projects that demonstrated the power and flexibility of the QuakeC development environment, which caught John Carmack’s attention, who in turn referred him to us. Before that, Steve worked at a local internet service provider and delivered pizza, a fact that we rarely let him forget, even in his corporate bio.
Charlie Brown - Software Developer
Charlie earned his reputation within the gaming industry while working for 3Dfx Interactive and, later, Ritual. A Ft. Walton Beach, Florida native, Charlie graduated from the University of Florida in the summer of 1994 and then headed for California and 3Dfx. His responsibilities there included developer support, ports of products to hardware, sample code and simple demos, and ultimately working with 3Dfx Developer Relations managing the engineering game porting effort. After a 2-year stint, Charlie left 3Dfx with college-friend Gary McTaggart to create the Uber(tm) Engine at Ritual Entertainment in Dallas, Texas. Shortly thereafter, Charlie and Gary left Ritual to start their own company. Valve subsequently contacted Charlie (and his friend Gary) with an offer "they couldn’t refuse."
Dario Casali - Level Designer
Joining Valve from England, Dario is a world-famous level designer. His work includes some of the most popular deathmatch levels on the Internet, as well as Final Doom, published by id Software.
Yvan Charpentier - Software Developer
Yvan Charpentier has a Master’s Degree in Electrical Engineering from the ENSPM, Marseille, France. He first worked in 2D and 3D imaging for medical companies, developing a 3D body scanner prototype for skin mapping and processing ultrasonic data for heart research purposes. Then he participated in the development of a DVD emulator for Microsoft Xbox. Yvan is a Steam developer at Valve.
Jess Cliffe - Product Manager
Cliffe joined Valve after co-creating the original Counter-Strike with Minh Le. He enjoys contributing anything and everything to CS and is the "voice of Counter-Strike" via the radio commands and sound effects. In his spare time Cliffe can be found practicing with his synth pop Depeche Mode cover band, Error. One day he will get over how slowly people drive in Seattle and will convince Johnson and Walker that Topspin is "the new Soul Calibur".
John Cook - Online Development Manager
Formerly of Team Fortress software, John manages online platform development for Team Fortress 2 and other projects. Before that, John studied computer science at RMIT in Australia. John is apparently still suffering jetlag from the move to Seattle, as he doesn’t seem to be able to make it in to work until past noon.
Greg Coomer - Product Design / Communications
Prior to joining Valve, Greg helped Microsoft design various software products. Before that, he worked with Nintendo, started and ran a user interface design company, and spent several years as a freelance product designer. Greg helped to name the company "Valve", and then led the first game project that Valve ever cancelled. His secret dream is to create a game called ’Akzidenz-Grotesk’. You know, for kids.
Quintin Doroquez - Graphic Designer
"Q!" brings over 10 years of multi-disciplinary graphic design experience to Valve. He has had a creative role in launching print, online, and new media endeavors as a senior art director for Incite PC Gaming magazine, art director for PC Accelerator, and associate art director for PC Gamer. At Valve, you can find Q!’s schedule filled with marketing, packaging, web design, game trailers, .dem file creation, and other visual communications tasks. In his spare time, Q! likes to reminisce how he likes to think he was training to be a competitive bodybuilder 14 years ago. Get over it, already!
Mike Dussault - Software Developer
MikeD comes from Monolith Productions where he was the lead engineer on Lithtech1 and Lithtech2 and worked on Shogo, NOLF and Blood2. Previous to that, he worked at Zombie on a game called Locus. He came to Valve because it is a mecca for innovative research and development. So far he’s having a great time working on new technology. In his spare time, he plays guitar and piano, writes code, reads, writes code, hikes, writes code, attends punk shows, and cooks.
Rick Ellis - Senior Engineering Lead
After years of managing embedded hardware and software projects in the communications and emulation industries, Rick constructed a team that is currently the broadband group at Valve. He has spent nearly six years with the group trying to decide if herding this group of engineers is easier than simultaneously holding on to six greased cats. The last time anyone saw Rick (it’s rumored he wanders the hallways in a type of lobotomized stupor) he was asked if he ever figured out how the cats differed from the team and his comment was, "Yes, the cats were sane. Now where was I going again?"
Dhabih Eng - Senior Artist
(pronounced ZA-bee)
Dhabih, who’s been playing games since he was six years old, has a degree in Interdisciplinary Art from the University of Washington. He started making a name for himself by doing freelance design work for gaming magazines (Electronic Gaming Monthly, Official Playstation Magazine, PC Gaming World) while still in school. Dhabih has also done web design and worked on the Quake2 TC pack Zaero from Team Evolve. He started at Valve by doing freelance work in mid-1998, and signed on full-time in early February of 1999. Dhabih is truly a world citizen, having grown up in six different countries (Australia, Macau, Canada, China, Taiwan, and the USA). You can find out more about Dhabih and check out some of his work by visiting his website, http://www.sijun.com/.
Miles Estes - Artist / Animator
Miles began his career at Foundation Imaging in Southern California as a character animator on the Starship Troopers TV series. Shortly thereafter, he went to work for Interplay as the lead animator on the PS2 game, Run Like Hell. Upon joining Valve from Interplay, Miles was inhumanely forced to participate in company play tests. As a result he has developed an addiction to Counter-Strike, despite the fact he’s really bad at it. If you’d like to see some of Miles’ work, you can do so at his website: http://www.divinion.com.
Adrian Finol - Software Development Engineer
Prior to joining Valve, Adrian contributed to several popular Half-Life MODs and was a founding member of the Front Line Force Team. He landed in Venezuela from Krypton, and began programming at an early age. After years of fighting Lex Luthor, he came to America in search of the perfect donut. He finally achieved what some call “Donut Nirvana,” and has successfully acquired the physique of a veteran games programmer.
Moby Francke - Character Designer/Art Lead
Moby is a character designer for Half Life 2 and the art lead on Team Fortress 2. He brings to Valve academic fine art training with an emphasis in illustration. After graduating from the Academy of Art San Francisco, he worked at Lucas Arts as a conceptual designer, and taught figure painting at the Academy of Art SF. He's won several prestigious awards, including 2 New York Society of Illustrators Competition Awards. He is originally from the small Caribbean island of St. Thomas, and enjoys the simple things of life.
Pat Goodwin - VP Finance
Pat joined Valve with 17 years of accounting and finance experience. Early in his career, Pat worked for Pricewaterhouse Coopers focusing on audits and consulting engagements for a range of clients from small start-ups to large public companies. Prior to joining Valve, Pat worked as CFO for several successful Seattle start-ups where he was actively involved in private capital raising and was responsible for accounting, finance, systems, administration, strategic planning, and legal areas of the companies. At Valve, Pat is responsible for finance and accounting, including business planning and financial modeling. He holds a BA in Economics from the University of Washington and an MBA in finance from UCLA. He is a certified public accountant in the state of Washington.
John Guthrie - Game and Level Designer
Along with Steve Bond, John started the influential and popular Internet gaming site, "Quake Command." John was also the co-creator of Quake Airplane and Quake Kart and constructed many of the chambers and corridors in the Black Mesa Research Center.
Brian Jacobson - Software Developer
As a child, Brian first learned programming in order to crack all the computer games he couldn’t afford. After being wracked with years of guilt, he decided to join the games industry to make up for his reprehensible childhood. At LookingGlass, he worked on Flight Unlimited, and then went on to co-found GameFX, and was a lead engineer on Sinistar Unleashed. After a brief stint out of the games industry, he came back to his senses and joined Valve, where he is currently hard at work on Team Fortress 2.
Erik Johnson - Project Manager
Erik began his career as a shoe salesman and later moved up to selling used cars. Deciding that the car business wasn’t for him either, he took a job with Sierra Online in the QA department. As one of Sierra’s testers for Half-Life, Erik spent a lot of time over at the Valve offices and was eventually offered a job with Valve as shipping manager. Erik’s responsibilities include localization, testing, managing the build process, creating demos, and shipping products.
Jakob Jungels - 3D Artist / Animator / Game Designer
Jakob attended school in Indiana while working as the lead 3d Artist, animator and designer for Day of Defeat. In his spare time (ha!), he also had contributed work to America’s Army. Eventually moving to the Northwest to work at Valve, Jakob now continues work on DoD as well as other Valve-related projects. Between long work weeks, Jakob tears it up at the local motocross track on his Honda CRF250R dirtbike.
Eric Kirchmer - Illustrator/3D Artist
Eric came to Valve after graduation from the Art Institute of Seattle in 2001. Originally from San Diego, Eric was a freelance illustrator who left the sun to work on more of a healthy monitor complexion. As part of the HL2 team, Eric is responsible for the game’s visual density, by modeling everything from cars to broken concrete and debris. In the other few hours of Eric’s life he can be found sculpting, raising bansai and working in his sketchbook.
Marc Laidlaw - Writer/Game Designer
Marc Laidlaw is the author of half a dozen strange novels, including Dad’s Nuke and The 37th Mandala. He is also the person most responsible for making sure the edgy and intense Half-Life storyline worked in the game. While writing a cover-story about Quake for Wired Magazine, he determined that level designers had the coolest jobs on earth--although the fact that he’d been working as a legal secretary for 10 years might have warped his perceptions very slightly. Oddly, he refuses to do anyone else’s typing.
Jeff Lane - Level Designer
Jeff started his career doing graphic design for the print industry. In a series of leaps and bounds over more than 12 years, he moved into doing graphics for video projects, then graphics for commercial multimedia, and finally graphics for games. He hasn’t looked back since. After creating 3D art at Hyperbole Studios on their Quantum Gate interactive movie projects, he spent five years at Sierra Studios, where he worked as an Art Director on Phantasmagoria 2 and, recently, as a Level Designer for SWAT3: CQB before coming to Valve.
Tom Leonard - Software Engineer
Immediately prior to joining Valve, Tom was the CTO of Buzzpad, Inc. Before that, he spent five years at Looking Glass Studios, where he was notably the lead programmer of Thief: The Dark Project, writing the AI and core architecture for the game. Tom also had spent seven years working on C++ development tools at Zortech and Symantech.
Doug Lombardi - Director of Marketing
After years in the music industry, Doug decided to get a real job. Then he came to his senses and made the decision to get into the gaming industry instead. During his time in gaming, he has worked on the launch of websites, magazines, and games. As Director of Marketing at Valve, he helps manage and coordinate third-party relations, marketing and press activities.
Randy Lundeen - Level Designer/Graphic Designer
Randy comes to Valve by way of Microsoft, where he worked as an interface designer for the Internet Gaming Zone. Randy designs some of the most unusual and original levels in the company, and he also is the most likely person to be pushing the polygon and memory limits of our engine. In his distant past, he was a key staff member at a potato processing plant (his responsibilities including peeling and potato quality oversite).
Scott Lynch - Chief Operating Officer
Prior to joining Valve, Scott was Senior Vice President at Havas Interactive where he created and managed the Sierra Studios business unit publishing a number of products, including Half-Life. During his 5-year tenure at Sierra, Scott held a number of different positions in business development, acquisitions, finance, investor relations, and product development. Before joining Sierra, Scott worked in the public accounting industry at Coopers and Lybrand where he worked in both the audit and tax departments managing a range of clients from small start-ups to Fortune 500 companies. Scott is a graduate of the University of Washington Business School with a concentration in accounting and is a certified public accountant in the state of Washington.
Ido Magal - Level Designer
Ido is a UC Berkeley computer science drop-out turned professional artist. Prior to joining Valve, where he makes textures and maps for Counter-Strike, he worked at Westwood Studios, making thousands of tiny ground tiles for Red Alert 2. He enjoys photography, foreign films, and advising the President about issues of national importance. His superpower consists of knowing someone is thinking of him when his nose itches, and his weaknesses are Indian food, sharp women, and Tom Waits.
Gary McTaggart - Software Developer
Gary left the University of Florida in 1995 to pursue a career in programming at 3Dfx Interactive as employee number 11. While there, he created demos that were used to show the potential of Voodoo Graphics hardware. The most notable of these demos are the Valley of Ra and Wizard’s Tower. Additionally Gary worked as developer support for other game companies wanting to get the most out of 3dfx’s hardware. Gary left 3Dfx with Charlie Brown for a short stint at Ritual Entertainment. After working at Ritual, Gary and Charlie decided to start a new company and do contract work for Electronic Arts. Later, Gary decided that Valve would be the ideal place for him to be able to work on great games and technology without having to worry about the day-to-day operations of a business.
John Morello II - Animator / Game Designer
Originally from Chesapeake, Virginia, John came to Valve via the MOD community. As lead animator and designer on Day of Defeat, John has spent the majority of the past few years modeling and animating the objects and characters in the popular WWII themed online game.
Bryn Moslow - Network Administrator / Keyboard-pounding Monkey
Known as "The Man" by those that know him as The Man and "Who?" by most everyone else, Bryn’s life has been usurped by the machines. He started on Usenet and IRC from a DEC VAX terminal when Usenet and IRC were useful and may be one of the last people on Earth with a VAXstation still running Ultrix. He and his friend Al built the Internet together but he became disgruntled and left to be a Rock Star when Al took all the credit for it. When the whole Rock Star thing didn’t pan out he found himself once again a keyboard-pounding monkey. In the few odd hours he isn’t cursing incoherently while facing Redmond he can often be found doing horrible things to his neighbors with a heavily modded Marshall JCM 900 and one of his flock of Telecasters and wondering when the whole Internet fad is going to finally die so he can have a life again.
Martin Otten - Software Developer
Martin comes to us from Germany where he attended Dortmund University earning a masters degree in computer science. He is best known for programming Argus (for Quake) and Half-Life TV (as a contractor for Valve). Since arriving in Washington, Martin has lost all four hubcaps on his Volkswagen and has single-handedly stopped Seattle traffic by walking across the street in a bath robe while sipping a white Russian. Not bad for a “poor German boy.” Martin also enjoys listening to the band Manowar since, after all, some bands play but Manowar kills.
Kristen Perry - Artist
A new import from Ohio, Kristen is the latest cog in the "hushhush" Team Fortress 2 machine. Trained as a traditional artist with a visual communications design degree with an illustration concentration, she brings a commercial and advertising perspective to an otherwise sci-fi/fantasy appetite. As a digital artist, she holds Photoshop most dear, save the occasional lure of dark chocolate and black tea. You can find out more about Kristen and her work at her website: www.merekatcreations.com.
Dave Riller - Game Designer
Prior to joining Valve, Dave was an active developer in the online Quake community and worked with id Software on the deployment of Quake World. For his day job, Dave was a program designer/analyst at MSI, a Windows software developer located on the East Coast. He also ran their website. Dave has been a beta tester for Doom 2, Hexen, Quake, and Warcraft II. In his virtually non-existent spare time, Dave is a pilot and musician.
David Sawyer - Level Designer
A world traveller as a result of his father’s job in the Foreign Service, David comes to Valve from a recent stay in the Washington D.C. area. David became a full-time employee after proving himself through contract mapmaking work on Team Fortress Classic, and is now pouring himself into Team Fortress 2. Despite a calm exterior, David has become one of Valve’s most fearsome and ruthless snipers in Team Fortress Classic, and delights in the cries of "Damn you, Ramirez!" that can be heard from nearby offices. He enjoys tormenting Chuck, in particular.
Taylor Sherman - Software Developer
After college, Taylor worked on NPC AI and netcode for big, expensive video games ("Wait, you mean those are *real* planes out there?") at The Boeing Company. After striking in an attempt to win fair treatment of ambiguously-surnamed engineers everywhere, Taylor left for the much smaller Applied Microsystems. There, he demonstrated his versatility by utilizing his two *first* names to write lots of code that was never used by anybody. Taking the hint from his previous coworkers at AMC and the pink slip in his hand, he jumped over to Valve, where he works on Steam. Taylor has a Bachelor’s of Electrical Engineering from The Cooper Union, and, if you squint real hard, two halves of an MSEE.
Eric Smith - Software Developer
Eric has a B.S. degree from the DigiPen Institute of Technology in Redmond, WA. Programming has been Eric’s obsession since he began programming in Basic on his Atari 800 when he was 12. His college career began at the University of Washington where he studied Electrical Engineering. Unhappy with Engineering, he landed a job as a Game Counselor at Nintendo. Over the years, he was promoted and ended up handling Risk Management issues for Nintendo. When DigiPen opened its doors in the U.S. in January 1998, Eric saw an opportunity to change careers and "make" games instead of just play them. Eric has lived in Washington most of his life and enjoys all the outdoor activities this area provides.
David Speyrer - Software Developer
David has a BSEE from Louisiana and six years of experience in network and serial communications software development and project management. PC games have been David’s passion since he started programming at the age of 11. David was living and working in Boulder, Colorado, when he played through Half-Life: Day One. Soon he was packing his belongings and putting his house up for sale. David now says that Valve was about the only thing capable of compelling him to leave Boulder’s rock climbing and 300 days of sun per year. An eternal optimist, David is convinced that the sun will come out "any day now" so that he can go climbing.
Jay Stelly - Senior Software Development Engineer
Jay joined Valve from Tetragon where he was lead engineer and 3D engine developer of Virgin’s Nanotek Warrior. Before that, he developed titles for Sony Playstation & 3DO. Way before that, he wrote his first computer game (at age 9) and had a game published in a magazine (at age 15). A native of Cajun Country, Jay finds Northwest buildings too hot (what, no air conditioning?) and the food not hot enough.
Kelly Thornton - Sound Engineer / Game Designer
Kelly arrived at Valve via the Half-Life mod community. While earning a Masters degree in Business at UM-St. Louis, he helped develop and did sound work for Day of Defeat. Seeing video game development and sound engineering as the obvious natural progression to come out of an MBA and an undergrad degree in biology, he packed his things and headed west to Valve. Today, you can find him in his office surrounded by WWII books and memorabilia with a fat pair of headphones on, wondering how in the world he actually landed a job he loves doing.
Bill Van Buren - Producer/Designer
Like a guest at the dinner party in Bunuel's “The Exterminating Angel,” Bill signed on for a short stint to help ship Half-Life and found himself unable to leave. Bill's pre-Valve experience includes positions at Starwave and Microsoft where he was responsible for art and design direction, production management, and creating art, animation, and the odd bit of music.
Robin Walker - Design Manager
Robin co-wrote the hugely popular Quake mod Team Fortress with John Cook and Ian Caughley before being assimilated when Valve acquired Team Fortress Software. He’s now hard at work managing the Team Fortress 2 design and art, and has no time to answer email, so please don’t send him any. Easily identified by the large inflatable kangaroo mounted on his monitor, Robin has no idea how to relax now that his hobby has become his job.
Josh Weier - Software Developer
Hailing from Wisconsin, where he worked on multiple FPS titles with Raven Software, Josh now finds himself in the ever-raining Seattle. But at least it doesn’t snow. Most of his days are spent holed up in an office with Steve Bond designing new encounters, creating special effects, and using his whiteboard as a canvas for a wide variety of strange and badly drawn characters. Don’t get him started about "treasure games" and be sure to make fun of how young he is, because he really gets a kick out of it.
Douglas R. Wood - Animator/Modeler/2D Artist
Doug joined Valve from Apogee/3DRealms where he worked on projects such as Duke Nukem3d, Shadow Warrior, Prey (before everyone left) and the Plutonium/Atomic Edition for Duke. Before 3DRealms, he worked for Origin down in Austin. As far as we know, Doug is the only member of Valve who has ever been a Guardian Angel in New York City. Doug is responsible for many of Half-Life’s scripted sequences, including tentacles that pull unsuspecting scientists through the ceiling.
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