Jump to content
The Dark Mod Forums

Has Gaben sold out?


Kurshok

Recommended Posts

We all know that Valve has a problem counting to 3. All of their signature series in many's eyes, Portal, Half-Life, and Left 4 Dead, seem to have been abandoned. The company seems content to serve as a game e-market rather than innovative game-makers anymore. The last two games of note to make people sad were a dota card game and now some other dota related hobby game. I don't know what Gabe Newell's smoking while he's watching My Little Pony, but many fans of Valve seem to feel abandoned. How do you guys feel about this?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

went bad when half-life 2 was made to run on consoles, they cut the number of objects the game could have by 200 so a lot of half-life 2 mods stopped working, it all depends if valve are being told by the console makers what type of games they want to see that will run on xbox, ps4, and maybe pc, or maybe valve are being told not to make pc games at all.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

From the perspective of fans it sucks, but as a business model it's a smart system, and I could even argue it's better for the fans in the end.

 

Their business model is every staff picks the projects they want to work on. So if a project can't sustain enough people to make progress, then it means that people don't believe in it and the project was doomed to begin with. In the long run, it means the projects that do make it out are the ones that could sustain people, so they're going to be worthwhile games the devs believed in. And as for the ones we never see, it's probably better that we don't see them. It means you would have had people working on a project they didn't believe in just to satisfy management, which is always a recipe for dev hell and ultimately a bad game. So all in all I'm okay with it. Better a great new game coming out than a piss poor 3

  • Like 2

What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know that it's mine.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think they'll wait for VR to become a better experience and then use it for HL3. They've always tried something new for their Half-Life games, so I would bet on this. :)

  • Like 1

"Einen giftigen Trank aus Kräutern und Wurzeln für die närrischen Städter wollen wir brauen." - Text aus einem verlassenen Heidenlager

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's a 10-year-old question at least. Valve is a Steam platform owner, first and foremost, and that's what generates most of the revenue for them. Valve the publisher and Valve the development studio are two other things, smaller in scale and less profitable.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

The real problem with Valve is called Epic Games Store. You know, the one that is paying out millions to crowdfunded indie titles to transform them into exclusives (enough to cover all backer copies being refunded). A platform where user reviews are not central and can be completely disabled by the publisher.

 

Steam has to match or nearly match the 88% cut to stop the bleeding. They can focus on making games after they solve this problem.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't get Epic Store at all. If you have such funding, maybe use it to make your store have basic functionalities first? Like shopping cart maybe? :D

 

And if you have such disdain for your customers, maybe change the industry? Although I must say, when I watch the cringe-worthy highlights from E3, I'm on devs side. If there are people that are so insanely moronic with their enthusiasm, it's really hard to have any respect for them.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Epic Store is a disgrace, but that doesn't stop me & everyone from taking their monthly free giveaways anyway.

 

And I've almost always taken the devs side for most things, given what I know about it just form TDM's own development dramas. While sometimes devs can be the engineers of their own dev hell, a lot of times the problem comes from management and the marketing/business side (something we've been blissfully free of for the most part), which I feel like devs are also burdened with handling without much credit.

  • Like 2

What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know that it's mine.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Corporations exist to make money, not to make people happy. If you could give up the years-long, hard work of making games and instead chill and collect proceeds because your game delivery software is installed on 95% of gamers' computers, why would you continue the hard work of actually making games yourself?

 

Especially so if the proceeds of others publishing games through your service earns you more than you did actually making and selling your own games!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 6/18/2019 at 8:22 AM, demagogue said:

Epic Store is a disgrace, but that doesn't stop me & everyone from taking their monthly free giveaways anyway.

Thanks for sharing this, as I didn't know about these. Those are now weekly free giveaways till the end of the year I think. Next week Rebel Galaxy will be free and that was just a game that I wanted to buy.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

While the Epic Store might not be as good as Steam at the moment, I still appreciate the competition. Steam is the main reason why Valve develops no really new games, this started already back in the time of HL2 when Newell only concentrated on Steam and therefore HL2 was delayed again and again! Why do hard-work when designing some hats can keep you busy and you get 30% for free from everything other people are creating? Regardless of whether it actually runs in the state Steam sells it, or it's just an asset flip or people made it for fun for free, like when Valve tried to commercialize mods too. If the Epic Store manages to break that monopoly, it can only lead to improvements in Steam itself and maybe Valve will be forced to make computer games again :)!

Edited by wesp5
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 6/18/2019 at 1:22 PM, demagogue said:

Epic Store is a disgrace, but that doesn't stop me & everyone from taking their monthly free giveaways anyway.

 

And I've almost always taken the devs side for most things, given what I know about it just form TDM's own development dramas. While sometimes devs can be the engineers of their own dev hell, a lot of times the problem comes from management and the marketing/business side (something we've been blissfully free of for the most part), which I feel like devs are also burdened with handling without much credit.

The only games I have on Epic store are the free games and that only because I would be stupid to not use that opportunity, but if that was not the case then I would not install it, why, one is years behind Steam, even GOG and two, I totally don't agree with their store exclusives, I still didn't play Crysis 3 just because is exclusive to Origin.  To me the only reason Epic Store has any momento is the Free games and it being linked to their engine because it is still very bare bones IMO.

 

About Valve and Gaben, I really don't care, I like the HL franchise but I will not lose sleep if they never make a third game or even games at all, there's plenty of other good developers outhere. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The major thing that is a counterpoint to this is Valve's VR ambitions.  HLVR is quite clearly in development and they're pushing enthusiast VR hardware further than anyone else in the consumer space with the Index.  The company's philosophy on this is that you establish something that proves to be compelling in the high end before addressing the major cost reduction matters for the wider markets.  This is while other corps involved with VR are getting impatient and engaging in a "race to the bottom" under the assumption that VR's major roadblocks are in price and friction.  Which is an approach that I think will ultimately fail because even as a big VR enthusiast I realize that VR is currently not yet good enough for wider markets at any price (IMO it needs variable focus, sim sickness mitigation tech, and haptics that convey translational/rotational forces--promising solutions for all are in the works but these are things that need to be paid for and "beta tested" by the high end).  

But the point here is that if they were only concerned about the most profitable path of least resistance they wouldn't even bother with VR as VR is quite the opposite of that.  The $1000 price tag of the Index (and this is not a mistake--see Gabe's comments on "premature price reduction" going back to 2017) is evidence of this.  They are investing a *ton* of resources into a market that quite transparently consists of mostly enthusiasts (for now anyway).  Over a third of Valve's employees are working on VR related things.  

But supposing they were motivated to create another Half-Life, *could they* actually make something that lives up to HL's hype?  The expectations are so absurdly high.  And if you look a litter deeper, they do seem to be *trying* (many leaks over the years have suggested the development of games related to their major series but at some point the leaks dry up and the assumption is that those projects were cancelled).  Both HL1 and HL2 paired major developments in gaming technology with an engaging storyline, high production values, and great gameplay.  So first, could they even satisfy the latter three aspects?  This is no small feat as the gaming market looks much different than it did around the time of HL2's release--the scale and production qualities of modern games remind me of something closer to big budget movies.  Competing here doesn't seem to suit Valve's organizational structure which is anything but an assembly line of devs slaving away.  And second, would making "just another Half-Life" game at modern production standards be enough?  I seriously doubt it and I also doubt Valve's employees are even interested in something that is ordinary.  Gamers are expecting something novel--there need to be major technical innovations paired with it.  And what remains for *major* technical innovation in flat (desktop monitor) gaming?  There certainly doesn't seem to be any low hanging fruit remaining.  

Personally I think in many ways gaming is currently bottlenecked by the medium through which it is experienced.  VR removes some of those bottlenecks--and has at least temporarily added some of its own (but as I said above I think those will be overcome).  Increased immersion is nice but more importantly VR is about expanding on the interaction space--giving us something closer to the complexity and dynamics of real life interactions (which the VR perspective is critical for).  When I see what e.g. the Boneworks ( https://i.imgur.com/L0rwfrl.gifv ) and Blade & Sorcery devs are doing, creating the next iteration of Half-Life here totally makes sense (and Thief games as well ...).  And sure enough, strings for "HLVR" prefixed to things like "crowbar" and "grabbity gloves" started showing in Source 2 binaries in late 2015 (and other leaks seemingly pertaining to HL3 came to a halt not too long before that).  So I think this is what they are doing.

 

EDIT: Literally just 10 minutes or so ago.  When was the last time that Gabe has stated--in practically direct terms--that they have the intention of making HL3?  At the Index launch party of all things.

""Maybe some day the number 2 will lead us to that shiny integer glowing on the mountain someplace ... you'll just have to see ..."

 

Edited by woah
Link to comment
Share on other sites

IMO, if anything, gaming is blocked by lack of ideas on how to interact with game worlds in interesting manner, other than shooting a moving target in the head. It's an interface problem as well, I guess. VR has a different problem though, and the opposition isn't just towards the high price. Gaming spent several decades trying to get to mainstream / average Joe's home. VR and the necessity of wearing weird peripherals takes us back to the basement nerd era again. No amount of money spent on marketing will change that.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, peter_spy said:

IMO, if anything, gaming is blocked by lack of ideas on how to interact with game worlds in interesting manner, other than shooting a moving target in the head.

Agreed, but there are already other options and especially with HL3 it would have been so cool to have a portal gun in it, after HL2 introduced the gravitiy gun. In my opinion it always fails because Valve has no pressure to release anything as long as all other companies give them 30% for basically nothing except for owning the monopoly! Newell already had no drive to finish HL2 and worked on that Steam monopoly instead, so now even the last writer has left Valve why should they do it? As for VR, even home TV 3D failed because you needed spectacles which of course were not compatible to each other, so I don't see VR succeeding in that environment being even more complicated.

Edited by wesp5
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

 Pssh they’ll release HL3 when VR is on par with the HoloDeck from Star Trek. So uh like forty years from now. And Newell will just feign they were working on it the whole time in secret, claiming it didn’t meet standards or whatever typical BS we all hate him for. From a business standpoint I guess he is smart but from a gamer’s, yeah he’s a sellout.

As my father used to say, "A grenade a day, keeps the enemy at bay!"

My one FM so far: Paying the Bills: 0 - Moving Day

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

That was always my opinion. (I think that's what I said above.) Valve's entire philosophy is the entire staff choose their own work schedule, so only games that people know are going to be good get worked on. If one can't get people to work on it, it means it's really likely it'd be a bad game if you forced people to work on it anyway. And I can't say that's much worse than no game at all.

What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know that it's mine.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

  • Recent Status Updates

    • Petike the Taffer

      I've finally managed to log in to The Dark Mod Wiki. I'm back in the saddle and before the holidays start in full, I'll be adding a few new FM articles and doing other updates. Written in Stone is already done.
      · 0 replies
    • nbohr1more

      TDM 15th Anniversary Contest is now active! Please declare your participation: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/22413-the-dark-mod-15th-anniversary-contest-entry-thread/
       
      · 0 replies
    • JackFarmer

      @TheUnbeholden
      You cannot receive PMs. Could you please be so kind and check your mailbox if it is full (or maybe you switched off the function)?
      · 1 reply
    • OrbWeaver

      I like the new frob highlight but it would nice if it was less "flickery" while moving over objects (especially barred metal doors).
      · 4 replies
    • nbohr1more

      Please vote in the 15th Anniversary Contest Theme Poll
       
      · 0 replies
×
×
  • Create New...