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    Half-Life

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    A celebrated series of award-winning FPS games which has consistently pushed the limits and expectations of the first-person shooter genre since its inception.

    Any other examples in history of what happened to Half Life?

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    dagas

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    Half Life is not the first series to die (it might as well be dead since it has been ten years now since HL2) but I cannot think of any other example where such a major game didn't get a sequel. Half Life was huge! HL2 was my favorite FPS for a long time and is still a contender for that. To not make a sequel seems crazy! Sure HL3 might be under development but the fact that is hasn't been released yet seems absurd.

    I know that Valve makes a lot of money on Steam, probably a lot more than their own games combined, getting a cut of all games sold. But HL3 would have bring in a lot of money if it had come out. It's not like they stopped making games. I cannot imagine that no matter how succesfull Portal 2 was they would not have made more money with HL3. You might say that they wanted to work with something new and not make a sequel but Portal 2 and Team Fortress 2 are both sequels.

    So back to the question, can you think of anything as big as Half Life where they stopped making games. And Tony Hawk and such doesn't count because that has to do with dwindling interest. No one was tired of Half Life. No one said "I wish they would take a break from making Half Life games". They just stopped, at the peak and I cannot imagine that whenever HL3 does come out it will be as big of a deal as it would have been 5 or 6 years ago when people still remembered Half Life. When it comes out we will be fathers and grand father talking about how Half Life was cool when we were their age,

    Halo, Gears of War or Call of Duty need a break, Half Life never needed a break. It would be like CoD taking a ten year break after the first Modern Warfare.

    Sorry for the long rant but listening to the bombcast mentioning HL3 just made me pissed again that Valve ignored their roots. Half Life was Valve and Valve was Half Life. I don't even know how I would react to an announcement of HL3 at this point. It would be like my girl friend from when I was 15 came back and asked to be together again. I would say she had her chance and I am with someone else now. It would have to be the best FPS ever for me to even care.

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    BisonHero

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    F-Zero died after only 3 main entries (fuck the GBA games, they really don't count). F-Zero GX was actually a really well made game, even if the difficulty tuning was a little on the hard end. Then Nintendo hasn't made an F-Zero game in a decade.

    Also, you're super duper wrong, Half-Life isn't dead at all. Like, Nintendo, Valve just takes their sweet-ass time making sequels most of the time, since they're the polar opposite of Activision/EA's strategy of "let's make annual sequels until we run the franchise into the ground". Valve takes their time, and isn't afraid to scrap projects and start fresh if the idea just wasn't working. After Portal 2, I'm sure they've been working on a big project of some sort. CS:GO and Dota 2 took some effort, but I highly doubt the entirety of their dev teams were putting their full force into those projects.

    I mean, people saw Left 4 Dead 3-related text at Valve, so that's coming. But they're probably working on something else as well, though it's totally possible that it's not Half-Life and is something else entirely.

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    pyrodactyl

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    #3  Edited By pyrodactyl

    Shenmu, beyond good and evil, etc.

    And valve use to go with half life and polished story based games. They don't anymore. Now it's all about breeding whales, F2P, gamification and other marketing experiments.

    If you want to support the kind of games valve use to make just shop at gog. The CD projekt guys just seem passionate about great narratives and awesome singleplayer the same way valve was before they started making crack cocaine instead of video games.

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    2HeadedNinja

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    Shenmu, beyond good and evil, etc.

    And valve use to go with half life and polished story based games. They don't anymore. Now it's all about breeding whales, F2P, gamification and other marketing experiments.

    Wait what? ... They just did a big story focused game with Portal 2? ... After that they did Dota2 ... Thats hardly "all about F2P"? ... Nobody know what exactly they are doing atm ... Probably L4D3? I feel like blowing the doomsday horn of "valve only will do F2P games!" is a little early.

    When it comes to Halflife ... From what I remember of the employee-handbook that leaked a while ago they pretty much have a very open structure of working on stuff. If there are enough people that want to do something they will do it. I think the best explanation why there is no HL3 is that nobody wants to do it. And I can't really fault them for that. Doing the next part of HL seems like something that could go south really fast and, at this point, only disappoint people.

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    Marcsman

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    I know what's going to happen to this thread

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    theodacourt

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    #6  Edited By theodacourt

    @dagas: I don't think valve does anything for the sole purpose of making money. They just do what they think would be cool and we pay them for it so that they can continue making cool things (and i'm not just talking games). They just happen to be so good at their job that they have all of our money by now. If they wanted to release half life 3 by now they would have and they're not like any other games company.

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    rollingzeppelin

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    I think they should keep its development a complete secret right up until release. Allowing any sort of hype to build up would kill the game from expectations and a shit ton of people will buy the game anyway, no marketing needed. The op's sentiment that it would have to be the best game ever for him to even care is probably a big reason why they're so secretive about it.

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    ll_Exile_ll

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    The Chrono series.

    Chrono Trigger was one of the greatest JRPGs of all time, but it didn't get a sequel for 5 years. Some people were disappointed with Chrono Cross, but it was still solid and sold well. After that, nothing. Rumors of a third game over the years, "Chrono Break," but nothing ever came of it.

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    Corevi

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    Well Fallout was dead for a period of time after 2 incredibly successful games and a myriad of awful spinoffs.

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    BabyChooChoo

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    #10  Edited By BabyChooChoo

    As big as Half-Life? That's a tall order right there. Yeah, I can certainly think of big/popular IPs that just sorta disappeared, but very very few come to mind that are up there with Half-Life. A couple of months ago, I probably would've said Unreal Tournament, but well...we're getting another one soooooooo...yeah. Well, now that i think about it, I guess Burnout maybe might possibly sorta kinda be up there too? I dunno.

    And why does Halo (or Gears for that matter) need a break? I feel like the time in between each release is such that by the time the next one rolls around, it feels like it's been ages. It's not something we're bombarded with year after year like CoD and Assassin's Creed.

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    EXTomar

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    What was the problem? I mean we aren't going to get another Freedom Force even though Levine seems to indicate he wants to more of it.

    As for Half-Life 3, what I suspect has happened is that customer's tastes for single player FPS games have changed so dramatically it may not be the same game as designed any more. It would be a bad idea to release such a game or to force Valve to release it in that state.

    Which is the bigger problem? Never seeing another Freedom Force or Half-Life 3 or seeing a piss poor version that sells okay? I'd rather never see Half-Life 3 if Valve isn't happy with it instead of doing it for the sake of money.

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    Shortbreadtom

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    @2headedninja: Portal 2 came out 3 years ago. Admittedly that isn't a particularly long time between games, but the fact no one has even heard an inkling of another single player game outside of difficult to substantiate rumors. It's also pretty reductive to say that Dota 2 was a F2P game and leave it at that - it's not that they released a F2P game, it's that they made one of the biggest F2P games, invest huge amounts of work, money and publicity to it and also consistently work on and update TF2, a 7 and a half year old game. I think it's perfectly fair to say that Valve is less focused on single player games than ever. You add that on top of all the work they do on Steam, the Steam controller, Steam Boxes and a host of other stuff... Valve seems to be focusing on things that make them money in the long run rather than a 60 dollar release, one and done game.

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    Lemonhead

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    It took Blizzard 9 years to announce a sequel to Starcraft and another 3 to launch it. Although the circumstances for a Starcraft sequel never seemed so dire as it does now for another Half-Life, it's still a crazy long time considering how enormous Starcraft was.

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    EuanDewar

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    I know this is not at all what you're asking but I was thinking about a similar thing today in reference to Richard D. James. Dude was huge and incredibly well revered, then he just slowly stopped releasing stuff. At first he was doing interviews giving reasons for the lack of new music but then eventually he stopped even doing that. He's one of the very few popular musicians who appears to have wilfully and gradually dropped off the radar with little fanfare. Hell, the last new thing we got from him is an unreleased album from 1994 that some randomer happened to stumble upon a test pressing of.

    Sorry, just had to get my thoughts on that down somewhere.

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    2HeadedNinja

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    #15  Edited By 2HeadedNinja

    @shortbreadtom said:

    @2headedninja: Portal 2 came out 3 years ago. Admittedly that isn't a particularly long time between games, but the fact no one has even heard an inkling of another single player game outside of difficult to substantiate rumors. It's also pretty reductive to say that Dota 2 was a F2P game and leave it at that - it's not that they released a F2P game, it's that they made one of the biggest F2P games, invest huge amounts of work, money and publicity to it and also consistently work on and update TF2, a 7 and a half year old game. I think it's perfectly fair to say that Valve is less focused on single player games than ever. You add that on top of all the work they do on Steam, the Steam controller, Steam Boxes and a host of other stuff... Valve seems to be focusing on things that make them money in the long run rather than a 60 dollar release, one and done game.

    TF2 has no more or less been updated than in the years since it's release. And from all I hear Dota2 has a pretty small team now that it's out.

    I get where you are comming from. But right now we are still in a rather regular developmen cycle. L4D2 -> Portal 2 -> Dota 2 -> .... Who knows what will be next? Let's be honest here. There won't be a TF3 anytime soon nor will there be a Dota3 ... they hardly need the full company to continue updating Dota (keep in mind, Valve is a big company). So the others are most likely working on either something new and/or L4D3. We can declare the end-times of single-player games from valve once we've seen the next 2 or 3 games they do. Right now it seems like business as usual to me.

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    pyrodactyl

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    #16  Edited By pyrodactyl

    @2headedninja said:

    @pyrodactyl said:

    Shenmu, beyond good and evil, etc.

    And valve use to go with half life and polished story based games. They don't anymore. Now it's all about breeding whales, F2P, gamification and other marketing experiments.

    Wait what? ... They just did a big story focused game with Portal 2? ... After that they did Dota2 ... Thats hardly "all about F2P"? ... Nobody know what exactly they are doing atm ... Probably L4D3? I feel like blowing the doomsday horn of "valve only will do F2P games!" is a little early.

    When it comes to Halflife ... From what I remember of the employee-handbook that leaked a while ago they pretty much have a very open structure of working on stuff. If there are enough people that want to do something they will do it. I think the best explanation why there is no HL3 is that nobody wants to do it. And I can't really fault them for that. Doing the next part of HL seems like something that could go south really fast and, at this point, only disappoint people.

    Portal 2 was more then 3 years ago and they haven't even announced another game since that came out. If they're working on L4D3 that would be super disappointing. It's also going to be F2P, mark my words. And I'm not criticizing them for not making HL3, who the fuck cares at this point? I'm criticizing them for their whole current mindset.

    What has valve been working on in the last 6-7 years? Outside of portal 2, a weird outlier, the only things we know they worked on are Dota 2, team forteress, CS:GO, hats, gamefying steam, hats, gamefying steam sales, more hats, steam box and steam OS platform for them to side step microsoft and sell you hats, steam controler, a way for people to design hats, a marketplace to sell those hats and give valve a cut, Greenlight, a failed crowd sourced curation program and VR presence.

    So yeah, valve isn't all F2P. It's mostly F2P, weird hardware with no perceivable audience and other stuff I don't care about.

    I feel really good going out of my way to not give them my money until they show they're not all about the kind of stuff that gross me out the most in the modern game industry. I'm pretty sure they won't though, that sweet drug money is real good and they already got high off of their own supply.

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    veektarius

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    Half Life 3 is Frog Fractions 2

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    Shindig

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    Shenmue sort of lives on through the Yakuza games whereas multiple things happened which have halted Half-Life coming back.

    1. The episodic experiment - Valve just couldn't wrap it up and it was taking forever between episodes.
    2. The landscape of shooters. Half-Life 2 had physics and some lovely visual bells and whistles but Call of Duty, Halo and even the Bioshock games have placed the marker so far removed from Half-Life that the series now feels like a relic. If they produced another game in the spirit of the first two - just to wrap up the narrative - would it be fun to play?
    3. Steam. Its gone from being a thing you update your games with to a massive platform which requires a fair few staff to run.
    4. Time.

    Also, I wonder if anyone at Valve would really champion a new Half-Life. If anything, it wouldn't be a climax of Gordon's story but probably a reboot.

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    Darson

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    I honestly don't think it's just HL3 that they're working on. Much like with 1 and 2, they're probably building another engine around it.

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    cheesebob

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    Just you wait. The next Source Engine will launch with Half Life 3.

    #believe

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    RonGalaxy

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    #21  Edited By RonGalaxy

    Not a game example, but it took decades for the 2nd Star Wars trilogy to get made and it ended up being disappointing. That's probably what valves thought process on Half Life is. If they can't meet their own standards, why should they push for release? They are a company afforded the luxury of time thanks to the success of steam. They can put many years and a shit load of money into whatever they want and they never have to meet a deadline. If they don't think what they've made is ready for prime time and want to make it the absolute best it can be, then cool. That's a good thing to me. I'd rather the Half Life story remain unresolved then for them to release a shitty game that ruins the potential for something better.

    And I'm not saying them taking a long time will result in a good game. It could still turn out to be a shitty game. But shitting a game out out into the world just to meet the internets demand for it will have an even greater chance of failure.

    Also, there is nothing worse than fan servicey bullshit. They did some of that in Portal 2 and it makes me kind of resent that game, so I really hope they take Half Life more seriously if/when they make another one.

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    Raven10

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    If I was a betting man I would bet that they have been waiting for a new generation of consoles. Source is a decade old engine at this point. They need to make something completely new but I have a feeling their vision wasn't going to be possible on last gen consoles. There will be a Half Life 3 eventually. I just don't expect Valve to release it until they get it right. They have the issue that both Half Life and Half Life 2 redefined shooters in their respective eras. The pressure to meet such crazy expectations is very high I'm certain. As some others mentioned, Blizzard took a decade to make Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3. The new Doom will hit over a decade after Doom 3. And like is likely the case with Half Life 3, Id scrapped their work multiple times before settling on their current design.

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    Ry_Ry

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    I'm still waiting for another Metal Arms game, but Swinging Ape studios doesn't exist anymore after the Blizzard acquisition.

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    Justin258

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    #24  Edited By Justin258

    Didn't Valve say they weren't releasing any more single-player games? Or something along those lines?

    And yes, it has been far too long since Episode 2. Call me cynical, but it seems like they don't really care anymore. They'd rather sell games and Dota 2/TF2/CSGO items by the bucketload. I mean, I feel like they're generally being consumer friendly, but they sure aren't doing much for the fans of the series that made them what they are.

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    schlorgan

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    @theodacourt: I don't know, some stuff with CSGO and Dota 2 feel almost more insidious than other microtransaction stuff.

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    Rebel_Scum

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    Yeah I can think of a few: (don't care if they're not "as big" as HL)

    Streets of Rage

    Strike Series (Desert, Jungle, Urban, Soviet, Nuclear)

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    bybeach

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    #27  Edited By bybeach

    I think the fear of a sequel or a finish in what we assume is a trilogy has caused icy fear to stab down deep into their yarbles (and female counterparts). It is such a definitive FPS that failure is not acceptable. If nothing feels right, nothing becomes better. I don't totally blame them. Gamers and workers in the video game industry can be, politely termed, very critical. And when reviewers and editorialists start pouncing on terms like 'Past it's time' it can probably cause a sickening feeling. Real hard to put your rep and labor out there for the Third Time in anticipatory conditions like that.

    At a point, too many times determined by judgment after the fact, there is the correct time to end (or should have ended), a Series or Franchise.

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    SomeDeliCook

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    There hasn't been a Quake game in a long while

    There also hasn't been a Doom game in 10 years (fun fact, thats the length from Doom 2 to Doom 3) although it was confirmed a game has been in development for years

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    fisk0

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    #29 fisk0  Moderator

    These come to mind:

    • Quake
    • Blood
    • Hexen/Heretic
    • No One Lives Forever
    • Unreal (the single player games, not the multi-player spin-offs Unreal Tournament and Unreal Championship)
    • Wing Commander
    • System Shock (though we know why that series ended, as EA and LGS parted ways and had a contract that made sure none of them could do anything with the IP on their own)
    • Descent (while I personally didn't like Descent 3, it was well received and many seem to hold it as their favorite in the series)
    • Freespace
    • Jane's Combat Simulations
    • Ultima
    • Dune
    • Baldur's Gate (and the Dark Alliance spin-offs)
    • Shattered Steel
    • Elvira: Mistress of the Dark (err. OK, the last two bullet points may not be as revered as they should be)
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    Dixavd

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    #30  Edited By Dixavd

    I hope they "pull a Saturn", as Jeff would say, and basically announce Half Life 3 as it's going on shelves.

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    cornbredx

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    Valve wanted to expand. That's why Half Life 3 hasn't happened.

    It's weird that people don't get that. Valve is an independent studio- even if they are huge now. Making halflife 3 would not have been a smart business move where they were at after half life 2 released (which took them over 2 and half years to fix all the game breaking bugs in- I love how people forget that part).

    ...HL3 would have bring in a lot of money if it had come out.

    No. It wouldn't. They discovered this when releasing the episodic games (why do you think the story was never finished?). The industry was changing and they had to get their business profitable before it was too late and epsiodic releases wasn't working for them. Half Life 2 was popular, but they wanted to do something else. One hit isn't enough to survive forever as a small company.

    It's not like they stopped making games.

    You're right, they didn't. They started making games that were experimental, but ultimately profitable. Valve learned that community is what would make them profit. Multiplayer games are how you foster the best communities to monetize off of. I am not implying this was a bad thing, but rather this was a smart thing.

    I cannot imagine that no matter how succesfull Portal 2 was they would not have made more money with HL3.

    Portal was an experiment. They like to experiment. They're one of the best at innovating on game play. They didn't want to keep making the same old thing. HL3 would have made the same amount as Portal did I'd wager- maybe a bit less being that it's a shooter and some people (the people that would play a vValve game) might be turned off by that.

    Valve never ignored their roots. They're still highly a PC focused company that makes strong software to support their community. You're just angry because you haven't gotten the game you want- not because anything Valve actually did wrong. You aren't entitled to anything.

    They'll make HL3 when they feel like it. They aren't required to make it just because the series wasn't tired (and one could argue it kind of was after episode 2).

    Anyway, I can't think of other franchises that did this really. Half Life is one of a kind really in that Valve isn't afraid to experiment instead of milking a cash cow to the bone. Most games that don't get sequels have clear reasons- they sold poorly. For instance Unreal 2 I don't think did very well- so it never got another sequel. To be fair I never got the impression- as games became more and more about story- that Unreal as a single player narrative knew what it wanted to be.

    Most, if not every, post here is listing games that didn't sell well enough to support a sequel or had several games made until fatigue set in. It's generally down to either money or artistic fatigue. Mostly just money, though. Valve tends to be an exception to that.

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    The_Nubster

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    Didn't Valve say they weren't releasing any more single-player games? Or something along those lines?

    And yes, it has been far too long since Episode 2. Call me cynical, but it seems like they don't really care anymore. They'd rather sell games and Dota 2/TF2/CSGO items by the bucketload. I mean, I feel like they're generally being consumer friendly, but they sure aren't doing much for the fans of the series that made them what they are.

    They did, but Gabe Newell expanded on it a little bit in one of his high school lectures later on. This Kotaku story sums it up pretty well.

    It's not about giving up on single-player at all. It's saying we actually think there are a bunch of features and capabilities that we need to add into our single-player games to recognize the socially connected gamer. Every gamer has instant messaging, every gamer has a Facebook account. If you pretend that that doesn't exist, you're ignoring the problems that you're taking on.

    It's single-player plus, not ‘no more single-player.'

    It's hard to tell if they're backing down because of the backlash their 'mutliplayer only' comments got or if this is a legitimate clarification, but I could probably do with an AI buddy in a singleplayer game. Portal 2's multiplayer was really incredible, and they've proven in the Episodes that they know how to handle AI and leading around a mate, if you don't want to play online. Either way, I don't think story-driven experiences from Valve are in danger of never happening, but their focus is very much on multiplayer at the moment, as Dota 2 and TF2 (and the numerous L4D3 leaks) point to.

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    2HeadedNinja

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    @theodacourt: I don't know, some stuff with CSGO and Dota 2 feel almost more insidious than other microtransaction stuff.

    Sometimes I don't get people ... Dota2 is actually completely free to play. Nothing with any gameplay relevance can be bought. In what way is that insidious? ... I got into Dead Island: Epedemic because I like the gameplay. But even if I like the game it's clear that THAT is a game clearly build to make people pay money. If you call Dota2 and CSGO "insidious" you need to elaborate.

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    mike

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    #34  Edited By mike

    One of these E3's, Gabe Newell is going to be a keynote speaker. He'll walk out on stage, say "Half-Life 3", then drop the mic and walk out like a boss.

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    schlorgan

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    @2headedninja: I don't know, it's probably fine. I just feel super gross whenever I pay $2.50 for a crate key in CSGO to unlock one skin for one gun. It feels like gambling, and that the game is designed to make me want to gamble when I don't get anything meaningful from it.

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    pyrodactyl

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    #36  Edited By pyrodactyl

    @the_nubster said:

    @believer258 said:

    Didn't Valve say they weren't releasing any more single-player games? Or something along those lines?

    And yes, it has been far too long since Episode 2. Call me cynical, but it seems like they don't really care anymore. They'd rather sell games and Dota 2/TF2/CSGO items by the bucketload. I mean, I feel like they're generally being consumer friendly, but they sure aren't doing much for the fans of the series that made them what they are.

    They did, but Gabe Newell expanded on it a little bit in one of his high school lectures later on. This Kotaku story sums it up pretty well.

    It's not about giving up on single-player at all. It's saying we actually think there are a bunch of features and capabilities that we need to add into our single-player games to recognize the socially connected gamer. Every gamer has instant messaging, every gamer has a Facebook account. If you pretend that that doesn't exist, you're ignoring the problems that you're taking on.

    It's single-player plus, not ‘no more single-player.'

    It's hard to tell if they're backing down because of the backlash their 'mutliplayer only' comments got or if this is a legitimate clarification, but I could probably do with an AI buddy in a singleplayer game. Portal 2's multiplayer was really incredible, and they've proven in the Episodes that they know how to handle AI and leading around a mate, if you don't want to play online. Either way, I don't think story-driven experiences from Valve are in danger of never happening, but their focus is very much on multiplayer at the moment, as Dota 2 and TF2 (and the numerous L4D3 leaks) point to.

    That sounds a lot more like ``we can't sell hats to people in singleplayer so we'll be looking into innovating so we can sell hats in singleplayer too`` than ``we'll be making the singleplayer games we use to make but better``. Maybe it's just me being cynical though.

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    pyrodactyl

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    @schlorgan said:

    @theodacourt: I don't know, some stuff with CSGO and Dota 2 feel almost more insidious than other microtransaction stuff.

    Sometimes I don't get people ... Dota2 is actually completely free to play. Nothing with any gameplay relevance can be bought. In what way is that insidious? ... I got into Dead Island: Epedemic because I like the gameplay. But even if I like the game it's clear that THAT is a game clearly build to make people pay money. If you call Dota2 and CSGO "insidious" you need to elaborate.

    The guys at valve are just smarter than your regular F2P developper. Sure, you could tip your hand and show you want people's money by gating content or by using other standard F2P tactics.

    Or you could do what they did and get a big chunk of players that despise the usual F2P garbage. After that, the skins, the cosmetics, the chests, the keys and the marketplace where you can see the stuff and its value compells people to pay hundreds of dollars on what is, in the end, mostly pointless, valueless trash. It's a master class in psychology applied to marketing and video game design.

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    schlorgan

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    @pyrodactyl: That psychology is kind of what makes it feel insidious.

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    Justin258

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    @pyrodactyl: That psychology is kind of what makes it feel insidious.

    So don't buy it then. It's your money, Valve isn't forcing your hand. If another person is OK with spending money on Dota 2 - well, it's their money, and Valve isn't forcing their hand either.

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    pyrodactyl

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    #40  Edited By pyrodactyl

    @believer258 said:

    @schlorgan said:

    @pyrodactyl: That psychology is kind of what makes it feel insidious.

    So don't buy it then. It's your money, Valve isn't forcing your hand. If another person is OK with spending money on Dota 2 - well, it's their money, and Valve isn't forcing their hand either.

    Doesn't make it feel any less gross. You're not forced to buy or play candy crush, league or one of these gotcha japanese phone games before they banned them because they used gambling psychology to sell you stuff.

    The only reason I care is because valve made one of my favorite game of all time. They're not King co. or Riot games. I'm sad they put all their talent beind clever ways to make people think a skin is worth 5-$100 and you need to buy a truckload of them. That and weird pie in the sky hardware experiments.

    Like I said before, they can do whatever they want. I'm just going to avoid steam as much as possible in the meantime.

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    schlorgan

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    @pyrodactyl: You have expressed more or less my opinions in this matter far more eloquently than I am capable of. Thank you, sir. :)

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    Justin258

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    @believer258 said:

    @schlorgan said:

    @pyrodactyl: That psychology is kind of what makes it feel insidious.

    So don't buy it then. It's your money, Valve isn't forcing your hand. If another person is OK with spending money on Dota 2 - well, it's their money, and Valve isn't forcing their hand either.

    Doesn't make it feel any less gross. You're not forced to buy or play candy crush, league or one of these gotcha japanese phone games before they banned them because they used gambling psychology to sell you stuff. The only reason I care is because valve made one of my favorite game of all time. They're not King co. or Riot games. I'm sad they put all their talent beind clever ways to make people think a skin is worth 5-$100 and you need to buy a truckload of them. That and weird pie in the sky hardware experiments.

    Like I said before, they can do whatever they want. I'm just going to avoid steam as much as possible in the meantime.

    At some point the onus for self-control has to be shifted to the customer. Again, your hand is never forced to click "buy" and you can play for hundreds of hours without spending a dime. I just don't see how that can, in any way, be construed as "gross". They're essentially allowing you to walk into Disneyland and the only thing they're charging for are souvenirs. If you call that "gross", then where are your standards for business decency? The business model that Valve uses for Dota 2 is merely new and different. It can be exploited, yes, but Valve doesn't seem to be doing that.

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    Rowr

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    #43  Edited By Rowr

    @pyrodactyl said:

    @believer258 said:

    @schlorgan said:

    @pyrodactyl: That psychology is kind of what makes it feel insidious.

    So don't buy it then. It's your money, Valve isn't forcing your hand. If another person is OK with spending money on Dota 2 - well, it's their money, and Valve isn't forcing their hand either.

    Doesn't make it feel any less gross. You're not forced to buy or play candy crush, league or one of these gotcha japanese phone games before they banned them because they used gambling psychology to sell you stuff. The only reason I care is because valve made one of my favorite game of all time. They're not King co. or Riot games. I'm sad they put all their talent beind clever ways to make people think a skin is worth 5-$100 and you need to buy a truckload of them. That and weird pie in the sky hardware experiments.

    Like I said before, they can do whatever they want. I'm just going to avoid steam as much as possible in the meantime.

    At some point the onus for self-control has to be shifted to the customer. Again, your hand is never forced to click "buy" and you can play for hundreds of hours without spending a dime. I just don't see how that can, in any way, be construed as "gross". They're essentially allowing you to walk into Disneyland and the only thing they're charging for are souvenirs. If you call that "gross", then where are your standards for business decency? The business model that Valve uses for Dota 2 is merely new and different. It can be exploited, yes, but Valve doesn't seem to be doing that.

    It's clear some of you guys actually have no idea how they handle their F2P and are randomly hating on it. The game requires no money. They aren't making people think a skin is worth 5 - 100 dollars as you say. The community decides it's worth that much. I don't understand how people can take such issue with something virtual costing money since FUCKING PRACTICALLY EVERYTHING in the world works this way. Look how the fucking stock market works for christ sake.

    Let me repeat. THE GAME REQUIRES NO MONEY. If you want to buy some stuff for one of your favourite heroes, sure you can spend 5 bucks.

    In a game you spent upwards of 100's of hours with and you can spend 5 bucks to buy some gear on a dude that's going to make your game a little more entertaining, I think you are winning.

    It's not like valve are sinking all their talent into building items in Dota 2 instead of making Half life 3, most of the shit is community made wherein the makers receive money.

    Believe me, i have fucking no taste for most F2P bullshit, most modern game designs are heavily compromised by it's inclusion. But in this case there is absolutely nothing to whine about.

    If your going to wear tin foil hats at least be educated in why you are wearing them.

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    schlorgan

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    @rowr: Hey! I know exactly why I'm wearing a tinfoil hat.

    Cause it's sexy.

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    Hailinel

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    F-Zero died after only 3 main entries (fuck the GBA games, they really don't count). F-Zero GX was actually a really well made game, even if the difficulty tuning was a little on the hard end. Then Nintendo hasn't made an F-Zero game in a decade.

    Also, you're super duper wrong, Half-Life isn't dead at all. Like, Nintendo, Valve just takes their sweet-ass time making sequels most of the time, since they're the polar opposite of Activision/EA's strategy of "let's make annual sequels until we run the franchise into the ground". Valve takes their time, and isn't afraid to scrap projects and start fresh if the idea just wasn't working. After Portal 2, I'm sure they've been working on a big project of some sort. CS:GO and Dota 2 took some effort, but I highly doubt the entirety of their dev teams were putting their full force into those projects.

    I mean, people saw Left 4 Dead 3-related text at Valve, so that's coming. But they're probably working on something else as well, though it's totally possible that it's not Half-Life and is something else entirely.

    I don't think that the F-Zero games really fit here. True, it's been forever since the last one was released, but even with the completely bonkers story mode in GX, they haven't exactly left us on a cliffhanger for a decade.

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    AndrewB

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    They'll make HL3 when they feel like it. They aren't required to make it just because the series wasn't tired (and one could argue it kind of was after episode 2).

    I agree with most of what you said, though I'd need to pull back from this line. They aren't required to make it, sure, but Episode 2 ended on one of the teariest cliffhanger endings in video games ever. You can easily understand why, on top of the series being one of the best, the want to see where that story would have gone is there. And when you have a popular video game series where you designed a three part story arc from the beginning and laid out those plans publicly, I think that does lay out some amount of expectation.

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    deactivated-5e49e9175da37

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    I found the historical example portion of this to be more interesting than the Valve mystic hoodoo.

    There are plenty of popular, one-time only games that were never followed up on, but I'm thinking of games that had two successful sequels and then nothing but (what amounts to) an expansion or remaster.

    I don't know how well Parasite Eve 2 sold, but those were two well received games that just vanished.

    The KOTOR games might qualify, but Sith Lords was borked on release and might not qualify as well received. And Old Republic basically counts.

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    Shindig

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    A lighthouse, a G-Man, a city....

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    BisonHero

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    I'm gonna be honest, @pyrodactyl, you sound like you just irrationally have it out for Valve in this thread. They have like, the most benign microtransactions possible, in that people buy dumb cosmetic items in Dota 2 and TF2 and CS:GO because they like the game that dumb much. Like, if you're some 12-year-old kid who just wants to play a sweet game, none of the Valve games are trying to extort you out of money the way 99% of F2P games are (CS:GO costs money to buy, but you get my point).

    Yeah, there's a sucker born every minute, and obviously the entire F2P business models rely on whales who just want to own all the things, whether they matter or not. Like, they aren't sneakily tricking people into spending money using Jedi mind tricks. Dota 2, TF2, and CS:GO are all really good games, and there's an option there to buy extra shit for them if you're one of those guys that plays one or more of those games all the time. If they were shit games, people wouldn't be buying pointless cosmetic items.

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    cornbredx

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    #50  Edited By cornbredx

    @andrewb: I didn't mean the game wasn't good. Just that it was aging at that point and that's me- they really added nothing to the game with the episodes, and for me at the time I felt like I was good for now on that game. I can only assume based on it's sales numbers that others felt that way too. I mean I didn't even buy episode two until many years later when it went majorly on sale.

    I recognize that people liked that game. For me it wasn't that great, and added little to Half life as a game.

    Edit: I forgot to mention I get that people want a sequel to episode 2- I, for example, hate that Dreamfall (the Longest Journey) ended on a cliff hanger that never got resolved. It's the most maddening thing ever. Episode 3 is not gonna happen at this point and that is completely an economic thing. I suspect they will wrap that up whenever they get around to making Half Life 3, though. Just a guess of course.

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