Newport Robotics Group (NRG) has always been low on two things for FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC): money, and community outreach. Every year for the past 6 years, we have found ourselves underfunded at the end of the season with $200 left over at best, and $2000 under at worst. Sometimes this would affect our performance for the next year, but most of the time, our team was able to come together and raise enough funds to make it through the next year and we usually did quite well. This year though, we were more proactive. Before the season had even started, in fact, even before the summer had started, we had enough money to register for 2 FRC regionals, $10,000. This was amazing, our team had never had so much money, and especially not before school commenced. This incredible feat was accomplished with the donations of one very unique company, and an even more unique partnership. The relationship between NRG and Valve Software was a win-win situation for both of us.

For a bit of background, Valve Software is a video game maker. They have produced such titles as Half-Life 1&2, Team Fortress 2, and Counter Strike. They are widely known for making some of the best, fastest-paced Multiplayer games, single player campaigns with well thought out characters and story, and games that are playable regardless of computer performance. The company is relatively small with only 100 or so employees and founded by a man named Gabe Newell. The best part for us though, is that Valve is stationed right here in downtown Bellevue.

When our President from last year said she was related to someone in Valve, myself and many others assumed it to be another guy we would write to requesting money, and would maybe get $100 out of them, but she had different ideas. She requested, that myself, and several other dedicated members help her present to Valve in the hopes of a major grant. For weeks we made slides, practiced our presentation, and revised our content. The main things we focused on though were the values of FIRST, the education and experience of the people on our team, and that by sponsoring us, they were tax exempt. In hindsight, these were the wrong things to emphasize as was shown in our first meeting with Gabe Newell, the owner and founder of Valve:

They were stationed in the Bank of America Building, a towering brick monolith meant solely to intimidate anyone who approached which today was myself, our team president and two other dedicated members. We rose in the elevator to the 10^th floor where Valve was stationed. Turning to our right and passing through the double doors, we were immediately impressed with this Company’s pride in their work, the entire place was themed with Half Life and Team Fortress mockups and models, a life-sized Gordon Freeman Statue stood at a wall to our left and standing in the center of the room was a large valve shaped handle, the symbol of the company.

Several minutes later Gabe Newell and Ken Birdwell (a strange coincidence since Ken’s brother, Mike Birdwell, was the owner of the shop we used to work with) came out and greeted us. They ushered us into a conference room and sat down as we all stood awkwardly. They urged us to sit, and again we awkwardly took a seat. We introduced ourselves, and started our power point presentation on a TV in the room. The problem was, I don’t think we ever made it all the way through a slide without interruption. Clearly, we weren’t taking the hint.

When we finished, we were greeted by blank or even annoyed stares, they quickly faded, but we couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something we had done wrong. As it happens, 1) Valve makes a lot of money, so they don’t care if they’re tax exempt or not, 2) One team of 30-40 students getting a better experience does not benefit the company, and 3) although the FIRST values are important, they are beneficial only to us, not the company, so they had no interest in that either.

The question then posed was, “So what can you do for us?” We sat and stared blankly into space. What could a small team like us do for a big company like them? They were smirking, obviously there was something, but what it was escaping us. We were stressed, this could be extremely important for us, and here we were, silent.

Finally it came: Valve regularly pays $100,000 or more to bring employees to Bellevue to work for their company for the simple reason that they want the best of the best. What Mr. Newell, and Mr. Birdwell saw in FIRST, was the participants were the best of the best. Those who participate are dedicated, technically inclined, and are highly competitive. So what Gabe wanted, was advertising. Not advertising for a new game, as he said, “Releasing a screenshot of a new game can sell far more copies of a game than a team at a local regional and for a whole lot less,” but instead, he wanted advertising for his company as a place to work. He wanted those graduating from the top schools in the nation to come back and contribute to his company.

Then another question: How would we do that and how could we use Valve’s products to do it? Once again we found ourselves silent. “Uh, we could hand out fliers…” “Uh, we could give people stickers…” “We could…we could…uhhh…” We were sent home to think about it.

Our next meeting was better, we didn’t make fools of ourselves, and we didn’t feel like we wasted their time. We had several suggestions: 1) Valve could have someone tell what a great place Valve is to work in a video 2) Valve could have a summer internship and 3) We could make a robot simulator Mod using Valve’s Source game engine. The last, in particular, caught Gabe’s attention. When we were finally done he asked how much we were asking for. We replied, “Ten thousand dollars.” And he replied back, “Okay.”

Our jaws dropped, and one of the others almost laughed. My first thought was also that he was joking, but he kept a straight face, obviously he meant it. But I don’t believe it actually hit any of us until later: we could go to two regionals this year. It was miraculous and unreal, our team had never imagined we would get a grant anything like this. We learned shortly though, that this was not going to be a free ride: we were going to meet again the next week to talk about a simulator.

After the 10 floor elevator ride, we found ourselves back in the first room we visited but this time there were more people, Gabe was here again, but this time so were three others. Most significantly, this was the first time we met Michael Durand. Mike is a software engineer and is our main contact at Valve as well as our primary helper with the project. We discussed our vision of the simulator, and as we discussed our ideas, it became clear that this was going to be a huge project if it was ever going to work the way we wanted it to. The first thing we decided to do was make a preliminary testing version, just to see if we could make it feel like driving a robot and make some of the mechanics we wanted work. From there we would be able to expand to multiple styles of robots, and multiplayer. Ultimately, we would be releasing this to the FIRST community so people could practice individually and could eventually go online to play against each other all over the nation.

This, however, is a long term goal. For the moment, we are laying the groundwork. Once a week we work with Mike and are editing the basic code on which Half Life 2 Multi-Player runs on. Our goal now is to be sure this is a feasible and realistic simulation. Does the robot behave realistically? Does it feel natural when you drive it? Once these questions are answered we can prepare for the next step, creating a simulation that mimics next year’s game that not only feels real and is accurate, but also looks real.

The robots used, though, create a problem for us: every robot is different. So what do we do? This, most of the Valve employees agreed, would be the hardest part, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.

There is no real conclusion to a paper like this because our relationship is ongoing. We are not done working together. Not only do we want to make this game work, but we also want to continue this relationship with Valve. They are enthusiastic about getting some of the FIRST spotlight, and we know that if we can make this work, not only will our team benefit, but hopefully, so will everyone involved in FIRST. And hopefully this will be sustainable, with our team and this amazing company working together in years to come, not only help each other, but everyone else in the community.