Half Life 3 semi-confirmed

[Eraser]

Why put effort into developing a game you know you can't release yet because you're waiting for technology that you don't know will emerge in the coming years. By the time the technology is here, we may be 10 years down the line and all that effort is wasted. Also, he said there's more reasons.

Still, it remains speculative. As long as there's no official statement from Valve, I don't know what to believe. I'm not holding my breath for HL3 though.

[MKJ]

Yeah so they defo wouldn't be developing any other parts of the game that didn't involve mo-cap...

lol keep ignoring all the evidence and hang on to that shred of hope brah.

[Don Carlos]

It seems ludicrous to think they've done nothing at all with their biggest franchise for the last 6 years? No drawings? No concept art? No basic lay outs? Nothing at all?

I'm not buying it; it's real and so is Source 2.

I WANT TO BELIEVE!!!

[Eraser]

Why would they? They've got money pouring in from Steam anyway.

And I think by now Team Fortress 2 is their biggest money making franchise.

[MKJ]

concept art was already done years ago. concepting does not equal development, and without development shit is being done.

source2 was in that devscreen photo that got leaked. noone knows how long that has been in development nor how long the first stable version will hit.
as always, wait for an official announcement before wetting yourself. doubly so with valve products.

[Eraser]

wait for an official announcement before wetting yourself. doubly so with valve products.

Yes, and then take valve-time into account.

[MKJ]

indeed. Ep3 was officially announced and slated for 2007.
lol episodic gaming.

[obsidian]

HL2 animations were decent and seemed to do pretty well without fancy mocap. I doubt (if HL3 is still not in development) that it's being hung out to dry just because they can't get fancy animations working. It's like suspending a whole project because you're missing a single little tick mark.

The possibilities here are that either HL3 is currently under development but in super-secret, or they're not working on it because of some other primary focuses at Valve (maybe technical or development challenges with the next iteration of the Source engine), but it's not going to be on hold due to something small like mocap.




Personally, I think they already finished HL3 but then Gabe ate it.

[Eraser]

Personally, I think they already finished HL3 but then Gabe ate it.

Proof that HL3 would have been huge.

[MKJ]

I still think it's funny people think Valve's core business is HalfLife while they got two huge money machines in the form of Steam and TF2 going on.
They have been faring fine for the past 6 years without any HL releases.. why would Ep3 be their primary concern?

[xer0s]

Because the public demands it!

[Psyche911]

I still think it's funny people think Valve's core business is HalfLife while they got two huge money machines in the form of Steam and TF2 going on.
They have been faring fine for the past 6 years without any HL releases.. why would Ep3 be their primary concern?

Coming from someone who barely touched TF2, and it was ages ago, how does Valve make money on TF2?

[SoM]

ingame microtransactions

[SoM]

http://gamepolitics.com/2011/10/14/valv ... g5zbG1sLNU

[Don Carlos]

Hats

[feedback]

Dota 2 players contributed something like 3 million in revenue by buying the compendium alone this year. That's at 10$ a sale. Obviously, the money went to the TI3 event and the teams, but the point is that the money is there in the microtransactions.

[Psyche911]

http://gamepolitics.com/2011/10/14/valve-2-million-team-fortress-2-micro-transactions#.Ug5zbG1sLNU

Two million dollars? That's it? In the 4 years from when it was launched to when that article was published... Unless something has changed since then that is pocket change, at best, for Valve. Half Life 2 sold 6 times that many copies for who knows how much revenue.

[Eraser]

2 million, yes. In 4 months time. The game went free-to-play in June 2011 and the article is from October 2011. We're almost 2 years further now, and as far as I know, revenue has only increased since then.

[GONNAFISTYA]

Just so you guys have some idea of the amounts of "revenue" were talking about as it pertains to Valve running its business: $3 million is only enough to cover about 3 months wages for a studio with a staff of about 80. I'm not even getting into office costs.

Also, only about 5% of Free-To-Play gamers actually spend money on microtransactions...everyone else never pays a dime.

[MKJ]

Obviously, but I'm guessing .5 million per month for doing fuckall adds nicely to the Steam revenue. Not only that, it also pleases shareholders which is probably what it's all about. Them peeps bring in the real money.

[Psyche911]

Ah, thanks Eraser. I didn't realize the micropayments didn't exist at all until then. Oops.

[obsidian]

Not only that, it also pleases shareholders which is probably what it's all about.

Valve is still privately owned.

[Eraser]

Which doesn't mean there aren't any share holders. It just means that the shareholders don't publicly trade their shares (on the stock exchange). Shareholders could be members of the company or, for example, inverstors.

[losCHUNK]

Aye but those shareholders won't normally have any say in how the company is run, laced with all sorts of stipulations because not just anyone can buy shares. They'd just be people pumping money into the pie, so no one to please. This also means that they can't have board room power struggles by having people replaced when they don't meet targets laid out to its shareholders.

Of course any details are private, they don't even have to file the accounts publicly.

[Eraser]

Uh, you got it all wrong there, Bob.
Investors want to see a return on their investment. If they have shares, then they own that part of the company and they do have a saying in how the company should operate. That's no different between publicly and privately held companies. Actually, I imagine the influence of shareholders is bigger with privately held companies because there generally are less shareholders and they usually are closer to the company than public stakeholders who may be average Joe peeps that happened to buy a few shares.