Valve's game development isn't barren, it's just all hands on deck in Dota 2 and CS:GO. They make rather large changes and provide very good support for those games.

That being said I'd much rather a HL3. There's just so much more potential variety to come out of it, I loved the portals but they're very similar from beginning to end. Portal 2 did a lot with its setting but what you experienced in the end still felt like a slight variant of what you experienced at the very start. Half-Life has always had such drastic switches in scenery and game play structure from chapter to chapter that it kept me engaged. I also just really dig the art style from HL2 and would love to see it with current generation technology.

But really, I'd take either. A new game from Valve is always a treat even though they aren't my favourite developer they definitely have their own style that would be welcome in a sea of copy cat games.

Left 4 Dead 3

I'm not sure what the status of Valve's development team is, i know some significant dudes chose to leave, but looking forward if or when they do decide to buckle down on a major project, i imagine they have the budget and pull to hire some very good game developers.
I want Half-Life 3 more, Episode 2 saw the characters heading towards some Aperture Science related stuff which could be super interesting, not that i want to see HL turn into a Portal puzzler, but i do want characters outside of Portal to discover stuff about that company, however due to various bits of evidence and leaks i think we're going to see a new Left 4 Dead before those two.

Half Life 3

If you say L4D, you're a bad person

New IP. My interest in Half Life stopped with HL1 and Portal was really fun but i don't think we need a third game.

I really like Portal, but the gimmick therein started to run a little thin in the second game already. And I really do want to know what happens after the events of Half-Life 2: Episode 2.

In theory I would really like a Portal 3, but since Eric Wolpaw left Valve I have not much faith it would be as funny as Portal 2 was.

I just played HL2 episode 2 a few weeks ago, was saving it for years.

I'm ready for HL3 now.

Everyone you'd want to be involved in a Portal 2 has left Valve. I wonder why. At this point they should reboot Half-Life, but they won't, because they can sit on their ass skimming 30% off EVERY SINGLE transaction that happens on Steam dreaming up new hats to put into games and maybe kinda thinking about a new evergreen multiplayer game they can put hats into.

Contaminating the poll results because I'm curious to see the results but I don't care and there isn't a "show me the results" option.

I chose Portal 3, fwiw, but I don't actually care about any of Valve's games.

Just rip the band-aid off and make Half Life 3. Close the loop.

I think one of the crew said it best: something along the lines of "none of the people you want working on these games aren't with Valve anymore."

This is the correct answer.

After all the people who have left Valve these past few months and years, I wouldn't want them to make some major story-driven game. Make L4D3 and let them focus on gameplay and make that their primary FPS.

Half-Life 3 would just be a disappointment at this point anyway.

Half-Life 3. This makes me think about the time I was going to make a thread asking 'If Valve didn't make Half-Life 3, but let another well-regarded developer do it, who would you want to make it?' Portal is good (I really got into it with two since it felt more fleshed out and pivotal), but the easy answer it still Half-Life, and always will be. It'd be a weird time when people stop joking about the Half-Life 3 being announced. Aw heck, that joke is old now!

Don't really need either. But I think I'd rather have a short, entertaining new Portal game. I'm thinking my tastes these days lean towards lighter experiences.

I never really wanted a Portal 2 (the first one was great, but I didnt need more) so Half-Life 3.

I think Respawn could make a good Half-Life, they would obviously need a good writer though. Machine Games would also be a good pick but they like their cinematics a bit too much.

I stopped caring years ago, so if HL3 or Portal 3 comes out i will most likely not care.

I liked Half Life 2 quite a lot when I played it on the 360 a freaking decade ago. At the time I thought "yeah I'm interested in playing Half Life 3 when that comes out". At this point in time, I don't really care about playing it anymore. I'd be super interested in it as a product in the marketplace and it would be fascinating to see how the world reacts to it. But that's about it.

Portal was great. Portal 2 was unnecessary but somehow even better. Portal 3 would be EXTRAORDINARILY unnecessary, but I'm not entirely confident they could make something justifying its existence.

The real answer is Left 4 Dead 3. I have a lot of love for L4D. I essentially met my wife playing the game. Put out a game with a handful of maps, and they can sell all sorts of hats and shirts and shit they want for your character, I don't care.

HL3 of course.

As an aside though, all signs already pointed to Valve unifying the worlds of both of those games at least in a narrative sense, so there's no reason why it has to necessarily be one over the other, either, if the next HL3 ends up with Gordon Freeman toting a gravity AND a portal gun and the type of game design that could result from having access to both tool at once.

The sad fact is that single player games simply doesnt make sense for Valve anymore. All their success atm is with dota2 and csgo and we have games like destiny, anthem, overwatch and PUBG on the rise as the dominating forces. the big single player games only exist on consoles and its pretty clear that even there, alot of the big devs are eyeing multiplayer as the next big thing (just look at how Mass effect got shafted to make Anthem). Single player games are a flash in the pan and extremely hard to make. MP stays for years and years and build communities, tournaments etc. Its so much more valuable to Valve imo. Team fortress 3/L4D3 are alot more likely than HL3/Portal3 but i wouldnt even count on that.

Neither :/

It's bizarre to me that Episode 3/Half-Life 3 have been waited for since Episode 2's release which was in 2007.

We are almost 10 years since the release of Ep. 2; at this point, we are 2/3 of the way through Duke Forever's development which was around 15 years

It'd be nice if we could wrap up Half-Life's story. I'd honestly just play an Episode 3 in the HL2 engine at this point just to see it through.

But yeah, realistically, we're never getting a Half-Life 3. If it was going to happen it would've happened years ago.

@boozak: Several years ago, I might have said Monolith (the team behind F.E.A.R. and/or NOLF) or Crytek, made similar to the first Crysis, though obviously in both cases, get the same writer. I don't see why Mark Laidlaw can't go to some other team and get one last story out if he was up to it. Now though, I think the best developers for another Half-Life might be the guys behind the Metro games: 4A Games.

@ntm: Machine Games, that last Wolfenstein was one of my favourite games in the last 5 years.

I just really want Valve to close out the Half-Life story. The ending of Episode 2 is the most cliffhanger-y thing in the past decade that I've actually cared about seeing through. It's kind of a shame that we probably won't get the conclusion to that story.

RIP Eli :(

I want more Brad Muir/Ubisoft Gameshow Game Quick Looks.

Word

HL 3 easily for me. If they made HL 3 that would mean they felt they had some new vision and jump forward in technology I feel like so I would be very interested to see. I can't even make a guess other than I could see them putting it out as a VR game attempting to really put forth a legit AAA VR experience.

It's funny that only a few years ago a developer going to Valve seemed like a golden ticket and now it's just a place to go and waste time until you die.

I don't think Valve has the right creative staff in place to do HL3 or Portal 3 right now since Erik Wolpaw and several others have departed the company, but I also don't think they really have an interest in doing games that don't have the potential to support a large active player base (i.e. people that will buy keys/crates) along the lines of Dota 2, TF2, and CS:GO.

Depends on your definition of care, it doesn't consume my thoughts or anything, but whenever someone brings up Half-life I absolutely still wish they had completed it, I really enjoyed the story and characters in that game, so ending it on a cliff hanger is a bummer, I like when stories I enjoy have an ending, especially after all the mystery they build up (shared universe with Portal, the ship that went missing, etc.) but I'm not delusion either, it's been so long it's not like it's a gaping wound, that would be silly on my part, but it's a tiny little sting whenever I think about how badly Valve dealt with the whole thing.

I would take another Portal or Left 4 Dead just fine as well, when Valve made games they made good ones.

Worried now that if either came out after this long amount of time since the previous one that they might suffer similar to other franchises where it doesn't do much new things & just a big collection of nostalgia 'remember this' moments from the previous games. It like all games could be good but I think that expectations have been on this for so long (plus living up to those expectations) that we probably won't see them anytime soon.

I voted Portal, only because the concept could viably be detached from any previous narrative, and because I have never played a Half-Life game other than a few minutes of Half Life 2 on a 2008 iMac that still is not powerful enough to run it capably, it seems.

Portal was a brilliant side story about Black Mesa's competitor but there is no way Valve could justify another game with the same physics puzzles. Where it might be interesting is if Half Life 3 was based around the discoveries of the two rival research facilities. A portal gun that allows travel between universes, fighting the Combine empire, the Vortigaunts helping Gordon, the circumstances surrounding the Borealis, and the biggest mystery of all - who or what is the G-Man and who or what does he represent????

Half Life would basically be a standalone name that tries to reduce the "3" stigma. Something tells me Valve has always had it as a prototype in the background, testing an idea or two but never really committing to anything. I personally think there is room for another HL, especially if it can extend into a solid multiplayer component separate from the story.

We're nearing a decade since Half-Life Episode 2 was released and this year will be the 20th anniversary of the original Half-Life; its time we got something. I feel like Left 4 Dead 3 would be less important now given how many games of that type you can go and buy for $10-20 now.

People "Worried" about a hypothetical HL3 need to remember that Valve doesn't release just a shooter. Every time they've released Half-Life, Left 4 Dead, or Portal they've done something different than noone else at the time was really doing or thinking about the same way...there's no reason to think that wouldn't be the case with HL3. I think people say that simply because they really want a sequel to a different franchise opposed to actually thinking Valve is gonna crap out another regular, old FPS (which, at their time, none of the Half-Life games really were).

That is a difficult question because the expectation of Half-Life is to innovate. Which is why there hasn't been a new Half-Life, because the ideas for innovation on that type of game just aren't there. So if they made another one, that would imply they found the creative direction they needed. The question then becomes if I want a sequel to Portal or a first person game that innovates the genre. By that account I'd have to pick the latter.

That said, I do not care for Half-Life at all besides its innovative concepts that will trickle into other games. So if, for some reason, it doesn't hold true to the expectation of a Half-Life game, I would much rather have Portal 3. Heck, I'd sooner take another re-release of Skyrim at that point.

But I think the absence of another Half-Life for this long is telling that they just can't make one.

Half Life 3, Portal never really clicked with me sadly.

Team Fortress 3, I still love that game but post-Overwatch it feels like it could do with a refresh. It's become so cluttered at this point and while it's still fun I think the time is about right for a fresh start.

I don't really see a good place for Portal 3 to go narratively, and I've never been into HL enough to want another of those. The argument for, "A new HL game means a new step forward in Valve tech" is somewhat compelling, but if I was forced to pick one I'd still take Portal 3 just for a new series of Valve-made puzzle rooms.

I chose Portal 3, but then changed my mind :/

I don't care about either anymore, but out of pure curiousity I'd want to see where Half-Life goes. The one thing that bugs me about the universe though..Valve shouldn't have ended things on ridiculous cliff hangers if they have no idea whether they will ever finish it. I get that in many cases finishing something is out of a creators control, but when it is (Valve has the resources to finish Half-Life) putting something so on edge and then never finishing seems a little disrespectful to their fans.

Well, they released that map maker for Portal 2 so there are probably more than enough Portal levels out there now. I don't really think it needs a sequel.

I feel like as a general culture gaming fans have largely stopped caring about a Half Life 3 at this point, myself included. Even as a meme it feels played out. But I would be interested in seeing what's up with the Borealis.

Half Life 3 unabashed.

Finish the fight, you lazy mother f..kers.

And also, I would like to see Valve make a new IP again, they after all did make good video games, besides the hook-em content I see today. Or is Valve just mostly Steam now?

None of the above. Valve can't make single player games anymore. The bar is so much higher than it was when half life 2 and portal 2 came out. They don't have the drive or expertise to pull it off.

Valve is eSports and a digital store now. If you want to support a developer that makes great single player games support CDPR and buy on GoG.

I like both of those series, but I don't really need another of either. I voted for Half-Life 3 just because I know that would make a lot of people very happy.

Left 4 Dead 3

It's my understanding that attempting to start something up at Valve requires a serious amount of effort and needs to demonstrate strong business impact. Everyone is effectively their own boss and can technically work on whatever they want. But if you can't convince others to follow your lead then your project isn't going to go anywhere, and you can't just be working on something by yourself because that's not the culture that Valve has and you'll probably be let go. I imagine it's pretty difficult to convince anyone of moving away from the things that they're doing now that are successful.