So, am I the only one who's kind of angry about the introduction of virtual trading cards on Steam? Not about the cards themselves; I'm not that much of a neckbeard. I'm pissed because I can't help wondering how many people it took to implement them, and what else those people could have been working on (Episode 3, maybe? Maybe?).

You know, "Valve time" was a lot more charming back when Valve was this upstart little developer that upset the FPS apple cart with Half-Life. Let me give you a little perspective, here: Batman: Arkham Asylum was announced in 2008 and released in 2009. Rocksteady made it in a year, with about 90 people. Valve, by contrast, has 330 employees, and has been working on Ep. 3 for at least the six years since Ep. 2 was released. Six. Goddamn. Years. For a game whose engine and principal art assets were mostly already done.

You're probably not the only one, but it's as useless a thing to be aggravated about as can be.

Art guys don't work on level design, level designers don't implement steam features and coders don't provide trading cards.

In other words, the assumption that all this manpower could have gone to a thing you'd like to see released is inherently flawed.

What this man has said. You need to keep the writers and artists busy on something while the programmers do their job.

No, level designers don't implement Steam features. Coders do that. No, coders don't create trading cards. Artists do that. I don't know what work remains to be done on Ep. 3, but if any of it involves art or programming, then yes, the artists and programmers who worked on the trading cards could have been working on Ep. 3 instead.

Do you really think that Valve doesn't have a dedicated team solely for the purposes of maintaining and developing the main source of their income?

Your anger is misdirected.

He probably just doesn't want to see it go the way of Duke Nukem Forever.

And your point is immaterial. Trading cards aren't generating any revenue for Valve. The cards aren't purchased; they appear in your Steam inventory when you play one of the associated games. They cannot be traded for anything except other trading cards. Basically, the labor that went into them created zero value. It was busywork, and if they have artists and programmers who are so underemployed as to need busywork, they can move them to other projects. Episode 3, for example.

My underlying point stands: when another studio can produce a hugely successful, critically acclaimed AAA game from scratch in a year with 90 people, and Valve can't manage to produce a game in six years with 330 people and a head start, the only reasonable conclusion is that somebody at Valve has their cranium wedged firmly between their glutei maximi.

*Looks up from my cards* Where do I buy booster packs? I finally found my people's version of hockey cards!!!

EDIT: Also, where is my chewing gum???

What do you -mean- trading card's aren't generating revenue for Valve? Are you nuts?

Those cards cost them essentially nothing to create more of, and trade for cash on the Steam market. With each sale giving Valve a cut.

Valve is making mad money on this for relatively little effort on their part.

Yeah, you buy them from other people for like 15 cents or however, and Valve takes 2 cents or so. You can trade them directly, but people put actual money into the system to buy cards.

Personally I haven't put any money into the system, I've just sold doubles -- and I really don't care too much about collecting sets, I was just checking out the system -- and used the tiny handful of change that dumped in my wallet to purchase a few. The tiny cut Valve takes guarantees that the excess money in the system trends toward zero as people use the system, so if it's still going it means people are still putting money into it.

Oddly enough, with the effort to go back through the library and add cards to just about everything, they've incentivized playing games that've been sitting in your library unused for a long time. So if you feel a little 'meh' about going back and playing Skyrim some more, you can now go back and play Skyrim and get some cards.

...OK, I didn't realize you could sell them for cash. Ridiculously small amounts of cash, but still, it makes a tiny bit more sense now.

Boosters randomly generate depending on the games you got and the people in the community who are making badges.

AKA they appear out of the air whenever they feel like it