Roundtable Session with the Writers from Valve

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Gamasutra has put up an article that features a roundtable Q&A discussion involving some of Valve's writers, like Marc Laidlaw and Erik Wolpaw. It all went down apparently at the GDC Online event in Austin, Texas earlier today.

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Basically the two writers shared their thoughts on several topics about the games they've written, such as the idea of a silent protagonist, and their emotional attachment to their character creations. To sum up their creative process, Marc had this to say...

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"You want to be creating things that people don't know they want yet," said Laidlaw. "?We always want to feel like we're on the edge and challenging ourselves and growing all the time."

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I also learned from this article that Ted Kosmatka is the writer for Dota 2. He joined Valve in 2010 and was also a contributor to the Lab Rat comic. He talks a little bit about his design philosophy in the article.

 

[ríomhaire]

Is there anywhere to get a more full transcript?

 

[Hectic Glenn]

Great to get inside their minds, essentially they are building the game universe, the technology and visuals are just the veneer to deliver it. I think that's one of Valve's key successes, taking the good work the writers do and being able to translate it directly into a game without compensating or changing it much.

 

[hool10]

Carolyn was not raped by Cave! http://kotaku.com/5848907/no-there-is-no-rape-in-portal-2-but-there-were-buddy-cops Finally a real confirmation. That's why you never trust rumors. McLain was crying and Simmons refused to do the lines /bs.

 

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Is there anywhere to get a more full transcript?

I wish!

Hopefully one will turn up soon.

 

[ríomhaire]

They (and people on the intertubes in general) seem to misunderstand the whole rape rumour. The rumour was not that Cave was actually raping Caroline in the script, it was that JK Simmons likened the scene

Spoiler

that they had scripted where Simmons forces Caroline to become GLaDOS

to rape due to the dialogue in it and it was cut. In any case it looks like it wasn't true.