Shack Feature: Valve on Episode One

 by Chris Remo Jun 08, 2006 2:45pm CST tags: Valve, Steam
Valve's Half-Life 2: Episode One was released a week ago, and hopefully you've played and enjoyed it by now. For some more insight into Valve's thoughts and motivations regarding episodic content, I spoke with Valve's Gabe Newell and Robin Walker. Check it out.
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.

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  • #188
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    By: artartful This person is cool! x
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    The concept of episodes makes sense to me. As with a conventional game, the execution is what matters.

    Valve is way off on pricing. There is no way in hell I'm paying $20 on Steam for a 4-6 hour nugget. As somebody else stated, Steam completely removes packaging costs and the publisher/retailer cuts of the purchase price. Yes, there is the cost of serving the content, but that has to be much less than traditional distribution costs. The only excuse I can think of is that in order to make a deal with a publisher (EA) Valve has to agree to a certain price point for Steam purchases based on the cost of the game in a retail outlet. If that is the case, though, why is EP1 so cheap at retail?

    I finished HL2 but there were parts of it I absolutely hated. The vehicle sequences blew ass. If I wanted crappy rail-shooters I wouldn't be buying FPS games. I much prefer the way that Far Cry handled vehicles - very useful and sometimes required, but you could go on foot and clear the way if you wanted. The ant lions pissed me off, too. I despise the unlimited enemies approach to game design. If you're going to make me rush through an area as quickly as possible, why did you put that area in the game?

    I might try an pick up EP1 for cheap this weekend, but it's not a priority. HL2 just didn't impress me enough to make me care.
    Jun 10, 2006 8:18pm CST
  • #101
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    By: Conan This person is cool! x
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    Having new mysteries in each episode is important, but Valve also needs to actually have resolution at some point.

    For example, X-Files started out awesome, but after 6 seasons I still didn't really have a clue what was going, and it became apparent that either there wasn't an overall conclusion, or they were just delaying it until it made sense to end the series.

    This isn't good storytelling - you need to offer your audience real, actual closure from time to time. You can still leave threads to come back to later, but important issues need to actually be resolved. HL2 failed to do this, and there's going to have to be more to the plot soon or at least some people will stop following it.
    Jun 08, 2006 5:32pm CST
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