Portal writer says he’s joking about making Portal 3, doesn’t want to cause strife at Valve
The co-writer of the Portal games has said he’s mainly joking when he says he wants to make Portal 3, because he doesn’t want to cause strife at Valve.
During an appearance on the latest episode of Simon Parkin’s My Perfect Console podcast, Erik Wolpaw was asked if he’s partly joking each time he publicly states that he wants Valve to start development on Portal 3.
“It is a joke,” Wolpaw replied. “But the real reason is that in a flat structure like Valve, there is an opportunity cost to doing anything. And whatever is going on at Valve right now requires the dedication and participation of the people working on it, and it’s voluntary.
“So to some extent, I would like to make a Portal 3 but I understand that – other than the fact that I’m largely joking when I say it, just to give Valve and the people I work with some crap – it is to really go out and advocate for something like that, could it be destructive, just in the sense that you don’t want to cause internal strife?
“Which I guess I am doing, but I think the people who could be disturbed by it internally understand that it’s just me joking around.”
Wolpaw went on to explain that the public perception of Valve is that it’s a massive company due to the success of Steam, but that in reality it still has to manage its staff resources.
“The thing is, Valve is not a giant company,” he said. “I think people sometimes think it is because of the outsize influence of Steam, but it’s not really that many people.
“It takes manpower to keep Dota going, it takes manpower to keep CS:GO going, and the freeform nature of Valve means that there are a lot of experiments that simply fail. So things are happening. If you were inside Valve, you would think that stuff was always going on,
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