Interviews// Valve's Doug Lombardi

SPOnG: How have you found moving the control system from the PC to console?

DL: I think the controls have come a long way. I think that a lot of people have designed some good interface practices for that. Along the way, again, our history with Counter Strike and the first Xbox gave us some experience in that direction. Certainly things like Halo and all the Clancy games have given some good direction, as well.

I still think that the cross-platform thing might be a bit challenging for people in the multi-player, with the game pad versus the mouse/keyboard. But I think that for somebody playing the other person on the gamepad, it's got to that point where it's completely playable and fun. We're not finding ourselves fighting that as we were, say, when we first brought Half Life 1 to the consoles.


SPOnG: Have you made any concessions to the gamepad being harder? Any auto-aim?

DL: We're using a pretty similar system to what we used on Xbox 1, and there was a bit of aim assistance. But we've tried our best to have the player never notice it, and never make it feel like, 'You're kind of close here! Let's just move it across a little bit for you.' We spent a lot of time on that, that is the last bitcher. Because the fields of controls are pretty good, but you don't have the pixel-perfect... well, as many points of impact as you do on the mouse, I suppose. The mouse is much more sensitive.


SPOnG: Would you be interested in doing a shooter using the Wii's control system?

DL: Absolutely. If I'm going to knock us for anything in the last 18 months, it's the fact that we were completely asleep on the Wii.

SPOnG: You and just about everyone else... (laughs)

DL: Valve's doing a lot of things right right now, and I'm really proud of what we're doing, but the fact that we have nothing going for the Wii is like 'Oh my God!', you know. (Laughs)

SPOnG: It seems like something like Team Fortress might fit...

DL: Team Fortress or Portal, both seem like they're naturals for the Wii. So... we'll see.


SPOnG: How do you feel about Microsoft's recent bigger push into online gaming with the PC?

DL: I think it's just a migration, right? I think that just as there's room for several different retail outlets around the world, and several different game IPs and several different consoles... it's the same kind of thing. They're deploying a service, we've deployed a service, there's going to be lots of games. I think, five or ten years from now, people are going to be... just as many console guys have more than one console... I think people will probably have more than one online service that they will be using.

I think it's just good, because the more people that are doing that the more customers will feel at ease with that. Right now, it's seen as a little bit for the insider on the purchasing side of it. Everybody's using it to play Counter Strike and whatnot, for the back-end and what have you, but we still see the lion's share of dollars go through retail – which is fine – but I think that over time... certainly I think iTunes is selling a lot more now that Yahoo and everybody else has gotten into the business, you know what I mean? (Laughs)

So, I think we'll benefit from that, oddly enough, in the same way.