Backrooms director Kane Parsons has made no secret of how much he likes Valve’s games, calling Portal 2 the single “biggest inspiration” for the instant-hit film. In a new interview, he says the whole house of Steam is a creative touchstone for him, praising Valve’s commitment to artistic intent.
Speaking with Matt Belloni on his show The Town, Parsons clarifies that “there’s no one path that I look at and personally say, ‘I want that for me,'” when it comes to other creatives. Rather, he has more of a “desire to take things one step at a time.”
If he had to distill things down to a creative philosophy, he’d take a page from Valve’s book. “The closest comparison that I would call a north star would be the way that Valve conducts themselves with their projects,” he explains. “Obviously, that’s on the game side of things. But I think the integrity they’ve expressed with a lot of their, I guess, philosophy of, don’t make it if there’s not a meaningful reason motivating it behind the scenes”.
In its history as game developer, hardware manufacturer, and Steam shepherd, Valve has repeatedly argued the importance of new projects accomplishing something new and, in particular, having a bespoke reason to make new games. Half-Life: Alyx is probably the clearest example. (Shoutout to Artifact, too.)
The first Half-Life game in years not only wasn’t Half-Life 3 or Half-Life 2: Episode 3, it was a VR exclusive that told a fairly different story. Around its reveal, Valve staff like level designer Dario Calasi said that Alyx was made, in large part, to tackle the challenges and opportunities of VR – and in the end, Valve produced arguably the greatest VR game ever made.
Belloni compares Parsons’ description of Valve to recent remarks from Spider-Man star Tom Holland, who argued that the Christopher Nolan approach to filmmaking could serve some of the Marvel films. “We need to know why we are making this movie beyond the fact that it’s Spider-Man 4 and they make loads of money and we’re going to just have a big summer,” Holland said.
Parsons reckons that should be a “baseline” for creatives on any project. “But I also think that Valve specifically, they take it to such an extreme where it’s obviously motivated by the hardware and the tech aspect,” he continues. “So, I’m not solely into film. I just like media curation in general. I like creating experiences for people by whatever means necessary. I do a lot of music work as well and I’d love to look at games in the future.”
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