The team’s first project at Valve was an unusual one. “That’s when the Valve guys got back to us and said, ‘Hey, do you guys want to work at Valve?’” Kohli says. “It was essentially an interview with us, but a very informal one.”Ī month later, the team flew down to San Francisco for the Independent Games Festival, where they checked the second item off their list: Tag won the honor of Best Game in the festival’s Student Showcase. “He played the whole game, and while he played it he kept asking us questions about our process and how we worked on the game,” Kohli says. That’s where they ran into Robin Walker from Bellevue-based Valve Software. The team already had their “sweet game,” a 3D platformer called Tag: The Power of Paint in which players travel through an urban landscape by “tagging” surfaces with magical paint, and they were demoing it to recruiters. It all started at DigiPen’s annual Career Day, where students present their projects to visiting game developers. For most student developers, accomplishing one of those items would be a tremendous achievement – but these DigiPen all-stars managed to hit all three. RTIS graduates Tejeev Kohli, Brett English, Pongthep “Bank” Charnchaichujit, and Ted Rivera had a “wish list” for their time at DigiPen: “Make a sweet game, win at IGF, and get hired by Valve,” in English’s words.

Information for Teachers and Counselors.

Portal 2 source code