Half Life 3?

[Gerard]

And last time I checked, they have a really weird organisational structure, where nobody tells anyone else what to do. Projects "coalesce" and fall apart, like leaves in a storm...

Which has to make me wonder just wtf they get paid for? Do they have all these 3d modellers, coders, audio engineers, texture artists, programmers etc maintaining steam?

It really does seem to be a weird structure they have, I'd love to be a fly on the wall in that building for a day, presumably they're all just wandering about killing time until their next paycheque arrives as on the surface that really seems to be what they're doing. When's the last time they released a 'AAA' game? Presumably that would be Alyx and that's over 3 years old at this point.

It really does seem like Valve really don't have any idea where to go with Half Life and they're basically stuck in a rut in terms of ideas, but fortunately for them they have a money printing machine in steam so they can afford to be stuck in a rut, basically indefinitely.

Just a bit sad that a game that had a really interesting story and at our last visit left us on a cliff-hanger seems to be stuck in limbo due to valve's 'cant be bothered' attitude. 16 years and counting.

 

[MissChief]

Because they literally have more money than they know what to do with, and spend their time doing whatever experimental stuff they feel like, that week.

And last time I checked, they have a really weird organisational structure, where nobody tells anyone else what to do. Projects "coalesce" and fall apart, like leaves in a storm...

e: meh, beaten. Glad I'm not remembering wrong, tho

A bit late but that's not far off the truth. From what I've heard everyone's desk is on wheels. Everyone regularly posts on their internal board/app what they're currently working on. If someone likes the sound of that they can push their whole desk into the elevator and decamp to another floor and work with the person working on said interesting project. There's very little, if non oversight at all and very little of it actually coalesces into anything remotely workable or releasable. You could work on something for 3 days, 3 months or 3 years then suddenly have your interest piqued by something someone posted and go and do that instead. The number of shuttered, failed or simply forgotten projects and ideas must number in the hundreds.

 

[FoxEye]

A bit late but that's not far off the truth. From what I've heard everyone's desk is on wheels. Everyone regularly posts on their internal board/app what they're currently working on. If someone likes the sound of that they can push their whole desk into the elevator and decamp to another floor and work with the person working on said interesting project. There's very little, if non oversight at all and very little of it actually coalesces into anything remotely workable or releasable. You could work on something for 3 days, 3 months or 3 years then suddenly have your interest piqued by something someone posted and go and do that instead. The number of shuttered, failed or simply forgotten projects and ideas must number in the hundreds.

I'm not sure any other company but Valve could (or would) work that way.

 

[MissChief]

I'm not sure any other company but Valve could (or would) work that way.

Certainly not because of financial pressures and shareholders demanding returns. Steam allows Valve to sit back and let that money keep the company afloat in such a big way they can more or less do what they want. Being privately owned helps too. No shareholders demanding more and more returns. There is some evidence that this structure has been identified as a reason for not many actual releases though.

The lack of organization structure has led to project cancellations, as it can be difficult to convince other employees to work on them. In 2020, Valve acknowledged that its structure had made it difficult to gather momentum, slowing their output during the 2010s. Their VR projects and Half-Life: Alyx became a turning point, setting short-term studio-wide goals to focus the company. According to Walker, (Designer Robin Walker) "We sort of had to collectively admit we were wrong on the premise that you will be happiest if you work on something you personally want to work on the most."

 

[Gerard]

Certainly not because of financial pressures and shareholders demanding returns. Steam allows Valve to sit back and let that money keep the company afloat in such a big way they can more or less do what they want. Being privately owned helps too. No shareholders demanding more and more returns. There is some evidence that this structure has been identified as a reason for not many actual releases though.

The lack of organization structure has led to project cancellations, as it can be difficult to convince other employees to work on them. In 2020, Valve acknowledged that its structure had made it difficult to gather momentum, slowing their output during the 2010s. Their VR projects and Half-Life: Alyx became a turning point, setting short-term studio-wide goals to focus the company. According to Walker, (Designer Robin Walker) "We sort of had to collectively admit we were wrong on the premise that you will be happiest if you work on something you personally want to work on the most."

Maybe they need to set another studio goal and finish the story of half life. It really makes Duke Forever seem like a legit development timetable.

 

[mountaincow]

It sounds like some people are bitter that Valve can do what they want without making games and not crumble under financial pressure.
Valve have done some really great stuff for gamers outside of just producing and selling games.

Would you rather they were just another EA / Ubi or whatever?

 

[Aegis]

It's also worth noting that Marc Laidlaw (writer on Half-Life from the original until and including Episode 2) no longer works for Valve (he left in 2017) - even if we got a HL3, how much of the DNA of the studio that made those earlier games still remains there?

(For the record, I think they probably *could* do it justice based purely on the quality of HL:Alyx)

 

[MissChief]

Maybe they need to set another studio goal and finish the story of half life. It really makes Duke Forever seem like a legit development timetable.

It does make me wonder how much development there has been within Valve for anything '3' related. Has a story/plot even been hashed out? Any actual assets? Is anything HL3 related banned internally? Perhaps they even got some development started and worked on it for a few months but then the structure made it too easy to move away if you didn't like the direction/story/art style? Who knows!?

 

[Longbow]

Which has to make me wonder just wtf they get paid for? Do they have all these 3d modellers, coders, audio engineers, texture artists, programmers etc maintaining steam?

Make games, get bored, abandon them, start making other games.

It does make me wonder how much development there has been within Valve for anything '3' related. Has a story/plot even been hashed out? Any actual assets? Is anything HL3 related banned internally? Perhaps they even got some development started and worked on it for a few months but then the structure made it too easy to move away if you didn't like the direction/story/art style? Who knows!?

Left For Dead 3, was apparently a working game, but half of the team wanted to switch to the Unreal engine instead of finishing the Source 2 engine. A lack of direction meant it was abandoned after several years of development.

 

[Gerard]

It sounds like some people are bitter that Valve can do what they want without making games and not crumble under financial pressure.
Valve have done some really great stuff for gamers outside of just producing and selling games.

Would you rather they were just another EA / Ubi or whatever?

We would RATHER they finish the story they started in 1998, instead of leaving us on a cliff-hanger for the past 16 years. It's not like they're cranking out half-life games by the bucketload like EA would. The last proper instalment was 2007, Alyx was more of niche offshoot kinda game considering you needed a a headset to play it.

It's not just the fact they haven't made the game, it's their entire attitude to it that's basically "we're saying nothing" because of the incredibly strange way that company is run. That might have been cute for a few years after episode 2, but by now it's worn so thin its laughable. They know people want the game, they obviously had a story outline for how the series was meant to progress, they just seemingly can't be arsed to do it.

 

[Gerard]

Make games, get bored, abandon them, start making other games.

Left For Dead 3, was apparently a working game, but half of the team wanted to switch to the Unreal engine instead of finishing the Source 2 engine. A lack of direction meant it was abandoned after several years of development.

Seems like they have too many Indians and not enough Chiefs, maybe if they actually got organised instead of leaving people to scratch their holes they'd actually be able to get somewhere in development for a part 3.

 

[Gerard]

It does make me wonder how much development there has been within Valve for anything '3' related. Has a story/plot even been hashed out? Any actual assets? Is anything HL3 related banned internally? Perhaps they even got some development started and worked on it for a few months but then the structure made it too easy to move away if you didn't like the direction/story/art style? Who knows!?

There was development on episode 3, that much is pretty certain, but that's where things seemed to have went **** up. Episodes 1/2/3 Valve initially said were meant to be part 3, then at some point they changed their minds when development of the episodes took longer than expected. Valve said it was meant to be 6-8 months between episodes initially, though that was soon proved wrong.

According to hl3 fandom page this is what happened:

Behind the scenes at Valve, it had become clear over the course of developing the Half-Life 2 episodes that the team had an issue of scope creep: the episodes were planned to shorten the amount of time between Half-Life games (given the six-year time span between the first and second game), but Episode Two's development took much longer than anticipated and the results appeared to be much closer to sequels to Half-Life 2 than simple episodes. When the team was unable to come up with an episodic conclusion that matched the excitement and technological innovation associated with a Half-Life game, the obvious solution was to create a much larger next installment for the franchise, one that they could ship with the new Source 2 engine once it was finished.[2]

Episode Three was quietly cancelled during this time, with the only official announcement coming from Gabe Newell in a 2011 interview, where he confirmed that Valve had moved on from the episodic model of developing software.[3]

Following this, a number of projects planned as a potential Half-Life 3 were developed, some of which were still being worked on as late as 2014.[4] Although leaks over the years showed that Valve internally referred to many of these as Half-Life 3, none of the design experiments became a full-length Half-Life game due to a lack of excitement on the developers' end and the extended development cycle for Source 2. This, coupled with the pressure to create the increasingly anticipated follow-up to Episode Two ultimately prevented another Half-Life from seeing the light of day for nearly a decade.


And basically that's where we still are today, waiting on an alleged Source 2 Half Life 3.

 

[MoNkeE]

People also forget that whilst Valve have done some exceptional development on the Half-Life series, a lot of the games we attribute to them haven’t been developed by them. Some of their biggest successful; Left4Dead and Portal, were developed outside of Valve, and then refined through sequels. But those sequels were always bettering an established good product, not rebuilding on a new engine etc.

 

[Aegis]

People also forget that whilst Valve have done some exceptional development on the Half-Life series, a lot of the games we attribute to them haven’t been developed by them. Some of their biggest successful; Left4Dead and Portal, were developed outside of Valve, and then refined through sequels. But those sequels were always bettering an established good product, not rebuilding on a new engine etc.

Don't believe everything you read on the internet! (yes, I'm aware of the irony )

Narbacular Drop (the Portal prototype) was a very different beast to Valve's game and whilst yes, the concept was already there, you only have to compare the two to see what Valve brought to the project:

Narbacular Drop

Using two interconnected portals you can place on walls, ceilings and the floor, you must navigate your way through a sentient dungeon.

www.digipen.edu

Also, Valve have, IMO been very generous in allowing Turtle Rock to take so much credit for Left4Dead - Valve contributed a huge amount to that project and TR's output has been pretty mediocre since they parted ways with Valve:

Back 4 Blood proves Valve carried Left 4 Dead

"Bringing Left 4 Dead into your marketing mix also brings in the expectations of Left 4 Dead, thus opening yourself up to a lot more criticism." -Adam Sessle...

www.youtube.com

 

[Gerard]

Make games, get bored, abandon them, start making other games.

Jesus Christ, after viewing they video it really does seem that any games that valve managed to release was basically down to dumb luck if the dev team stay 'excited' about them or not to actually complete them.

An alleged 3 attempts at a half life 3 and according to that they wanted it to be very different vs a continuation of what people would expect. Have they never heard the phrase 'if its not broken don't fix it'? Some games don't need to be groundbreaking, they just need to remain true to their roots and provide a solid gameplay and story experience.

Seems to me like they're trying to overcomplicate a simple formula, but that's just going by that video which is based on rumours and leaks so might not really be the case.

I think if Gabe ever wants to complete the trilogy he needs to be more hands on in his direction, vs letting people do whatever they want and get paid for it, that seems to be the ethos in that company at least.

 

[Mak3R]

Next year is 20th Anniversary of HL2. So will probably get something, just unlikely to be HL3.

Say it ain't so.

 

[MissChief]

Say it ain't so.

HL1 & 2 remaster. Would be nice anyway.

 

[Mak3R]

HL1 & 2 remaster. Would be nice anyway.

There was HL1 source. As well as the HL2 cinematic mod (or some name to that effect) that made it much more pretty and run like **** at certain points. Probably the best you can hope for!

 

[Aegis]

HL1 & 2 remaster. Would be nice anyway.

Black Mesa is well worth playing if you want a more 'modern' take on HL1:

Black Mesa on Steam

Relive Half-Life.

store.steampowered.com

 

[Mak3R]

Black Mesa is well worth playing if you want a more 'modern' take on HL1:

Black Mesa on Steam

Relive Half-Life.

store.steampowered.com

Oh yes that is what I was thinking of, i played that when it came out and it was missing the final Xen levels. Or maybe there was a HL1 source also? Been years since I looked back at these so it's a blur.