Chet Faliszek

Chet Faliszek
Biographical information
Title(s)	Writer
Time period	December 2004 – May 2017
Nickname(s)	Mr. Awesome

 

Chet Faliszek is a writer who worked at Valve.

Biography

Faliszek is the co-writer, along with Marc Laidlaw and Erik Wolpaw, of the Half-Life 2: Episode One, Half-Life 2: Episode Two, and Portal stories. He also wrote the story for Left 4 Dead, and later co-wrote Portal 2’s plot with Wolpaw and Jay Pinkerton. He is also credited as a writer on Counter-Strike: Global Offensive for writing tidbits of lore in the skin descriptions as well as for the various operation events.

Faliszek is, with Wolpaw, the creator of the now defunct website Old Man Murray. He shared an office at Valve with Wolpaw and Laidlaw. Laidlaw once stated on his personal blog that "for years, Chet and Erik were legendary figures of mythic status to me. They still are, except now I can throw things over my shoulder and hit them." On Valve's official website, Chet's function was described as follows: "We are all still trying to figure out exactly what it is that Chet does at Valve, but at the very least he occupies office space on the 11th floor as self-proclaimed Mr. Awesome."

Faliszek began contributing to the Steam VR platform and developer community after Valve began investing heavily in the VR market. Faliszek promoted Steam VR heavily and met developers worldwide. He gave many VR talks and led some roundtables for VR developers to exchange insights. Many people in the Steam VR developer community saw Faliszek as a highly influential figure in the space, so when Falizsek left Valve in 2017 many VR developers who had published their games on Steam said they were shocked to see such a prominent figure leave the space and that this surely wouldn't be Faliszek's last time contributing to the VR platform.

Faliszek would join Bossa Games after departing Valve in 2017, to work on a cooperative horde shooter we now know as The Anacrusis as well as other VR related things. He would also join Vertigo Games' advisory board, to give insight into their future virtual reality titles. This means Falizsek has likely given insight into Surgeon Simulator VR and all of Vertigo Games' published titles except the base game of Arizona Sunshine. However, Bossa Games was reluctant to work with The Anacrusis as their own title, since they hadn't made a shooter before and didn't want to create a divide in their audience, so Faliszek would leave Bossa Games in 2019.

Faliszek founded his own studio along with former Riot Games employee Kimberly Voll, called Stray Bombay. They would create the vision Faliszek had while working at Bossa Games, a cooperative horde shooter very similar to Left 4 Dead on Unreal Engine 4, called The Anacrusis. It is a Left 4 Dead spiritual successor, set during a sci-fi alien outbreak. The game has Steam Workshop support, similar to Left 4 Dead 2.

Selected gameography

• Half-Life 2: Episode One (2006)
• Half-Life 2: Episode Two (2007)
• Portal (2007)
• Left 4 Dead (2008)
• Left 4 Dead 2 (2009)
• Portal 2 (2011)
• Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (2013)
• The Anacrusis (2022)

External links

• Chet Faliszek on Twitter
• Chet Faliszek on LinkedIn
• Personal website
• Old Man Murray
• Writer's Block: Portal 2 Writers Roundtable on Game Informer (March 12, 2010) (archived)