Valve has unveiled Pipeline, a
website created by teenagers and geared towards helping young
people get into the videogames industry.
The site aims to answer questions teenagers might have about
working in videogames as well as providing helpful content and
information. The site will act as a forum for the discussion of
related topics and is intended to very much be led by its audience
and what they want to know.
Another aspect of Pipeline is more experimental and seeks to
address one of the problems inherent in Valve's flat management
structure -- that it gravitates towards very experienced employees
because there aren't hierarchies within which to train people or
schemes set up to take in and nurture new talent.
"Traditionally Valve has been a very good place for very experienced videogame developers, and not so good at teaching people straight out of school (the reasons for this and the tradeoffs are covered in the Valve employee handbook). Pipeline is an experiment to see if we can take a group of high school students with minimal work experience and train them in the skills and methods necessary to be successful at a company like Valve."
As for the name, Valve explains that it comes from "The idea of directing information at people who want it. The name pipeline displays a direct feed of knowledge from Valve to the general public." It's also the name of the process by which games get created.
Valve isn't the only company aware of the value of appealing to young people and new talent. For example, Sony's Academic Development Programme seeks to get students acquainted with its hardware and software as part of their university education, meaning that working on Sony projects after graduation is more of an organic process. By being more inclusive and helpful towards those hoping to start work in the videogames industry, Valve may be able to take advantage of talent in ways its setup currently resists.
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