Valve's Gabe Newell Says They're Back To Making Games
No. Half Life 3 was not confirmed. Just let it go.
Good news for folks still holding out hope that someday Half-Life 3 will actually be confirmed and not just another long-running meme. Valve has announced that they're getting back to shipping video games. For the last decade or so Valve has focused on their online gaming and software store, Steam as well as making hardware for PC gaming.
The news came directly from none other than the big head honcho himself Gabe Newell during a demo tour of Valve's new DOTA 2-themed digital card game, Artifact. According to PC Gamer, Newell stated that Artifact is just the beginning:
"Artifact is the first of several games that are going to be coming from us. So that's sort of good news. Hooray! Valve's going to start shipping games again."
Back in January
"We aren't going to be talking about it today, but sort of the big thing, the new arrow we have in our quiver, really, is our ability to develop hardware and software simultaneously."
For the last few years, Valve has felt that the ecosystem of PC gaming was heading towards a more closed environment and had been focusing their energy on Steam VR and the Vive. But with that focus came a lack of game development. In fact, DOTA 2 was the last game that Valve developed, however that focus on VR ended up teaching the team the skills they needed to efficiently develop hardware and kept the PC gaming ecosystem from being closed off:
"The positive thing about the
Newell went on to say that Nintendo was a big influence on Valve wanting to create hardware and software simultaneously:
"We've always been a little bit jealous of companies like Nintendo. When Miyamoto is sitting down and thinking about the next version of Zelda or Mario, he's thinking what is the controller going to look like, what sort of graphics and other capabilities. He can introduce new capabilities like motion input because he controls both of those things. And he can make the hardware look as good as possible because he's designing the software at the same time that's really going to take advantage of it. So that is something we've been jealous of, and that's something that you'll see us taking advantage of subsequently."
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replyBlake Morse posted a new article, Valve's Gabe Newell Says They're Back To Making Games
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For the next month....
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No, the last time I enjoyed a digital card game was FFIX, and I feel like that's because I could play a game or two within the game I was playing with additional out of game consequences (as minor as they were). I like real life ones but for some reason when you lose that tactile connection and looking into other peoples eyes when they pick up/put down cards it just loses all my interest.
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I’m a little stunned at how hostile the reaction has been.
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They're a big company making an insane amount of money on numerous MP properties and their first foray back into actually making games is pretty much the lowest effort, lowest budget kind of game they could possibly make. And in a genre perfectly suited to the exact same microtransaction model they've been making bank on since TF2 became Hat Simulator.
Valve fans want the high quality single player games they used to be known for, not the Dota version of Hearthstone. We expect more from them, and they should have known that. -
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Because they’ve jerked with people’s emotions for so long. They’re like an ex coming back after many years, telling you that they’ll go to the way things were.
I personally have a lot of skepticism. But if they make AND RELEASE something awesome, I’ll be there. But not before. -
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Unless you don’t give a shit about card games and liked Valve because of their high budget and quality FPS story games.
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Then hopefully a future game is more your speed. Steam is in danger of being sidelined in 5 or so years so the pressure is on Valve to create exclusive content for it.
Epic has maybe the biggest game in the world running through their launcher right now. Origin has all of the EA games, GoG is a viable alternative minus DRM, Battlenet is getting the next CoD and probably every major Activision release going forward, etc etc. Even Steam's importance as a social hub is irrelevant now that platform agnostic social gaming apps like Discord have taken over.
Content is king, the failure of the XBox platform (and Phil Spencer's recent remarks that they are refocusing on exclusive content) is testament to that. Sony has had huge success with exclusives even after cutting back on internal development in 2011, and obviously Nintendo has been reaping the rewards of exclusive content for over 30 years.
Whatever competitive advantage Valve had is rapidly starting to erode and now they need to start giving people a reason to use Steam outside of the fact that there were no viable alternatives.
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to me P2W is defined by uncapped spending going towards your win percentage. CCGs are just games with high buy ins at the competitive level that offer the ability to buy in via small chunks in case you don't ever care to go there.
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The reaction comes from the context. THIS did not happen because people hate card games so much: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OR4jPtrDCLo It's because Valve's fans feel betrayed by the neglect they've shown their beloved franchises. Everyone knows it's because they prefer the easy profit of Steam and endless microtransactions on existing games. So in that context, when they ended their drought by announcing a derivative game in perhaps the most infamous genre for microtransaction cash grabs, it was understandably poorly received. This is what happens when you squander all your fans' good will.
You say they have ridiculous talent working on this one, how do you know that? They have not released a single game since Dota 2 in 2013. That's not a great way to retain the best talent.-
I said the reaction was understandable given the context. The reaction to the specifics of the game divorced from context are what is silly.
As for talent, Richard Garfield is working on it, its very difficult to get much higher in the world of tabletop game design. Others like Brad Muir were previously announced but Garfield is a major win, up there with their acquisition of Icefrog
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I have no doubt it'll be an excellent card game, but there's no place in my game library for ANOTHER card game, especially if it costs similar to other Card games and I cant see me abandoning my current investment in Hearthstone.
Its just unexciting, the card game market has come and gone IMO, even if its really well done its still just a card game.
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It's sorta like getting ghosted by a girlfriend that you fell head over heels for.
She comes back into your life and wants to play a game of cards.
Go fish. -
Probably because people didn't want yet another glorified magic the gathering.
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this game seems about as close to Magic as PUBG is to Doom
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I think the reasons for that are more layered than just the kneejerk defense that naysayers are just acting like they are entitled.
Personally, my cynicism is centered around two points;
-Quite a bit of the talent (writing and design for e.g.) that made Valve what it was back in its heyday have left.
-The fact that their newfound dedication to releasing IPs again is heralded by a CCG based on DOTA 2 is not inspiring or encouraging.
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I'm not convinced Valve has what it takes to make the kind of game the old fans want from them. A lot of the talent who knew how to make those kind of games have moved on. Hell the industry has moved on a great deal since they made ripples in the single player realm.
Valve built a reputation for leading the single player field, but in their absence everyone else has been busy evolving and developing in that realm for nearly a decade now. Balancing and supporting something like Dota 2 is an entirely different beast, and requires totally different talent to what they used to be known for.
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Sure and I'd probably be reassured if they announced they'd hired X y or z developer to spearhead the development but there has been none of that.
And that's the other thing it's more of the same drip feeding of vague details that valve has been frustrating people with for years. It's up to them what they do or don't share, but it's also up to fans whether or not they care to get excited at this point.
I mean they claim to have 3 big titles in development, will we actually see any of them? There have been countless reports of other titles they've been developing over the last few years that eventually got shelved.
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