Robin Walker (born 1975) is an Australian

video game designer Video game design is the process of designing the rules and content of video games in the Video game development#Pre-production, pre-production stage and designing the gameplay, environment, storyline and characters in the Video game development ...

best known for co-developing ''

Quake Team Fortress ''Team Fortress Classic'' is a first-person shooter game developed by Valve Corporation, Valve and published by Sierra Studios. It was originally released in April 1999 for Windows, and is based on ''Team Fortress'', a Mod (video gaming), mod f ...

'', ''

Team Fortress Classic ''Team Fortress Classic'' is a first-person shooter game developed by Valve Corporation, Valve and published by Sierra Studios. It was originally released in April 1999 for Windows, and is based on ''Team Fortress'', a Mod (video gaming), mod f ...

'', ''

Team Fortress 2 ''Team Fortress 2'' (''TF2'') is a Multiplayer video game, multiplayer first-person shooter game developed and published by Valve Corporation in 2007. It is the sequel to the 1996 ''Team Fortress'' Mod (video gaming), mod for ''Quake (video g ...

'', and '' Half-Life: Alyx''.

Career

Walker attended

RMIT University The Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (abbreviated as RMIT University) is a public research university located in the city of Melbourne in Victoria, Australia., section 4(b) Established in 1887 by Francis Ormond, it is the seventh-o ...

Melbourne Melbourne ( , ; Boonwurrung language, Boonwurrung/ or ) is the List of Australian capital cities, capital and List of cities in Australia by population, most populous city of the States and territories of Australia, Australian state of Victori ...

, Australia. Together with John Cook and Ian Caughley, Walker started working on ''Team Fortress'' as a mod for

id Software id Software LLC () is an American video game developer based in Richardson, Texas. It was founded on February 1, 1991, by four members of the computer company Softdisk: game programmer, programmers John Carmack and John Romero, game designer T ...

's ''

QuakeWorld ''Quake'' is a 1996 first-person shooter game developed by id Software and published by GT Interactive. The first game in the ''Quake'' series, it was originally released for MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows, followed by Mac OS, Linux and Sega S ...

'' in 1996. Due to the popularity of the product, the team was hired by the then-small

Valve A valve is a device or natural object that regulates, directs or controls the flow of a fluid (gases, liquids, fluidized solids, or Slurry, slurries) by opening, closing, or partially obstructing various passageways. Valves are technically Pip ...

to work on ''

'' and later on ''

''. Walker has played development roles in various Valve games, including ''

Half-Life 2 ''Half-Life 2'' is a 2004 first-person shooter game developed and published by Valve Corporation. It was published for Windows on Valve's digital distribution service, Steam. Like the original ''Half-Life'' (1998), ''Half-Life 2'' is played ent ...

'' and ''

Dota 2 ''Dota 2'' is a 2013 multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) video game by Valve Corporation, Valve. The game is a sequel to ''Defense of the Ancients'' (''DotA''), a community-created Mod (video gaming), mod for Blizzard Entertainment's ''War ...

''. More recently, Walker has been focused on the collision of economics and game design, in an attempt to transform ''Team Fortress 2'' into a

free-to-play "Free-to-play" ("F2P" or "FtP") video games are games that give players access to a significant portion of their content for free. The term "free-to-play business model" or simply, "free-to-play model", refers collectively to business models tha ...

microtransaction Microtransaction (mtx) refers to a business model where users can purchase in-game virtual goods with micropayments. Microtransactions are often used in free-to-play games to provide a revenue source for the developers. While microtransactions ...

-based game. Walker worked on Valve's flagship

virtual reality Virtual reality (VR) is a Simulation, simulated experience that employs 3D near-eye displays and pose tracking to give the user an immersive feel of a virtual world. Applications of virtual reality include entertainment (particularly video gam ...

game, '' Half-Life: Alyx'', released on March 23, 2020.

Influences and philosophy

Walker used ''Team Fortress 2'' updates to research what additional features are and aren't popular. The results of which he has used for the development of ''Dota 2'', as well as for later ''Team Fortress 2'' updates. Walker also stated that he cannot guarantee that he would keep working on ''Team Fortress 2'' indefinitely and that at some point, he will move on to a new project. Walker believes in the importance of communication between players and developers of modern PC games, stating that "being close to your customers – being able to talk directly to your customers – is valuable." In his experience, successful

multiplayer games A game is a structured type of play usually undertaken for entertainment or fun, and sometimes used as an educational tool. Many games are also considered to be work (such as professional players of spectator sports or video games) or art (s ...

"innovate in gameplay both on release, but also over time post-release, and that those innovations are significant and of interest to customers." Walker is notably not worried about

video game piracy Video game piracy is the unauthorized copying and distributing of video game software, and is a form of copyright infringement. It is often cited as a major problem that video game publishers face when distributing their products, due to the ease ...

, stating that to fight piracy, he is "looking at the things that pirates are providing and asking imselfhow ecan provide something better than that." By releasing frequent updates of his games after launch, he constantly improves on his games in a way that pirates could not keep up with. Walker is a supporter of the

model, as he says that the model supports a wider variety of customers, including those with "very little money," and that such a variety of players results in greater opportunities for richer experiences.

Selected credits

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Walker, Robin Living people Valve Corporation people Australian video game designers Video game producers 1976 births RMIT University alumni Australian expatriates in the United States