Gabe Newell opens up about lack of updates regarding next Half Life...

NKDietrich said:
You're just mad because he can afford to order from KFC and you're stuck with Popeyes.
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I don't mean to derail this incredibly useful thread... but Popeyes is better than KFC in an amount so vast it is not measurable.
 
the extra crispy stuff at KFC is pretty good.

But ya, popeyes is better. That fucking cajun gravy on the mashed potatoes is so freaking good.
 
A guess as I've gotten older I give less and less of a shit about release dates. When games are ready (well unless they are garbage) they will fucking come out.

Hassling the developer about it actually SLOWS development down because they will then respond to comments like a Q/A or an interview and that cuts time out of development cycle to work on what they want to release to fans.

Why do you think Blizzard canceled Blizzcon? Do you think that it's somehow not massively profitable to charge hundreds of dollars per ticket (and to viewers who buy a $40 ticket online to watch it all unfold of which over a million did last year) , sell out in less than a minute and that's not even taking into account what it does for the local economy in Anaheim each year. They canceled Blizzcon because they have 2 major releases coming out soon would rather get those games out to fans (even though one is going to be lousy ...fucking panda's) then sit around and talk about how they can't talk about what fan's what them to talk about...


Chill... the ...fuck...out.
 
Godmachine said:
Hassling the developer about it actually SLOWS development down because they will then respond to comments like a Q/A or an interview and that cuts time out of development cycle to work on what they want to release to fans.
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I kind of agree with some of what you said but seriously, how many days coding do you think was lost in that interview? Not unless it was done in slomo-o-vision.
 
haileris said:
I kind of agree with some of what you said but seriously, how many days coding do you think was lost in that interview? Not unless it was done in slomo-o-vision.
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You are thinking that he is only responding to one question or interview , in reality he has a full in box of request from various gaming outlets , major chains , editorial sites , web blog hosts and everything else.

If he responds to all of that personally (which it seems he is doing) than he can't manage the rest of development and he has to dedicated resources to say PR for handling the current out cry for a press release on what's going on. IF he decides to spill the beans early it could provide competition with a vague but starting time line of what and when he plans to release it. When a game as big as Half Life comes out , other publishers/developers will plan even years a head to make sure they can either avoid release around it or to wait until it releases and see if there are features that should be incorporated during development for there own games.

Its not as simple as you make it out to be , Half Life is the life blood of Valve , its what made them. Blizzard does the same exact thing as Valve does and the pay off is that they release stable , quality games that get played for decades. Not to mention the secrecy is probably also due to the fact that Half Life 2 was leaked before release in beta form , so quickly does the gaming community forget :

Half-Life 2 was merely a rumor until a strong impression at E3 in May 2003 launched it into high levels of hype where it won several awards for best in show. It had a release date of September 2003, but was delayed. This pushing back of HL2's release date came in the wake of the cracking of Valve's internal network[38] through a null session connection to Tangis which was hosted in Valve's network and a subsequent upload of an ASP shell, resulting in the leak of the game's source code and many other files including maps, models and a playable early version of Half-Life Source and Counter-Strike Source in early September 2003.[39] On October 2, 2003, Valve CEO Gabe Newell publicly explained in the HalfLife2.net forums[40] the events that Valve experienced around the time of the leak, and requested users to track down the perpetrators if possible.

In June 2004, Valve Software announced in a press release that the FBI had arrested several people suspected of involvement in the source code leak.[41] Valve claimed the game had been leaked by a German black-hat hacker named Axel "Ago" Gembe. After the leak, Gembe had contacted Newell through e-mail (also providing an unreleased document planning the E3 events). Newell kept corresponding with Gembe, and Gembe was led into believing that Valve wanted to employ him as an in-house security auditor. He was to be offered a flight to the USA and was to be arrested on arrival by the FBI. When the German government became aware of the plan, Gembe was arrested in Germany instead, and put on trial for the leak as well as other computer crimes in November 2006, such as the creation of Agobot, a highly successful trojan which harvested users' data.

At the trial in November 2006 in Germany, Gembe was sentenced to two years' probation. In imposing the sentence, the judge took into account such factors as Gembe's difficult childhood and the fact that he was taking steps to improve his situation.
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So the mere fever pitch of everyone wanting to play the next Half Life game resulted in an breach and a leak. Is it really so hard to understand WHY he is being tight lipped about it? Wouldn't you do the exact same thing if you were in his position?
 
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stealthy123 said:
the extra crispy stuff at KFC is pretty good.

But ya, popeyes is better. That fucking cajun gravy on the mashed potatoes is so freaking good.
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This. Mind you it's been like a year since I've been to either, but back then KFC might as well have been the reject chicken Popeyes wouldn't stain their deep fryers with.
 
I think he is just worried about the amount of increased attention they would get if they even confirmed the existence/progress (if there is any) regarding HL3. If i do recall, they were hacked last time! Anyways, whatever the situation, we cant do anything until they decide its time.

I can wait, last time, HL2 was worth it. I'm hopeful and optimistic that HL3 be will too - after all, it is their special baby!
 
Am I the only one who is excited for CS GO?

CS is the best versus fps ever, GO is very exciting for me, valve still provides stuff I care about.
 
fps4ever said:
If Valve picked things that were most valuable to their customers then HL3 or whatever they will call it would have been the first project completed. Gabe is talking out of both sides of his mouth. First comes making money not what customers want, which makes no difference to me but don't bullshit us. Typical nothing really said as usual.
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If Valve picked their next product soley based of what customer wanted and continued to work that product to death, it wouldn't be good for gamers. We'd see more of what happened with Half-Life 1. You know, Half Life 1 + expansion after expansion that added more content without really adding more 'quality'. In reality, Opposing Forces for example pretty much had the same quality as Half-Life 1.

Making expansions is relatively a short easy process that to some degree satisfies gamers. Making full sequels with a new engine takes a lot of time. Sadly, I agree with Valves take time between engine generations method they seem to take. If Half Life 2 had came out 9 months after Half Life 1, computer hardware would have hardly improved and Half Life 2 WOULD NOT have been capable of having the phsyics engine it did or the gravity gun. There simply would not be enough processing power to generate that level of physics way back in time one year after Half Life 1 came out. That's an unargueable fact; less you start considering what if people bought $25,000.00 workstations for home use.

Half Life 2 to complete what they wanted to complete in terms of scale, physics and gameplay required Half Life 2's engine be made at least x years after Half Life 1 to give time for computers to evolve. I personally believe when we finally see Half Life 3's engine and what they do with DX12... (partially kidding, but, mostly not) we will be amazed at what they've made possible and how much improved Half Life 3 is over Half Life 2. I don't doubt that the team that made Half Life 2 is capable of impressive creative vision. I recall being in awe playing through the original Half Life and Half Life 2 at many times during the game.

So I'm ok with them taking their time because in the end, it means the final chapter of Half Life (HL3) will be that much more epic. Unlike a LOTRO movie where each movie's quality will be about the same so you just want it fast, HL3 gets better and better with each year its delayed. Let's be honest, if you great an amazing game engine that maxes out a GTX880 or a Radeon 9990, it's going to be pretty darn impressive compared to the games that max out a GTX280 // Radeon 3770.

If you attempt to release games every 9 months or shorter, you end up with sequels that are really just expansions using the exact same engine that don't really improve much on visuals or what's possible gameplay wise. Case in point: Call of Duty. Call of Duty literately has used the same engine with very slight modifications for the last 8-9 titles. Call of Duty games basically are expansions adding new content with no new quality. There can be some argument made that this is due to 'consolitis' but still, there could be improvements made to the PC quality.

Would you really like Valve to treat Half Life 3 like Call of Duty to begin developing in that style? There's a reason people know Gordon Freeman's name but don't recall the name of who you play as in Call of Duty 3 or MW1. It's because Half Life established new boundaries of what's possible in gameplay and becomes thee-game that everyone wants to play.

F.E.A.R. said:
It's been so long I don't think I really care anymore about HL3. It better be epic for me to buy.
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What half-life game has not been ground-breaking in terms of game engine, story, models, attention to detail and the best game at the time of its release? Half Life games practically are the definition of 'Epic' and 'Creativity'. The gravity gun in Half Life 2 is still one of the most memorable, fun and interesting weapons I've ever encountered in an FPS game. I can honestly guaranteed you that Half Life 3 pretty much will be epic -- even though my time machine is currently broken ;) :cool:

Sure there's other classic weapons like Doom's BFG but the BFG basically was a weapon like any other that shot green-blobs at your enemy and blew em up. It's only memorable because of what the acroymn stands for. OMGosh. Swearing in a game?!?! That was unheard of back in the 80s! However, in reality, playing through some modern day games, swearing has lost its shock value almost entirely.

Whach said:
I can wait, last time, HL2 was worth it. I'm hopeful and optimistic that HL3 be will too - after all, it is their special baby!
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Exactly my thoughts! It's their baby and core flagship product. They will make it epic and it'll sell tons and tons of copies. My theory is still that Gabe or someone has this creative vision. They are imagining the best FPS every with a gravy gun 5.0 and a bunch of equivilent ground-breaking weapons combining the best of what's entered the fps genre over the last 5-10 years but they are waiting on the hardware necessary to make the vision a reality.
 
thats all fine for HL3
but that still leaves the issue of HL2:ep3 hanging
WHY is not out yet? its been years didnt Valve say they were going episodic installments to make shorter time between games? with shorter games?
i have no issues with taking all the time in the world for HL3 but i want to end of HL2 already
 
fps4ever said:
If Valve picked things that were most valuable to their customers then HL3 or whatever they will call it would have been the first project completed. Gabe is talking out of both sides of his mouth. First comes making money not what customers want, which makes no difference to me but don't bullshit us. Typical nothing really said as usual.
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In case you missed your economics class, "what customers want" = "what customers are willing to pay for" = "making money".
 
fps4ever said:
If Valve picked things that were most valuable to their customers then HL3 or whatever they will call it would have been the first project completed. Gabe is talking out of both sides of his mouth. First comes making money not what customers want, which makes no difference to me but don't bullshit us. Typical nothing really said as usual.
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trolololol. The last thing Gabe cares about is more money. They make games for the love of it, I can imagine you can get bored with the same storyline.

Gabe already made it in life after working at MSFT for YEARS. He has said time after time that Valve is about making enjoyable games. Sure its also about running a profitable business but jesus christ, its not like we are talking about EA here.
 
infect0 said:
trolololol. The last thing Gabe cares about is more money. They make games for the love of it, I can imagine you can get bored with the same storyline.

Gabe already made it in life after working at MSFT for YEARS. He has said time after time that Valve is about making enjoyable games. Sure its also about running a profitable business but jesus christ, its not like we are talking about EA here.
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I agree. If Valve was all about making more money wouldn't the company have gone public by now?

Gamers only make fun of Gabe because he's so damn lovable.
 
infect0 said:
trolololol. The last thing Gabe cares about is more money. They make games for the love of it, I can imagine you can get bored with the same storyline.

Gabe already made it in life after working at MSFT for YEARS. He has said time after time that Valve is about making enjoyable games. Sure its also about running a profitable business but jesus christ, its not like we are talking about EA here.
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If that were actually true, they wouldn't even bother with consoles, but they do. No matter how much you're dedicated to PC, developing for both consoles and PC will ALWAYS affect the PC version. Watch, I guarantee that they're waiting for new consoles to push out Source2/HL3 since the consoles now can't run what they envision. Now, if they were not about the money, they'd forgo consoles entirely and pump those out sooner.
 
infect0 said:
trolololol. The last thing Gabe cares about is more money. They make games for the love of it, I can imagine you can get bored with the same storyline.

Gabe already made it in life after working at MSFT for YEARS. He has said time after time that Valve is about making enjoyable games. Sure its also about running a profitable business but jesus christ, its not like we are talking about EA here.
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I'm not so sure about that even. Anyone kinda weirded out that were creeping up on the DOTA 2 release and have yet to see a pricetag?

If this is free too then I'm gonna completely lose faith in Valve as a souless money grubing publisher. They have got to get their gold-laced shit together.
 
Fail said:
is when you look at a game like Starcraft 2, which was a pretty mediocre update of Starcraft, it was just a reskinned version of the same game with slightly more modern graphics.
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I am sorry, what?

If you actually think this you don't know Starcraft or Starcraft 2.

So much difference in unit design, map design and game-play.

Yeah, good old episode 3! It is incredibly difficult to stay interested in that story arc.

Also at the people who think interviews, or questions and things slows development down. IT DOESN'T. Gabe is not integral to the development at Valve (Besides money).
 
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Bobthecoolguy said:
I am sorry, what?

If you actually think this you don't know Starcraft or Starcraft 2.

So much difference in unit design, map design and game-play.
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People that say SC2 is the same as SC1 never go beyond the singleplayer of both games.
 
AceCR42 said:
People that say SC2 is the same as SC1 never go beyond the singleplayer of both games.
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Even so, they are still vastly different. What missions are the same? The story is even told differently.

The only similarities in the games is the story and they are both real time strategy.
 
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