Experiment from Valve: Pipeline, or a novice game development school

In Valve, many dream to work, and it is no secret to anyone. If you have seen their new employee handbook (" Handbook for New Employees "), then you are definitely familiar with the unique spirit of working in this company. But the team that made games like Half-Life, Team Fortress 2, Left 4 Dead 2, DOTA 2, and Portal usually take on extremely experienced and talented people — while schoolchildren and students can only dream of working there. .

Well, they were lucky today: Valve is launching a new pilot project - Pipeline , designed to show high school students how the gaming industry works - including Valve's experience and knowledge.



“Pipeline is an experiment whose purpose is to introduce high school students to the gaming industry, answer their many questions about what it is like to do game development, and pass on the skills that will help them succeed in Valve and those with it” as stated by the FAQ on the site. The company also writes that it knows about the huge attention of teenagers to it, and that the name of the project is not at all accidental - the purpose of Valve is to transfer the necessary knowledge directly to those who are interested in it.
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What is actually Pipeline? Apparently - in the first place, this is a discussion forum where students can get answers to their questions from the studio and about the gaming industry as a whole. Most likely, the information will be open to all comers, but Valve will focus on such issues that school students are concerned about - where to go to study, what to learn, etc. Depending on what interests everyone, the site itself will be filled with information (the current page of the project, by the way, is also made by teenagers).

Recalling the old days, I would like to note that once the only way to attract the attention of Valve was perhaps the development of a super popular fashion about terrorists for Half-Life. But in a month the Pipeline will be available to the public, and it is quite possible that everything will change.

News sources: The Verge , Hacker News