Half-Life 2: Episode One

• Platform: PC
• Published by: Valve Software
• Developed by: Valve Software
• Release Date: Jun 1, 2006
• Genre: Action
• Multiplayer: Yes
• Online: Yes

 

Valve on Episode One

-- June 8, 2006 by: Chris Remo

Whether by design or simply by default, Valve is leading the charge on episodic gaming at the moment. For all the talk that's been generated about this kind of segmented gaming, it is likely that most developers and publishers at this point are keeping their eyes on Valve and the few other studios trying out the episodic model before they themselves jump in. Recently, I visited the Valve offices to play through the company's latest release, Half-Life 2: Episode One, and I was asked what other developers have been impressing in the episodic arena. It was a rather difficult question to answer. There's Ritual with SiN Episodes of course, using Valve's own Steam service for distribution, and there's Telltale with its Bone and upcoming Sam & Max adventure game series. Out of the very few companies taking the plunge in the early stages of the format, Valve is the one which has most frequently spoke out in favor and defense of episodic gaming--or, at least, the one which has most frequently been asked about it. So I asked some guys from Valve as well, and they answered.

Why episodes?

Why not keep going with the proven method? Both of Valve's two main Half-Life titles have been praised as some of the most immersive and revolutionary shooters ever made, and each game is a rather lengthy epic. There are actually quite a few reasons for the change. Having only just released its first piece of episodic content, this type of game creation is still new to Valve. However, the company is fully committed to the method. "We are definitely doing this instead of Half-Life 3 right now," said Valve's Robin Walker. As it turns out, episodic delivery is actually incredibly well suited to the company.

Some of the reasons are quite straightforward. "There's a lot of depressing evidence out there indicating that not very many players are finishing out games," admitted Walker. "As a creator, you want people to see all the cool stuff you've made." This is something that plagues video games as an entertainment form perhaps more than either the players or the developers would usually like to admit. It may not be as much of a problem among core gamers, and of course those who are fans of a particular game or franchise are much more likely to play to the end. Unfortunately, that's simply not true for most gamers. As much as people cry out for lengthy game experiences, most of the time that length is not being taken advantage of when we get it. For the record, when somebody at Valve talks about "evidence" relating to player experiences, it's not referring to extrapolation from message boards, or volunteer surveys. "Steam allows us to see where people gave up," Walker explained.

Steam

Steam, while primarily acting as a content delivery system serving Valve as well as a growing number of other independent developers, is also a tool Valve uses to guage gamers' pace, gameplay tendencies, and success rates long after the company's already extensive internal playtesting has finished. The episodic format is what allows the company to actually take advantage of that data in a timely fashion. Walker compared Valve's interpretations of Steam data to the process taken to create and polish mods such as Counter-Strike or Garry's Mod: "Episodic helps gameplay iterations. We want to build a way where we can make a single-player game with those advantages."

For the record, Valve co-founder Gabe Newell emphasized that Valve hopes players know what data is being collected and why. "We're paranoid internet users too," he said. "The hardware data we collect is published online." That data is used to give Valve, and other publishers for that matter, a good idea of what kind of PC hardware actual gamers are using, which helps developers know what to shoot for in their games. Gameplay data is used internally to refine gameplay in future releases. Newell hopes that such refinement can be taken to even greater levels in the future. He proposed the idea of a multiplayer game that could, for example, balance weapon prices in real time based on the in-game equipment purchasing and usage habits of players.

How Valve makes games

As you probably know if you've listened to Episode One's commentary tracks, Valve has a very iterative development process. Rather than designing a large level and then populating it with enemies and objects and perhaps some interesting scripted events, Valve focuses on specific encounters. Designers decide what needs to be conveyed in a particular encounter, discuss how to convey it, and test the implementation again and again and again until it works. Because Valve's storytelling have some very specific constraints--the first person perspective is never broken, the player never loses control without good reason, the protagonist never speaks, and so on--this development method is almost necessary to ensure that the intended story and emotions are reaching the player intact. "Every line of dialogue should reveal something about the world," Walker stated. "We want new questions raised in each episode, with enough for people to generate discussion." Newell chimed in, "We're all big J. J. Abrams fans here," referring to the creator of television programs such as Alias and Lost.

This technique benefits from episodic production in two ways. First, when Valve gets player feedback on what players think what works and what doesn't work, the company has the opportunity to iterate on gameplay using that information in a matter of months rather than a matter of years. For example, Valve got excellent feedback on the commentary feature in Half-Life 2: The Lost Coast, so it was carried over and expanded for Episode One. "We had fourteen pieces in Lost Coast; in Episode One we have about 115," said Walker.

Continue on to page 2 for more on Valve's development process.

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