Development
After the success of Portal, Valve decided to make Portal 2 a standalone product, partly because of pressure from other developers within Valve who wanted to work on a Portal product. Work began almost immediately after the release of Portal. Valve committed more resources to Portal 2's development than they had for the first game; Portal had a team of seven or eight people, but Portal 2 had a team of 30 or 40. The initial team of four was expanded as subgroups formed to devise game mechanics and to plot the story. Participants in internal review processes were inspired by what they saw to join the project. According to Erik Wolpaw, some Portal 2 developers worked on the Left 4 Dead games to help them meet milestones, but returned to Portal 2, "with extra people in tow." Kim Swift, Portal's designer, left Valve for Airtight Games halfway through Portal 2's development.
Project manager Erik Johnson said Valve's goal for Portal 2 was to find a way to "re-surprise" players, which he considered a "pretty terrifying" prospect. In March 2011, one month before the game's release, Valve president Gabe Newell called Portal 2 "the best game we've ever done." After Portal 2's release, Geoff Keighley wrote that according to Newell, "Portal 2 will probably be Valve's last game with an isolated single-player experience". Keighley later stated that the use of the word "probably" suggests that "this could change." Newell said that Valve is not "giving up on single-player at all", but intends to include more social features on top of the single player experience, akin to the cooperative mode in Portal 2.
Read more about this topic: Portal 2
Famous quotes containing the word development:
“If you complain of people being shot down in the streets, of the absence of communication or social responsibility, of the rise of everyday violence which people have become accustomed to, and the dehumanization of feelings, then the ultimate development on an organized social level is the concentration camp.... The concentration camp is the final expression of human separateness and its ultimate consequence. It is organized abandonment.”
—Arthur Miller (b. 1915)
“Information about child development enhances parents’ capacity to respond appropriately to their children. Informed parents are better equipped to problem-solve, more confident of their decisions, and more likely to respond sensitively to their children’s developmental needs.”
—L. P. Wandersman (20th century)
“I do seriously believe that if we can measure among the States the benefits resulting from the preservation of the Union, the rebellious States have the larger share. It destroyed an institution that was their destruction. It opened the way for a commercial life that, if they will only embrace it and face the light, means to them a development that shall rival the best attainments of the greatest of our States.”
—Benjamin Harrison (1833–1901)