As most of you know, HL3 is pretty much the most popular "vaporware" game out there. Something always rumored and in development, but never heard again after a certain point.

What I don't understand is why Gabens refusal to expand on the halted development of this game, it would've smashed sales absolutely and be the shining example in the modern gaming scene.

It just doesn't make sense, you'd think a games firm would be smacking it's lip ready for another full plate of gamers wallets.

Is it because the hype train is dangerous? Does Gaben prefer steam sales more?

What are your thoughts!

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[–] DaddleDew@lemmy.world 5 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

What you are asking for is for Valve to start behaving like developers like EA and Activision, who keep milking the crap out of their franchises with one bland generic release after the other for a quick cash grab.

The fact that Gaben doesn't force his employees to work on the game just to make money is the reason why Half-Life games are of such good quality. The employees at Valve work on what they are motivated to work on at the moment. They aren't being given arbitrary deadlines from overhead either. This is how we got amazing games like Team Fortress 2 and the Portal games too. Both Half-Life games were major milestones in video game history by pushing the envelope. And currently, no Valve employees believe that the conditions are currently set for this to happen with a new Half-Life 3. It would never meet the hype if they tried right now and it would be a huge disappointment.

Half-Life 3 isn't vaporware either as Valve openly admits that they are not working on it at the moment.

Just accept that great things can't happen as often as we wished they did.

Speaking of Team Fortress 2 and Portal, I have been around to witness other attempted iterations of what TF2 could have been been, only to be abandoned by Valve because it wasn't good enough. Then Valve finally got their vision for what the game ultimately ended up being and then suddenly everyone was motivated to work on the game. The first Portal game was also an experiment that motivated Valve employees to work on the sequel. Hopefully one day there will be a lightbulb moment in Valve and everyone will be motivated on working on Half-Life 3 and the resulting product will surely be worthy of the name. But you can't force it to happen.

Hopefully it will happen while Gaben is still in control of Valve though because there is no telling what will happen to the company's unique culture and philosophy after that.