14 ms·

Valve secrets spill over in new Steam documentary app

223 points by jtrip 6y ago

randombytes6869 6y ago
I heard lack of effective management structure was a far worse consequence of Valve's unusual structure. Heard influence became based on connections and favors, not good results or ideas. Heard many good projects died, even ones that would make sense to a third grader (HL3 L4D3). Hearsay but its all over internet if you're curious
- denkmoon 6y ago
  People talk a lot of shit about Valve without having a clue, a consequence of their secrecy and their position as a premier game developer. I wouldn't trust anything that is said about Valve that didn't come from someone who has worked there. Tyler McVicker/Valve "News" Network is a major component of this. His interviews with Valve are great. His speculation is trash.
  - akhilcacharya 6y ago
    Wasn’t his Alyx speculation on point?
    - ehsankia 6y ago
      To be fair every broken clock will be right twice a day. He throws out a lot of stuff, so of course some will be right sometimes.
  - bllguo 6y ago
    a lot of these comments about valve stem from the somewhat infamous tweets of a former valve dev, though here's the first link i found https://www.pcgamer.com/ex-valve-employee-describes-ruthless-industry-politics/ https://www.pcgamer.com/ex-valve-employee-describes-ruthless...
    - neuronic 6y ago
      Yea but thats still ONE guy who might be bitter for one reason or another. It's hard to get an objective look at Valve like this. What we get is utterly filtered.
  - britmob 6y ago
    He has been getting better recently. But he absolutely still needs to realize how much weight his words have.
- Trasmatta 6y ago
  > Heard many good projects died Part of me will never fully forgive them for just letting Half-Life 2: Episode 3 die, never officially cancelling it (even to this day), and refusing to communicate with their fans about it. People meme about HL3, but most of us Half-Life fans just wanted Episode 3. Episode 2 ends on the most heartbreaking cliffhanger, and we just wanted some sort of conclusion to that story.
  - phinnaeus 6y ago
    I was one of these people until I played Half-Life: Alyx. They've earned back some of the trust that was previously squandered.
    - Trasmatta 6y ago
      I've been playing it as well, but I'm not too far in. It hasn't grabbed me much yet. Part of that might just be that 2020 has me in a bad headspace, so it's hard to enjoy things as much.
      - whatch 6y ago
        Felt just like you a few chapters back (I'm on 6th now). But now I wish it doesn't end too soon.
    - ACS_Solver 6y ago
      Could you share a few spoiler-free thoughts about HL:A as a dedicated series fan? I'm in the same boat. Loved HL1, then HL2 even more, it's one of the very rare games I regard as perfect. Then both Episode 1 and Episode 2 surpassed my expectations, and I was very disappointed with Valve's refusal to say anything at all for years. The HL:A announcement took me by surprise, as I had given up on more HL. Do you find HL:A to be a good Half-Life game first and foremost? Do you feel it has the top-notch environmental storytelling and attention to detail that the series is known for? Does it make good use of VR's potential? I'm considering upgrading my PC this year, largely for HL:A and Cyberpunk 2077. The last time I tried VR was with the Oculus Rift in 2016, and it felt underwhelming to me. Very cool for an evening, but then the novelty wore off and the actual gaming felt less satisfying than traditional non-VR.
- ekianjo 6y ago
  hL3 and L4D3 make no sense anymore commercially. Valve is a lot more profitable as a market and store than as a developer.
  - Guest0918231 6y ago
    1. Steam became a success because of the games Valve developed. 2. Epic created Fortnite, which you likely know is a popular release. That game is leading to the Epic store getting off the ground and gaining traction. This is causing a rather large loss in revenue for Valve. That's why games are important. If you control the top games, you control the users, and you control the platform.
    - philliphaydon 6y ago
      Probably a large loss for epic too with how much they give away to con people into their terrible service.
    - drKarl 6y ago
      Epic Store is light years behind Steam. It is very barebones and primitive. In Steam when you go to the games in your library you see a lot of content, you see your DLCS, achievements, community content, etc. In Epic Store you don't even have a page for each game in your library, just a small cover to launch the game. Steam has Play on TV, Play on phone/table and Remote Play together which are great features. Also Epic catalog is so much smaller than Steam's. Also, it is interesting to have some context of Epic Games. I remember when it was Epic MegaGames and they released the original Unreal games, THAT was the hit that defined the company as they also started to license their Unreal Engine (which they still do today). Long story short, around 2012 the massive chinese giant Tencent acquired a big portion of Epic Games (40%) that allows Tencent to nominate directors, and the company shifted towards GaaS (Game as a Service). Many long time Epic Game employees left the company around that time. Epic Games used one of their games, Fortnite: Save the World, to develop Fortnite Battle Royale, which was a huge success. It's very important to note that Fortnite's biggest competitor, PlayerUnkown's Battlegrounds (PUBG), is owned and developed by Tencent. Also note that Tencent owns 100% of Riot Games, as well as having various stakes at different gaming studios.
- raxxorrax 6y ago
  They are extremely successful compared to more classical approaches to management.
  - neuronic 6y ago
    Especially since the more classical approaches to management have insane weaknesses that everyone constantly complains about even on this site.
- krageon 6y ago
  > influence became based on connections and favors Just like every other corporation, in other words.
  - dx87 6y ago
    No, it's worse at flat management companies like Valve. Since you don't have anyone in charge, and everybody works on what they want, there is no objective measure of whether or not you're doing well. Everything comes down to politics, from bonuses, to who gets laid off during downsizing, being very good at your job isn't enough. That's how it's been at the flat management company I worked at, and how it seems everyone who's worked at one describes it.
    - krageon 6y ago
      > no objective measure Any "objective measure" that a regular company uses is mostly a way for management to pose and bluster about what they actually want. Corporations are fundamentally all the same.
    - trowawee 6y ago
      Yeah, I think the complaint was that Valve is/was theoretically flat, in that people could self-manage, but in practice, it had an implicit hierarchy that was obscured by the officially "flat" structure (which, let's be honest, was always kind of a lie, because I guarantee you there's someone there who can fire other people, which means it's not actually flat). And an implicit hierarchy means that there's no way to say "I had these goals and objectively achieved them"; you aren't making your case to a defined supervisor, you're making a case to the informal supervisor. That'll almost always wind up with favoritism without any potential escape. Some of these problems exist in any company, but at least in a standard hierarchy, if your boss is sabotaging you or ignoring you, there are routes you can take (go to their boss, go to HR) to (imperfectly) route around that. In a flat structure, you're grasping at ghosts - after all, no one's your manager, so it shouldn't matter if one person has it out for you, but of course, if they're politically entrenched, it absolutely does matter. And there's no one in the company to complain to, because the company's official position is "this is impossible, we're a flat company", and your complaints are minimized if you complain externally, through some combination of "sour grapes" + "but it's a flat system!". Honestly, it's a great trick on management's part - everybody has the responsibilities of management, but no one is an official manager, and there's an easy playbook to run on anyone who complains.
ziffusion 6y ago
> We sort of had to collectively admit we were wrong on the premise that you will be happiest if you work on something you personally want to work on the most What do they say about this? What is it that they found that invalidated this "premise"? I can't seem to find anything in the article.
- olliej 6y ago
  My feeling from the article was that people just jumped on the hot new thing, because let’s be honest “new” or generally more interesting than “old”. That could easily be a source of projects spinning up, taking devs from other projects(dooming them), and then in a full circle leaving to join whatever new project had come up. Eg, if the direction is always “work on whatever you find fun right now” you run into problems ever actually finishing anything. Which matches what happens in my ~/Projects folder quite well :)
  - kevingadd 6y ago
    A common theme I heard from internal sources was that they had serious issues with software quality because nobody wanted to do the difficult work of fixing bugs, addressing security vulnerabilities, etc. As a result someone eventually had to be pressured into doing it, but now they weren't really doing what they were passionate about and they'd catch criticism for not being Passionate or doing Highly Impactful Work. If nobody fixes the security holes in Steam's overlay sandbox and protocol handler, every single person with Steam installed gets a crypto-locker installed. The old Valve model didn't really have incentives to encourage people to do the hard work necessary to achieve those fixes, especially if that hard work was interfering with other people's fun.
- unishark 6y ago
  I gathered it was because the result of this strategy was a failure.
  - ehsankia 6y ago
    To be specific, it was a failure because, as they point out, they basically did not finish any games for the entirety of the 2010's. The ebook goes into all the projects they worked on that lead nowhere, and the lack of focus/direction that resulted from the "work on what you want".
ss3000 6y ago
I used to be a huge Valve fanboy, but throughout the years they've managed to burn away all of that goodwill through a combination of not building good games anymore (or at least not releasing them, as I learned in the article), and pioneering microtransactions and loot boxes (read gambling) added to their existing games that profit mainly off of gamers with poor self control (most of whom are literally children). Although I also blame the gaming community as a whole for collectively rejecting the subscription model for games, which made the much more exploitative f2p + microtransaction/lootbox business model the only real viable option for games that require ongoing development.
- olliej 6y ago
  I don’t think it’s fair to compare it directly to gambling, as in actual gambling the odds can’t be changed dynamically while you play to increase addiction.
  - andrewksl 6y ago
    Exactly. At least gambling is regulated.
  - nefitty 6y ago
    So are you saying the loot box model is more addictive than standard gambling? There are currently efforts to implement more skill-based gambling into digital gambling, ie fight game machine tournaments with money stakes, etc
    - olliej 6y ago
      Once it starts being skill based it changes from pure gambling to skill based betting. Loot boxes are purely "luck" based gambling, where your "luck" is dynamically altered based on how much the operators are get you addicted. Including occasional "free" rewards to encourage you to buy more with actual money.
- imafish 6y ago
  I think a great article could be written on how much of the gaming industry, including PC games, phone games and twitch streamers are funded by whales without self control, who are mainly children and teens.
jbob2000 6y ago
>... combat sequences through procedurally generated towers and buildings, chained together by crafted plot events. There's a fantastic game out right now called Hades from Supergiant Games (of Bastion fame, this one could comfortably be called "Bastion 2.0") which does this roguelite-action-rpg genre very well. Highly recommended, checkout the trailer from the recent update: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNrt43epkG0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNrt43epkG0
- ehsankia 6y ago
  Hades really did a fantastic job at doing narrative in a Roguelite game. I loved how you get bits and pieces of story along the way. That being said, I don't really see Valve making a game like that for some reason.
pansa2 6y ago
> we were wrong that you will be happiest if you work on what you want I’m not sure that’s true. Perhaps the right conclusion would be “we were wrong that it would be best for the company if you work on what you want”.
- smabie 6y ago
  I mean, you think people are happy when they never get to finish their projects and no one ever gets to play their games? I certainly wouldn't be. In fact, I would start to question what I was doing with my life.
  - erulabs 6y ago
    My grandmother always said “if you want to have an unhappy life: just do whatever you want all the time”, and I think about it a lot when finishing a project. The first 50% of any project is so fun - the rest is hard work!
- justnotworthit 6y ago
  I'd like more details as well. I imagine the originators of an idea attracting a bunch of help, then when it got complicated and tough, they were willing to see it through but couldn't get support from the unconvinced. Rinse and repeat for 15 years.
egypturnash 6y ago
If I am doing the math right it’s 14 years since HL3 was announced. If I am doing the math right it was also 14 years between the initial announcement of Duke Nukem Forever and it’s release. Guess HL3 is about to become the longest-running vaporware game. It is only nine years between the release of the second book in The Kingkiller Chronicles and now, despite its author’s claim around the time the first was published that all three were ready to go in quick succession. But it is 27 years since volume 4 of David Gerrold’s War Against The Chtorr.
- lmm 6y ago
  Still 47 years waiting on The Last Dangerous Visions, if that's the kind of thing that interests you.
  - rnhmjoj 6y ago
    The tale of Beren and Lúthien was recently published, a century after being written, so you never known.
- Impossible 6y ago
  HL3 (Half-Life 3) was never officially announced, unless you mean Half-Life 2: Episode 3, which was cancelled a while back
  - Trasmatta 6y ago
    Episode 3 was never even officially cancelled I believe. Valve just stopped talking about it, stopped answering questions about it, then everyone just started assuming Half-Life 3 was coming instead. Ending Episode 2 in the way that they did, then just letting Episode 3 evaporate was a real slap in the face.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- ehsankia 6y ago
  Maybe I'm an optimist, but Valve doesn't release games unless they are very happy with it. HL:A was excellent and I don't see why HL3, if it does come out, would be Vaporwave. Valve heavily tests their games internally and if it is not a huge success, they will not go forward with it. Yes, I do realize they did release Artifact, but that suffered more from economic issues, which internal play testing don't really catch.
_pmf_ 6y ago
Translation: "we were wrong that letting you work on what you want will make us happiest"
mesa8 6y ago
I'm surprised they worked with Geoff Keighley ⊂ (Mountain-Dew ∪ Dorito)
- Trasmatta 6y ago
  They've worked with him many times. He's done similar "Final Hours of..." projects for the original Half-Life, Half-Life 2, and Portal 2. He's had a close relationship with Valve for decades now.
BlahGod420 6y ago
So...Half-Life 3 confirmed?
whywhywhywhy 6y ago
I feel pretty strongly that, assuming you care about the art and creating things then Valve is a blueprint of how exactly not to do it, hang on let me finish. Building Steam was a genius business move, it has basically given them an insane amount of income for close to zero effort, I mean the client is insanely janky and has barely been updated from an actual experience point of view in over a decade but it doesn't matter because almost all PC gaming purchases are funneled through it. Now what this should have done is allow the company to stop caring about profits and being able to relish in building true art to a true un-compromised vision. But something has seriously gone wrong here and the company has struggled to ship close to anything meaty in 16 years. To put it in perspective lets look at auteur studios held in similar regard as Half-Life. (I'm ignoring side releases, just focusing on mainline games) - Half-Life: HL2 2004, HL:A 2020 - Kojima : MGS3 2004, MGS4 2008, MGS5 2014, Death Stranding (worth pointing out his studio was rebuilt from nothing for this too) 2020 - Rockstar : GTA:SA 2004, GTA4 2008, RDR 2010, GTA5 2013, RDR2 2019 If Valve hadn't had steam, the company would not still exist today with that output. If HL:A good, yes. But we put it next to Rockstars output in the same time and it's not even the same league. Something has seriously gone wrong within Valve and I think the charitable way to frame it is "Oh they just care so much they only release when its perfect" but I'm not really buying that, I feel they have instead of being freed creatively by Steam they have been shacked by it. Steve Jobs sales and marketing speech comes to mind [0], the people calling the shots are only focused on running a digital videogame Walmart, artists push and push get burned out by not shipping and leave. At the head of it I guess Gabe just doesn't have the passion or care enough about creating art to push for anything else. Now if you're a big Valve fan what I'm saying might annoy you, but really think for a second. What have you as a Valve fan been denied because the people in the company care more about running a store than making art. What games exist in the reality where Valve never made steam. [0] : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4VBqTViEx4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4VBqTViEx4
- mostlysimilar 6y ago
  I dunno, SteamVR and the Vive (and later Index) are pretty noteworthy. Not to mention all of the progress on Linux gaming.
- trowawee 6y ago

223 points by jtrip 6y ago

I heard lack of effective management structure was a far worse consequence of Valve's unusual structure. Heard influence became based on connections and favors, not good results or ideas. Heard many good projects died, even ones that would make sense to a third grader (HL3 L4D3). Hearsay but its all over internet if you're curious

denkmoon 6y ago
People talk a lot of shit about Valve without having a clue, a consequence of their secrecy and their position as a premier game developer. I wouldn't trust anything that is said about Valve that didn't come from someone who has worked there. Tyler McVicker/Valve "News" Network is a major component of this. His interviews with Valve are great. His speculation is trash.
- akhilcacharya 6y ago
  Wasn’t his Alyx speculation on point?
  - ehsankia 6y ago
    To be fair every broken clock will be right twice a day. He throws out a lot of stuff, so of course some will be right sometimes.
- bllguo 6y ago
  a lot of these comments about valve stem from the somewhat infamous tweets of a former valve dev, though here's the first link i found https://www.pcgamer.com/ex-valve-employee-describes-ruthless-industry-politics/ https://www.pcgamer.com/ex-valve-employee-describes-ruthless...
  - neuronic 6y ago
    Yea but thats still ONE guy who might be bitter for one reason or another. It's hard to get an objective look at Valve like this. What we get is utterly filtered.
- britmob 6y ago
  He has been getting better recently. But he absolutely still needs to realize how much weight his words have.
Trasmatta 6y ago
> Heard many good projects died Part of me will never fully forgive them for just letting Half-Life 2: Episode 3 die, never officially cancelling it (even to this day), and refusing to communicate with their fans about it. People meme about HL3, but most of us Half-Life fans just wanted Episode 3. Episode 2 ends on the most heartbreaking cliffhanger, and we just wanted some sort of conclusion to that story.
- phinnaeus 6y ago
  I was one of these people until I played Half-Life: Alyx. They've earned back some of the trust that was previously squandered.
  - Trasmatta 6y ago
    I've been playing it as well, but I'm not too far in. It hasn't grabbed me much yet. Part of that might just be that 2020 has me in a bad headspace, so it's hard to enjoy things as much.
    - whatch 6y ago
      Felt just like you a few chapters back (I'm on 6th now). But now I wish it doesn't end too soon.
  - ACS_Solver 6y ago
    Could you share a few spoiler-free thoughts about HL:A as a dedicated series fan? I'm in the same boat. Loved HL1, then HL2 even more, it's one of the very rare games I regard as perfect. Then both Episode 1 and Episode 2 surpassed my expectations, and I was very disappointed with Valve's refusal to say anything at all for years. The HL:A announcement took me by surprise, as I had given up on more HL. Do you find HL:A to be a good Half-Life game first and foremost? Do you feel it has the top-notch environmental storytelling and attention to detail that the series is known for? Does it make good use of VR's potential? I'm considering upgrading my PC this year, largely for HL:A and Cyberpunk 2077. The last time I tried VR was with the Oculus Rift in 2016, and it felt underwhelming to me. Very cool for an evening, but then the novelty wore off and the actual gaming felt less satisfying than traditional non-VR.
ekianjo 6y ago
hL3 and L4D3 make no sense anymore commercially. Valve is a lot more profitable as a market and store than as a developer.
- Guest0918231 6y ago
  1. Steam became a success because of the games Valve developed. 2. Epic created Fortnite, which you likely know is a popular release. That game is leading to the Epic store getting off the ground and gaining traction. This is causing a rather large loss in revenue for Valve. That's why games are important. If you control the top games, you control the users, and you control the platform.
  - philliphaydon 6y ago
    Probably a large loss for epic too with how much they give away to con people into their terrible service.
  - drKarl 6y ago
    Epic Store is light years behind Steam. It is very barebones and primitive. In Steam when you go to the games in your library you see a lot of content, you see your DLCS, achievements, community content, etc. In Epic Store you don't even have a page for each game in your library, just a small cover to launch the game. Steam has Play on TV, Play on phone/table and Remote Play together which are great features. Also Epic catalog is so much smaller than Steam's. Also, it is interesting to have some context of Epic Games. I remember when it was Epic MegaGames and they released the original Unreal games, THAT was the hit that defined the company as they also started to license their Unreal Engine (which they still do today). Long story short, around 2012 the massive chinese giant Tencent acquired a big portion of Epic Games (40%) that allows Tencent to nominate directors, and the company shifted towards GaaS (Game as a Service). Many long time Epic Game employees left the company around that time. Epic Games used one of their games, Fortnite: Save the World, to develop Fortnite Battle Royale, which was a huge success. It's very important to note that Fortnite's biggest competitor, PlayerUnkown's Battlegrounds (PUBG), is owned and developed by Tencent. Also note that Tencent owns 100% of Riot Games, as well as having various stakes at different gaming studios.
raxxorrax 6y ago
They are extremely successful compared to more classical approaches to management.
- neuronic 6y ago
  Especially since the more classical approaches to management have insane weaknesses that everyone constantly complains about even on this site.
krageon 6y ago
> influence became based on connections and favors Just like every other corporation, in other words.
- dx87 6y ago
  No, it's worse at flat management companies like Valve. Since you don't have anyone in charge, and everybody works on what they want, there is no objective measure of whether or not you're doing well. Everything comes down to politics, from bonuses, to who gets laid off during downsizing, being very good at your job isn't enough. That's how it's been at the flat management company I worked at, and how it seems everyone who's worked at one describes it.
  - krageon 6y ago
    > no objective measure Any "objective measure" that a regular company uses is mostly a way for management to pose and bluster about what they actually want. Corporations are fundamentally all the same.
  - trowawee 6y ago
    Yeah, I think the complaint was that Valve is/was theoretically flat, in that people could self-manage, but in practice, it had an implicit hierarchy that was obscured by the officially "flat" structure (which, let's be honest, was always kind of a lie, because I guarantee you there's someone there who can fire other people, which means it's not actually flat). And an implicit hierarchy means that there's no way to say "I had these goals and objectively achieved them"; you aren't making your case to a defined supervisor, you're making a case to the informal supervisor. That'll almost always wind up with favoritism without any potential escape. Some of these problems exist in any company, but at least in a standard hierarchy, if your boss is sabotaging you or ignoring you, there are routes you can take (go to their boss, go to HR) to (imperfectly) route around that. In a flat structure, you're grasping at ghosts - after all, no one's your manager, so it shouldn't matter if one person has it out for you, but of course, if they're politically entrenched, it absolutely does matter. And there's no one in the company to complain to, because the company's official position is "this is impossible, we're a flat company", and your complaints are minimized if you complain externally, through some combination of "sour grapes" + "but it's a flat system!". Honestly, it's a great trick on management's part - everybody has the responsibilities of management, but no one is an official manager, and there's an easy playbook to run on anyone who complains.

ziffusion 6y ago

> We sort of had to collectively admit we were wrong on the premise that you will be happiest if you work on something you personally want to work on the most What do they say about this? What is it that they found that invalidated this "premise"? I can't seem to find anything in the article.

olliej 6y ago
My feeling from the article was that people just jumped on the hot new thing, because let’s be honest “new” or generally more interesting than “old”. That could easily be a source of projects spinning up, taking devs from other projects(dooming them), and then in a full circle leaving to join whatever new project had come up. Eg, if the direction is always “work on whatever you find fun right now” you run into problems ever actually finishing anything. Which matches what happens in my ~/Projects folder quite well :)
- kevingadd 6y ago
  A common theme I heard from internal sources was that they had serious issues with software quality because nobody wanted to do the difficult work of fixing bugs, addressing security vulnerabilities, etc. As a result someone eventually had to be pressured into doing it, but now they weren't really doing what they were passionate about and they'd catch criticism for not being Passionate or doing Highly Impactful Work. If nobody fixes the security holes in Steam's overlay sandbox and protocol handler, every single person with Steam installed gets a crypto-locker installed. The old Valve model didn't really have incentives to encourage people to do the hard work necessary to achieve those fixes, especially if that hard work was interfering with other people's fun.
unishark 6y ago
I gathered it was because the result of this strategy was a failure.
- ehsankia 6y ago
  To be specific, it was a failure because, as they point out, they basically did not finish any games for the entirety of the 2010's. The ebook goes into all the projects they worked on that lead nowhere, and the lack of focus/direction that resulted from the "work on what you want".

ss3000 6y ago

I used to be a huge Valve fanboy, but throughout the years they've managed to burn away all of that goodwill through a combination of not building good games anymore (or at least not releasing them, as I learned in the article), and pioneering microtransactions and loot boxes (read gambling) added to their existing games that profit mainly off of gamers with poor self control (most of whom are literally children). Although I also blame the gaming community as a whole for collectively rejecting the subscription model for games, which made the much more exploitative f2p + microtransaction/lootbox business model the only real viable option for games that require ongoing development.

olliej 6y ago
I don’t think it’s fair to compare it directly to gambling, as in actual gambling the odds can’t be changed dynamically while you play to increase addiction.
- andrewksl 6y ago
  Exactly. At least gambling is regulated.
- nefitty 6y ago
  So are you saying the loot box model is more addictive than standard gambling? There are currently efforts to implement more skill-based gambling into digital gambling, ie fight game machine tournaments with money stakes, etc
  - olliej 6y ago
    Once it starts being skill based it changes from pure gambling to skill based betting. Loot boxes are purely "luck" based gambling, where your "luck" is dynamically altered based on how much the operators are get you addicted. Including occasional "free" rewards to encourage you to buy more with actual money.
imafish 6y ago
I think a great article could be written on how much of the gaming industry, including PC games, phone games and twitch streamers are funded by whales without self control, who are mainly children and teens.

jbob2000 6y ago

>... combat sequences through procedurally generated towers and buildings, chained together by crafted plot events. There's a fantastic game out right now called Hades from Supergiant Games (of Bastion fame, this one could comfortably be called "Bastion 2.0") which does this roguelite-action-rpg genre very well. Highly recommended, checkout the trailer from the recent update: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNrt43epkG0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNrt43epkG0

ehsankia 6y ago
Hades really did a fantastic job at doing narrative in a Roguelite game. I loved how you get bits and pieces of story along the way. That being said, I don't really see Valve making a game like that for some reason.

pansa2 6y ago

> we were wrong that you will be happiest if you work on what you want I’m not sure that’s true. Perhaps the right conclusion would be “we were wrong that it would be best for the company if you work on what you want”.

smabie 6y ago
I mean, you think people are happy when they never get to finish their projects and no one ever gets to play their games? I certainly wouldn't be. In fact, I would start to question what I was doing with my life.
- erulabs 6y ago
  My grandmother always said “if you want to have an unhappy life: just do whatever you want all the time”, and I think about it a lot when finishing a project. The first 50% of any project is so fun - the rest is hard work!
justnotworthit 6y ago
I'd like more details as well. I imagine the originators of an idea attracting a bunch of help, then when it got complicated and tough, they were willing to see it through but couldn't get support from the unconvinced. Rinse and repeat for 15 years.

egypturnash 6y ago

If I am doing the math right it’s 14 years since HL3 was announced. If I am doing the math right it was also 14 years between the initial announcement of Duke Nukem Forever and it’s release. Guess HL3 is about to become the longest-running vaporware game. It is only nine years between the release of the second book in The Kingkiller Chronicles and now, despite its author’s claim around the time the first was published that all three were ready to go in quick succession. But it is 27 years since volume 4 of David Gerrold’s War Against The Chtorr.

lmm 6y ago
Still 47 years waiting on The Last Dangerous Visions, if that's the kind of thing that interests you.
- rnhmjoj 6y ago
  The tale of Beren and Lúthien was recently published, a century after being written, so you never known.
Impossible 6y ago
HL3 (Half-Life 3) was never officially announced, unless you mean Half-Life 2: Episode 3, which was cancelled a while back
- Trasmatta 6y ago
  Episode 3 was never even officially cancelled I believe. Valve just stopped talking about it, stopped answering questions about it, then everyone just started assuming Half-Life 3 was coming instead. Ending Episode 2 in the way that they did, then just letting Episode 3 evaporate was a real slap in the face.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
ehsankia 6y ago
Maybe I'm an optimist, but Valve doesn't release games unless they are very happy with it. HL:A was excellent and I don't see why HL3, if it does come out, would be Vaporwave. Valve heavily tests their games internally and if it is not a huge success, they will not go forward with it. Yes, I do realize they did release Artifact, but that suffered more from economic issues, which internal play testing don't really catch.

_pmf_ 6y ago

Translation: "we were wrong that letting you work on what you want will make us happiest"

mesa8 6y ago

I'm surprised they worked with Geoff Keighley ⊂ (Mountain-Dew ∪ Dorito)

Trasmatta 6y ago
They've worked with him many times. He's done similar "Final Hours of..." projects for the original Half-Life, Half-Life 2, and Portal 2. He's had a close relationship with Valve for decades now.

BlahGod420 6y ago

So...Half-Life 3 confirmed?

whywhywhywhy 6y ago

I feel pretty strongly that, assuming you care about the art and creating things then Valve is a blueprint of how exactly not to do it, hang on let me finish. Building Steam was a genius business move, it has basically given them an insane amount of income for close to zero effort, I mean the client is insanely janky and has barely been updated from an actual experience point of view in over a decade but it doesn't matter because almost all PC gaming purchases are funneled through it. Now what this should have done is allow the company to stop caring about profits and being able to relish in building true art to a true un-compromised vision. But something has seriously gone wrong here and the company has struggled to ship close to anything meaty in 16 years. To put it in perspective lets look at auteur studios held in similar regard as Half-Life. (I'm ignoring side releases, just focusing on mainline games) - Half-Life: HL2 2004, HL:A 2020 - Kojima : MGS3 2004, MGS4 2008, MGS5 2014, Death Stranding (worth pointing out his studio was rebuilt from nothing for this too) 2020 - Rockstar : GTA:SA 2004, GTA4 2008, RDR 2010, GTA5 2013, RDR2 2019 If Valve hadn't had steam, the company would not still exist today with that output. If HL:A good, yes. But we put it next to Rockstars output in the same time and it's not even the same league. Something has seriously gone wrong within Valve and I think the charitable way to frame it is "Oh they just care so much they only release when its perfect" but I'm not really buying that, I feel they have instead of being freed creatively by Steam they have been shacked by it. Steve Jobs sales and marketing speech comes to mind [0], the people calling the shots are only focused on running a digital videogame Walmart, artists push and push get burned out by not shipping and leave. At the head of it I guess Gabe just doesn't have the passion or care enough about creating art to push for anything else. Now if you're a big Valve fan what I'm saying might annoy you, but really think for a second. What have you as a Valve fan been denied because the people in the company care more about running a store than making art. What games exist in the reality where Valve never made steam. [0] : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4VBqTViEx4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4VBqTViEx4

mostlysimilar 6y ago
I dunno, SteamVR and the Vive (and later Index) are pretty noteworthy. Not to mention all of the progress on Linux gaming.
trowawee 6y ago