Independent Games Summit: Valve's Kim Swift - 'From Narbacular Drop To Portal'

Author: by Staff

The IGS organizers are continuing to put online key video lectures from this year's Independent Games Summit, which took place at Game Developers Conference 2007 last March as part of the yearly Independent Games Festival - and which will again appear as part of GDC 2008 next February. The ninth lecture is from Valve's Kim Swift, a key member of the team that was one of the Independent Game Festival's 2006 Student Showcase honorees with Narbacular Drop. Kim and that team went on to be hired by the Half-Life creator and complete the critically acclaimed Portal, which recently shipped as part of Valve's The Orange Box. Swift's lecture is aimed somewhat to the student independent developer, explaining how the Portal team successfully transitioned from working as a student team at DigiPen to a professional one at Valve, but also discusses some of the influences behind the FPS puzzle title in both its incarnations, explaining the evolution of gameplay as it was re-imagined on the Source engine. Therefore, here's a direct Google Video link for the lecture, plus a higher-res downloadable .MP4 version and an embedded version:

Here's the original session description: "In this lecture, the team which made IGF Student Showcase winner Narbacular Drop talk about the making of the innovative title, tips for student developers, how the entire team got picked up by Valve to make Portal using the Source Engine, and exactly how they've transitioned from student indie creators to continued innovation at the home of Half-Life." (Other IGS 2007 videos posted so far, as linked on sister site GameSetWatch, are Daniel James discussing indie MMOs, and indie innovation panel w/Mak, Blow, Chen, Gabler, Swink, plus Matt Wegner on physics, alongside the Gastronaut founders on 'Small Arms' for XBLA, the Telltale folks on Sam & Max/episodic gaming, Gamelab's Eric Zimmerman on 'The Casual Cash Cow', and Braid's Jon Blow on indie prototyping, as well as Russell Carroll on 'indie marketing'.)