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Gabe Newell Explains Valve’s Silence on Half-Life Sequels
Over the weekend on Penny Arcade, Valve boss Gabe Newell sat down to chat about many, many things—among them, the reasons why the company is reluctant to discuss sequels to their popular franchises, particularly Half-Life.
“We’re acutely aware of how much we annoy our fans and it’s pretty frustrating to us when we put them into that situation,” Newell remarked in response to fans who are “gnashing their teeth” waiting for sequel news.
Newell elaborated:
“We try to go as fast as we can and we try to pick the [projects to focus on] that we think are going to be most valuable to our customers and if there’s some magi way we can get more work done in a day then we’d love to hear about it, but we recognize that it’s been a long time whereas we have so many great games that people really love—Counterstrike, Half Life, Portal, Left 4 Dead, not a whole lot of Ricochet enthusiasts out there, and at the same time we want to be making sure that those games and those stories and those characters are moving forward while also making sure that we don’t just get into terminal sequelitis.
“…part of the reason that we backed off talking so much about what was happening in the future is that when we’ve done that in the past, you know, with Half Life 1 it was a year after we originally said it would be, Half Life 2 basically if you go and read the forum posts apparently took us fifty or sixty years to get done so we’re trying to be careful not to get people too excited and then have to go and disappoint them. So we’re sort of reacting in the other direction ands saying ‘okay, well let’s have thing a little more baked before we start getting people all excited about it.’”
A few weeks ago, the Steam Forums start to see a lot of activity from frustrated Half-Life fans, who explained that their frustration with Newell and Valve had reached a boiling point (boing!). A group of fans named “Call for Communication” demanded to be told what was going on with their beloved franchise, and later that group held a “game-in” type of protest, where they would all play Half-Life 2 on Steam at once to demonstrate their love of the franchise. An even weirder sort of protest cropped up before that, called “Operation Crowbar,” where fans would buy crowbars on Amazon and have them shipped to Valve’s headquarters.
Which, you know, is really, really fucking creepy. But hey, maybe that’s just me.
Via Penny Arcade
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They just don’t want to make the same mistake as the past. Look at Square Enix. They announced FFvs13 long before it was even being produced. Because of this, fans had to wait nearly 6+ years before being told that the project is in “full production.” People are not patient enough to learn about something exciting and wait for it for years. They want it in a matter of months. HL3 or HLE3 will happen, and is probably already in production. Though, I would not expect any announcements until they are past the 50-70% mark. :(
You, good sir, nailed it.
Truth.
This is due to the way it was marketed, to release the second part of HL2 in ‘small chunks’ through 3 stand-alone episodes over the course of a few years (compared to 5+ years needed to develop a new game engine along with a full-length AAA game). This was the comparison originally drawn by the company itself to justify the short, episodic nature of the games.
In hindsight, to avoid this situation, they should have stuck to the tried-and-true development cycle that games tend to take (the one you speak of). Peoples’ frustrations are the least bit undue. Companies need to realize that using the hype machine all the time is a double-edged sword and will eventually catch them in the rear.
Still waiting for conformation on Ricochet 2 VALVE
I would not send a crowbar but I do not think it is creepy I think it was awesome and it seems like it would make the Valve team very proud they created something that would evoke that much of a response
“Man, I sure do hope Stephen King writes a sequel to Cujo soon! Let’s all send him dog carcasses in the mail to show him how much we love him and his delightful horror fictions!”
I think sending someone a dead dog is a little more extreme than sending a company a hunk of metal.
Blow up Michael Bay’s house so he knows how much we love his film making.
With him in it, right? Lol
And most retarded comment of the day goes to…
Maybe we should send Rockstar dead hookers.
They have to go somewhere!
Let’s all send Epic a bunch of bloody chainsaws so they’ll put out more Gears 3 dlc.
Everyone that posted from “Brian P Rubin” down (except for Grim Joker) is a moron. The Crowbar thing was genius and if i worked at Valve i would be extremely appreciative that the fans would go to those lengths to show their support.
I completely understand why Valve are reluctant to announc anything, look at Blizzard and Diablo 3! They announced that 3 or 4 years ago and there still isnt even a release date for it, not even a guesstimate.
Exactly. Valve is doing the right thing by keeping their lids shut. And the fanbase is doing the right thing by showing they actually care about the franchise. It sucks for both sides, but in the end, everyone will get their slice of heaven (Half Life 3 for fans – cash for Valve). :)
Well said Mugenite, well said!
Have a cookie, on me!
Num num num num… Mwahahahahaha!!! >:D
Don’t know if it’s being a “true fan” to cry for a game.
I think a true fan would rather place his trust at the game company. I mean come on, the game IS coming that much we know and that much should be enough. Give them time to make the game polished, that way we get proper content, the game of millenia, something to talk about for the next fucking 50 years and even beyond, something game-revolutionary even.
The way these “fans” are demanding for content disgusts me, maybe these “fans” should change allegiance to companies like Activision, who like to put out content every year. Does it keep “fans” satisfied? No, cause the content is shit.
I remember when Bethesda announced Skyrim. Was it a full year or half a year of wait after the trailer and I couldn’t just hold myself together for the wait. Then the game arrived and I must say I was abit disappointed after all the hype. It’s a great game, but not worth having an erection over the trailer for six months.
When they show some proper gameplay trailers of Half Life 3, I hope the release date wouldn’t be far either.
Well I can already tell you’re going to be disappointed with HL3 with those expectations, i mean really?
“the game of millenia, something to talk about for the next fucking 50 years and even beyond, something game-revolutionary even.”
If that’s not over hyping I don’t know what is.
My best guess is that one day, people will just log onto Steam and find HL3/HL2E3 just sitting there on the front page, ready to be downloaded. And the only trailer we’ll get is of Gabe dancing around with the troll face.
I’m afraid that HL3 might turn out like Duke Nukem. Duke Nukem was delayed and delayed and the fans went crazy when its release was announced. But becuase they waited so long, the game seemed stale, out dated, and just generally bad. HL3 is getting pretty old now….
Why is everyone acting like they were disappointed with Duke Nukem?! I knew it was a retarded concept from the moment I heard the name. Seriously. If you want to complain about waiting, complain about something like FFv13 or Last Guardian. I literally cringed my teeth every time I heard, “DUKE NEUKUM IST DA KINGZ!! LOLOLOLOL”
am i the only one wondering what valve did with all those crowbars?
*imagines a statue of either gabe newell or gordon freeman….made of crowbars*