How valve is like Pixar

Consistently satisfying entertainment. This is what all entertainment companies strive for and which very few achieve. Those that do succeed- I am thinking specifically of Pixar and Valve, will usually become extremely popular and respected by community and industry alike. Let me name a few things that both these companies have achieved:
-Revolutionized their field to some extent. With pixar, they basically invented successful CGI filmmaking, especially as family fare. With Valve, their Half life series rethought story telling in First person shooters, with nearly every such game since owing something to it. They also created the most popular shooter in the world by a huge margin, Counter strike.

-Consistently turn out quality content. Not only did each of these companies revolutionize their medium, they have a nearly flawless track record of creations to date. Besides Half life and CS, Valve has also turned out creative and financial powerhouses like Portal and Team Fortress 2. As for pixar, I am consistenly amazed every year as their studio produces another highly polished, heartfelt and funny movie that is truly for all ages. Most companies are lucky if they hit on a single good idea (like Shrek or something), but Pixar continually rolls out original and successful material on an annual basis.

By now it is clear that I am quite enamoured of these two companies. Let me delve a little bit into why I think they have been so successfull. My observations are largely based not only on experiencing the movies/games, but on the plentiful developer commentary left behind by BOTH companies.

Both companies seem to take a big picture viewpoint to their work constantly, making sure they have a vision and that it still fits the product they are making. This is sometimes reflected by the fact that they do massive rewrites. For instance, in its development process, Team Fortress 2 went through a massive overhaul in design and appearance halfway through its ten year development process. In particular for Valve, the commentary on their games makes clear that every design decision is driven by their overarching game plan.

They know that accessibility matters. Both companies add plenty of spice to their products, but the core enjoyment must be easily accessible. For Valve that means streamlined and dummy-proofed gameplay which NEVER requires you to go look up how to do something in the manual. For Pixar, it means well defined characters whose very physical characteristics tell you all you need to know about their personality (just look at the characters for the upcoming Up. Certainly, there is depth to every production coming out of these companies, but they also insure that they rarely lose customers to lack of interest.

They aren't afraid to scrap ideas. Having worked in group projects (though nothing of the type these companies do), I know that it can be hard to part with an idea. A good example is the commander idea which they had in Team fortress 2 for some time. The idea was to let one player be the "commander" of the battle, seeing the action as a whole and issuing orders to their fellow team mates. The commentary in TF2 documents the pains the team went to to try and make this idea work, but they eventually scrapped it, realizing it was never going to be realistically feasible.

This is all I have for now. Writing this has sparked a thought I had about the development of TF2 which I will write about in my next post.