Halva 3 or we will grow old faster
Shocking news – the third episode of Half-Life 2 will most likely never see the light of day. And that’s good! A very reasonable question is why?? Yes, because Valve Software for some time now does not consider the “episodic” game release scheme as the most suitable for successfully making money. The company has a new role model. Its name is Team Fortress 2. Meanwhile, one might think, the ghostly Half-Life 3 will follow in his footsteps.
Having recently been questioned by journalists from the British publication Develop, Gabe Newell said that the gaming industry has begun to change rapidly in the last few years and what was popular three to five years ago is no longer in demand. Therefore, relying on old and rusty ideas in the modern economic climate is becoming less and less common. This life wisdom also applies to the episodic delivery of content to the consumer’s table.
The experiment with HL2 episodes, of course, www.casino-heyspin.co.uk helped developers shorten the lengthy cycle of creating new projects, but it did not gain enormous success and was eventually supplanted by a new, fresh ideology.
If a few years ago Valve Software considered games simply as an addition to its Steam service, now its philosophy has radically changed. Now the studio looks at each of its games as a “separate, independent service” that exists within Steam.
The best illustration of this is the online shooter TF2, which recently experienced its 200th anniversary update and continues to be popular despite its venerable four-year age. The game has actually become a tiny ecosystem, where the desire of the players is an unspoken law, which will be taken into account in the next updates. This is where the future lies, according to Gabe.
“If you look at Team Fortress 2, we think it’s the best model for what we do at Valve.”. Each time the update release cycle for the game gets shorter and shorter. Left 4 Dead has already begun to gradually approach TF2 in this regard. In fact, if you talk to some Korean developers, they will laugh at us at Valve for updating TF2 so slowly. Koreans think: “Until we release updates every day, we will lose a huge amount of game value.”. I think that this point of view is quite justified,” said Gabe.
In other words, if somewhere in the dark closet of Valve three and a half people are making a sequel to Half-Life 2, then it will most likely appear in the form of a full-fledged third part of Half-Life, and not a puny third episode. Well, hats for Freeman, I think, will also become an integral element of HL3, coupled with a bunch of updates that will keep the game alive.
What do you think