If you’ve always wanted to work for a game developer but don’t have the artistry or technical skills to become a designer, I have good news: Valve is looking to fill a range of new positions, and not all of them require a design portfolio.
As reported by The Loadout, Valve is advertising a number of vacancies, including a handful of positions you might not expect, including an in-house economist, a psychologist, and a statistician.
The detailed ads and person specifications offer a rare insight into Valve and its current priorities, not just in game design but in other aspects of its business, too, from human resources to data analysis.
“In order to create exceptional products that people will use and appreciate, we need to know about human behaviour and about the motivations and influences underlying how and why people do what they do,” states a job advert seeking to recruit a psychologist. “We believe that all game designers are, in a sense, experimental psychologists. That is why we’re looking for an experimental psychologist with superior research skills to apply knowledge and methodologies from psychology to game design and all aspects of Valve’s operations.