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Half-Life 2 Art Director Explains Valve Departure
The gaming community often depicts Valve as a walled garden, inside of which topless pixies frolic and gilded communal money pots constantly overflow with money. Why, then, would anyone leave? In an interview with Eurogamer, Dishonored Visual Design Director Viktor Antonov explained why he left his position at Valve for another project.
“Valve is a great place, but I’m interested in projects, not in companies. I went to Valve specifically for Half-Life 2. I went and I collaborated with Arkane to do The Crossing and Dishonored,” Antonov said. “I put the project above everything else.”
Antonov goes on to explain that he worked on the pitch for Team Fortress 2 at Valve, but left because they weren’t working on the large triple-A projects anymore.
“They’ve grown now, they’re much bigger, and I’m interested in a certain level of creative risk taking and a certain energy that can be compared to jazz, jamming or rock n’ roll, where it’s small, it’s intense and it’s about making revolutions in the media,” Antonov said.
I don’t want to pull a HALF-LIFE 3 CONFIRMED twist out of this story, but there’s something concerning behind this if you read between the lines. Antonov left Valve because they’re no longer tackling huge projects like Half-Life 2. Of course, the series has been focused on episodes since Half-Life 2, but does that imply that a large Half-Life 3 is not in development? By Antonov’s logic, he would’ve stayed with the company if there was still a large, daring project to work on.
Regardless of how much you want to read in to it, Antonov’s attitude is pretty cool, only because it means we get to see the fruits of his talent more often.
[via Eurogamer]
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ONE day i hope to wake up and get the Orange Box 2 with HL3 and The Crossing, and Dishonored. But, i know that’s not going to happen.
Valve really doesn’t realize the mistake their making, most of the fans who use steam are half life fans. I swear they are becoming the new vaporware kings. I fully expect that we will never see a half life 3 game until valve stops making a profit off of the other stuff. So i’d say 10 more years.
Honestly, what’s wrong with them not making a third game? Why can’t we just be happy with what they’ve given us? Also, what if they did make a Half Life 3 and it didn’t live up to our expectations? Should we also be waiting for a Portal 3 now that the series has produced two of the greatest games of all time?
Also, it would be safer to say that most of the fans who use steam are using steam because they’re a cheaper alternative to buying pc games. It makes me happy that for the price of one new retail game ($60), I was able to buy seven different games during steam’s summer sale.
Unfair comparison, Both portal games had a definitive ending (Portal 1 was retconned after they decided to make portal 2) alas HL2: Ep2 ended on a cliffhanger, and not just a mildly “We are hinting a sequel” mind you, people are waiting for years for the story to conclude, and it is Valve’s fault, HL2 had a pretty solid ending that could wait another 10, 15 years for another game, but they decided to expand the story in Ep1 and 2, and now not only are they not talking about EP3 but there are rumors flying everywhere about a Half Life 3, which could potentially be delayed for years and years because Valve’s a perfectionist, meaning HL fans that could care less about DOTA or CS (or portal, left 4 dead and so on) have to wait indefinitely for something that should have already been released.
It’s stupidity to say we should be happy with what we got and move on, if you start something, bloody well finish it.
Also, why does there need to be a third game in each of their franchises? Who said three was a destined number? Maybe Valve just didn’t think about makign a full blown third installment in their perspective properties. Why not cheer for them to make new IP’s instead?
Why does it say “Half Life 25 Art Director…” at the top. Is that some kind of joke I don’t get?
Oh it’s supposed to be Half-Life 2′s but the font thingie strips out all punctuation.
I’ll change it to make it less weird.
It originally said 2′s but turned into 25 after the page finished loading. Reload the page and it will appear as 2′s for a second before completing loading.