An exclusive interview with Valve level designer Phil Co

[[Steve]]

Phil Co, a level designer at Valve has been kind enough to answer a ton of questions especially for us at Interlopers.

The interview covers a huge variety of topics including what it’s like working for Valve, designing Portal 2’s boss fight and Phil’s general workflow as a level designer.

A huge thanks to Phil for taking time out from his busy schedule to do this and for giving us such detailed and awesome answers, and a big thanks to Valve for letting this happen!

Read the full interview.

[marnamai]

wow, definitely reading this !

[SM Sith Lord]

Awesome stuff. Painting over the actual brushwork screenshots is brilliant, I am going to start doing that. Much more accurate than redrawing the whole scene on paper.

[Garrador]

Nice! Great interview. Was a good coffee read

Thanks.

PS: More of these. Very fun to read. See if you can get a hold of Alexander Roycewicz for an interview. I know he has been passing through here at some point long ago.

[Knights]

Great interview.. Love reading these types of subjects....

[MaK]

This is really great Steve. It feels like its been years since Interlopers has done an exclusive interview, let alone getting a hold of somebody at Valve. That's super awesome.

[Armageddon]

That was a really great article. Good job on this Steve. I especially liked the part about brushes never dying.

[Hollow]

Yeah I was pleasantly surprised to see this appear on the home page. very informative & interesting read. So kudos to you getting this set up and to Phil for being such an awesome guy and providing a lot of cool behind-the-scenes insights to life at Valve.

[[Steve]]

Thanks guys, I have been away the last week so only just seen your replies.
Glad you all enjoyed it, was great fun for me to do. I plan to do a few more of these in the future so feel free to suggest people I should try contact or questions you would like me to ask.

[Generalvivi]

Good shit.

[Stormy]

Great read. I liked the stuff more generally directed at how he did stuff at valve more than the questions about the specific design decisions. The insight into working is more interesting to me than trying to pry secret details out of valve. I think they would appreciate that more as well. Fuck am I making any sense?