Gabe Newell Speaks Out About Half Life 3
Penny Arcarde recently sat down with Valve’s co-founder and managing director, Gabe Newell and asked him some questions about the gaming industry and the direction Valve is going in. They asked Gabe to take us through his typical day at Valve. During the interview Gabe talked about how Valve handles all of the new project ideas they come up with.
PA asked the following question:
Is there ever tension between all the different things that Valve is interested in doing?
Gabe Newell’s reply:
Oh absolutely. 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. We try to go as fast as we can and we try to pick the things that we think are going to be most valuable to our customers and if there’s some magic 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 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.
But we’ve always somehow, you know, 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 and saying “okay, well let’s have things a little more baked before we start getting people all excited about it.”
Unfortunately, Half Life fans are still left guessing if Half Life 3 is in development or not. According to this reply it sounds to me fans will not know about any new Half Life release until the game gets close to a release date. Valve appears to be working on other projects and exploring other methods to increase revenue. I think HL 3 is in the mindset of people over at Valve and eventually we shall see a third release. The real question is how far up on the priority list is Half Life 3?
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you know, hl2 took eight years, team fortress 2 took ten years. all this into consideration hl3 will be in about a decade if we add another couple years to team fortress, so start complaining everyone when it’s about 6 years from now. with this kind of wait time i may make a portal mod and call it hl3, portal is still basically hl2 so we only need someone to do textures,animations, and one on coding i can do the mapping and supply some ideas. in hl3 there will be advisors by the dozen and an aperture science shipping boat so howsabouts we get an advisor to not take damage from singel bullets or physics objects, after this it will spawn a model of double mass and gravity gun it at gordon. perhaps have an alternate ending with the choice to destroy it or bring the tech back to the black mesa guys and potentially have the on board portal device be taken by the combine to get more reinforcements, but destroying it could mean losing an asset and a huge explosion to run away from. about a mile before you get to the borealis your heli gets shot down and you have to treck there dealing with elites and hunters, once there you start fighting the advisors, weapons that fire more than one bullet in seccusion (shotguns, smg, ar2,) will still damage it but physics objects including rockets would be reflected. The jury is still out on melee attacks, oh man with this kind of narritive we need an alyx voice actor, how we going to do that? anyway back on topic it’ll be a while with their record to calm down, let’s see how many pages long this post is. XP
In my honest opinion Valve is just waiting for the new consoles to come out so they can start really working on half life 3. I mean, why would they release a game now with limited technological capabilities if the new consoles are just around the corner? I´m more of a “take as much time as you need” person but don´t get me wrong, the Half Life series it my favorite game series of all time and i want to keep it that way, i don´t want Half Life 3 to be rushed (*cough* CoD *cough*) i want it to be the most amazing game that this generation has ever seen.
Valve has never steered us wrong before, I still have faith in them despite waiting for so many years for HL3 – I would wait longer if it meant the final product was going to be that much better, the problem is that the actual story of episode 2 ended in a place that wasn’t right for a long break like this – And it would be nice to see just a little reassurance from Valve (proof) that they are really working on it, or at least have plans, anything! The reason why I like Valve is because they take some risks in development (which is what ultimately makes memorable classics) and still know how to get respect from their fans, by treating them like people. – they’re perfect game company…And, I actually think that the fact that they have a smaller development team makes the goals of each project more clear in the minds of all the creative individuals involved, and we get higher quality and more defined games as a result. One thing I want Valve to know though, is despite all of their other great projects, Half Life carries the real strength of their reputation and success – You would think that they would put all of their energies into that series, if it was real cash value they were going for…why they don’t? I have no idea. Could it be that they really are waiting for new technology to make the greatest and most innovative shooter of its time? – Again!? For a third time? Now that, my friends is an encouraging thought…A big business holds off on making a game (and the big bucks) so it can be better than it would have been otherwise, if that is the case, it goes to show Valve is a company of real people.
I would like a Half-Life 3 to be the same as Half-Life 2 just with modern graphics. Gameplay in HL2 is just way more fun than any current game. Come on Valve, get with the program! Make it and we will buy it. PC only!
I don’t think making a HL2 reborn would a good idea, I can see where you’re going but if I wonted HL2, I’d play HL2. And the idea of PC only would kill some people, including me. My PC is most likely the worst PC ever so I have to play on XBox360, and it would suck to not be able to play HL3. But I can see you’re point of view.
When Half Life 3 comes out I will already have grandchildren and no interest in video games or whatsoever.
The day i lose interest in video games is the day that i die.
please take as much time as needed, bur keep in mind each second that passes makes us expect more content value
@gabe We needed Half Life 3 five years ago dammit! Stop making things like Portal, DOTA, Counter Strike etc because although they’re all great games the one everybody wants is Half Life 3. We were left with a cliffhanger years ago and I still want to know what happens to Gordon and the planet. You said it frustrates you to annoy your fans, why take so long with Half Life 3 then? Eight years is more than enough time to make a sequel to a game. Please stop messing around and just make the one game EVERYONE wants!
The nominees for “Taking the p*** when it comes to leaving huge time gaps between your games” are:
Polyphony Digital – Gran Turismo
Rockstar Games – Grand Theft Auto
Valve – Half Life
Bethesda – The Elder Scrolls
And the winner is…….
Valve of course!
Look, Valve took 9 years on tf2 and 10 on half-life 2, the truth is, THEY ARE NOT WORKING ON HALF-LIFE 3, they obviously will later, but their working on Ricochet 2 and Counter-Strike Global Offensive, sorry.
What about Duke Nukem?
What about Blizzard? With Starcraft 2?
They REALLY need to release HL3 asap..
NO, They need to release some teaser trailers or some hints that bring up more questions. Its been a while and Half-Life 2 is not fresh in my mind, i need some recapping.