this post was submitted on 17 Nov 2024
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Gabe is absolutely right on this. If it doesn't completely recenter the first person shooter genre, it's not really a half life game.
This is such an irrational bar to surpass
Episodes 1 and 2 were fun but they in no way “recentered the first person shooter genre.”
They hoped the episodic delivery of games would be the future. Especially alongside a digital distribution platform like Steam. I suspect they realized episodes wasn’t the way after the release of Orange Box, so they moved on from that.
They didn't try. They did one then it was years before episode 2.
You have to actually make episodes before declaring it a failure.
I watched the full documentary now. It’s clear they were burned out of Half Life when they started with Episode 3. The idea to deliver a new episode every 12 months wasn’t creatively sustainable. So they put it on hold while they worked on L4D and other projects.
It's a weird argument for them to make: We are too exhausted to make a short game so instead made an entirely new full game.
When they started with episode 3 they’ve already worked on Half Life 2 for more than 8 years. Most good ideas had already been explored, and they struggled to come up with new ones.
At that point it’s easier to start with something fresh where they’re not confined with the expectations of what a Half Life 2 should be.
I assume that's how creativity works? Making new different things gets you more ideas than doing similar thing over and over.
Valve really only releases things that shake the industry up. I've been playing through Alyx for the first time this weekend and oh my god is it good.
Valve buys up dev teams that are about to shake the industry up. Valve haven't actually been the ones to make something new in a long time. TFC, CS, Portal, DoD, L4D, Alien Swarm, Dota 2... were all made by outside dev teams that Valve absorbed and put their name on. The only things Valve have actually made, themselves, in the last 5 years are Alyx and CS2, neither of which brought anything new to the industry (although they are wonderfully-executed games) and are both sequels of existing franchises.
Personally, I'm not a fan of this practice, because I feel like Valve inadvertently stifles these studios after they bring them onboard. For instance, the team from DigiPen that Valve bought for their Portal tech? Imagine if they were still able to make games. Imagine if they were still able to stretch their creativity and create new tech and ideas. Instead, their intellectual properties are all tied up at Valve and they got to release two whole games in the last 20 years. Who knows what we could be missing out on from these guys if they were able to actually still make stuff.
A lot of studios develop with the intention of being absorbed and/or bought out. The plan is usually to develop some niche incredible tech that's only around PoC quality and then be acquired.
They didn't get crushed by the big man here. That's simply how the reality of the market goes.
It's like pharmaceuticals. No one starts a new pharma company expecting to compete with Pfizer or Merck, the whole game is to develop a promising drug and then get your company bought out by one of them so they can use their resources to get it to the market.
Plus, the actual creatives aren't gone just because their studio stopped making games, they usually keep working in some other role. It's hardly ideal, but it's wrong to frame this as a loss of their future contributions.
To equivocate a little, a great team is bottled lightning and having them disbanded because of market dynamics is a loss.
Valve does seem to contribute substantially to the development of their games, at least. Turtle Rock's Evolve and Back 4 Blood had nowhere near the success of L4D/2, which is still going strong 15 years later.
I think it shows that Valve has built a strong culture for creativity that’s hard to replicate. Their approach to play testing. The “flat” company structure.
What’s evident from the HL2 documentary is that there’s no single mastermind behind the game. There’s no Hideo Kojima or Will Wright. It’s the creative output of many individuals.
They're still at it, they bought Campo Santo (Firewatch Devs) in 2018 and now their game In The Valley of Gods is never gonna happen, they worked on Alyx instead.
They poached a bunch of folks from Hopoo Games recently too.
You speak of developers as if they have no agency.
The Hopoo folk left because they didn't want to work on RoR anymore.
Well yeah, Hopoo sold the RoR franchise to gearbox 2 years ago.
Moving from a small indie studio to Valve they are giving up a lot of agency.
I wish they didn't feel this pressure to push forward the industry with EP3. Full Half Life 3, maybe, but I would have preferred a closing chapter with the tech and features available.