What is the deal with Valve?

[FrikaC]

Back then when Half-Life was released, there were a lot of HL versus Quake fanboyism everywhere.

Maybe HL versus Quake 2 fanboyism. Quake was already "dead".

It doesn't help right now that if you ask the average Team Fortress 2 player what was the original Team Fortress that the game they are playing is a sequel to, they will usually cite TFC.

Quake was the foundation for so many things but a lot of the people who got into gaming as of late have no idea what exactly transpired prior to Half Life, and it's more sad than anything. Most of these people tend to be Valve fans or console gamers.

It's a shame because Quake and Doom were forerunners to their games, totally worthy of their time, but the lineage has been relatively expunged.

[Squirt]

Yeah nothing wrong with Valve. If they only would show some love to the original Team Fortress mod, I'd like them a tiny bit more.

I'm trying to avoid Steam since I bought a game last year and wasn't able to return it even though it didn't run and my laptop was way over the required system specs.

[mh]

Overall, it's just a cultural thing. The same happens between Marvel and DC, Nintendo and Sega, and so on. Sometimes it may be something fun to joke about, and this doesn't mean we actually dislike either company/game/whatever.

Think you've nailed it. We're still tribal animals after all, and we like to pick sides.

[scar3crow]

There is naturally a degree of tribalism, envy, etc. But there is also the fact that Quake is, as FrikaC pointed out, the foundation for many gameplay and tech elements that players take for granted. Expunged is practically the perfect summation of what has happened.

Personally, Valve was the first company to "burn" me, the first time I followed a game's development closely (Half-Life), cheering it on, evangelizing others about it, and having the final product disappoint me deeply regarding the final content (versus Quake, Duke3d, Blood, Quake2(yes actually), and Unreal). This followed by DMC which seemed insulting, followed by TFC which also seemed insulting, and a great recipe they managed to not get right.

I do harbor a (friggin large, epic titanic sized) bit of resentment toward them over their public perception versus what I see of their creativity, quality and ludology. I do resent the co-opting of TF into something ultimately far more flawed an hamfisted (yes I know they hired Robin Walker), I do resent renaming of Worldcraft to Hammer (yes I know they hired Ben Morris) and the pushing of Source as their own tech (though as I understand it, they finally removed all id code). Even Infinity Ward and Treyarch have the decency to refer to the Call of Duty map editors for what they are: Radiant.

Its a case of "But they're just not that good..." in response to all the cheers, they're akin to a bad pop-punk band to me in that light, one that got famous for covers of other people's songs. To me, the quality isn't there, the ludology isn't there, the originality isn't there.

Great sales on Steam though.

[daemonicky]

Personally, Valve was the first company to "burn" me ... having the final product disappoint me deeply regarding the final content (versus Quake, Duke3d, Blood, Quake2(yes actually), and Unreal). This followed by DMC which seemed insulting, followed by TFC which also seemed insulting, and a great recipe they managed to not get right.

What disappointed You?

(I was dissapointed with Max Payne, i thought it is going to be awesome. It was great polished game and I liked it very much, but it was still just a variant of MDK (-humor +shootdodge +slowmotion). The awesome trailers (1998, 1999, 2000, 2001) were quite arranged, I was a fool who expected that to be in-game; i was thinking "how the hell they will make this playable?". Later I found Total Overdose and Stranglehold to be much better than Max in the John Woo/Desperado feeling.)

...there is also the fact that Quake is... the foundation for many gameplay and tech elements that players take for granted. Expunged is practically the perfect summation of what has happened.

Expunged? Like censorship? Could You clarify this, please.

... the quality isn't there, the ludology isn't there, the originality isn't there.

Could You clarify it, please?


Ludology:
I am not exactly sure what You mean, but Valve makes the games fun by testing them properly on players. Valve to my knowledge gathers and analyzes lot of information from what they get from their players. I believe they make social (multiplayer, how people react on this thing ...) and engineering part of ludology, not sure about humanities one (see wikipedia on Ludology).

Quality:
I disagree, they make it work well. But it depends on what You define as quality.

I like what they say in "developers commentary bubbles" about how they tested their game properly.
I belive proper testing was not done so much in the past (and maybe is not even now) when I remember all the f***ed up stuff in games. And basically I like how they approach development, they make prototypes ... to me it seems like they are much more artists (skilled) than garage developers (who don't have much formal knowledge).

Quality vs Originality:
AFAIK Valve are making other's people ideas working well. Take game Portal, unoriginal but very good. Game Singularity from Raven company is also copycat but done very well. I mean what is the point of original and crazy ideas if You f**k up implementation like Shiny company (with few exceptions of course), it is much better to to have unoriginal ideas and make them very good. If we are at originality, Duke 3D copycats his quotes, and I really wonder if Shrink Ray and Freeze Ray are not copycated from some Star Trek (or some sci-fi, it is full of such crazy ideas).

Valve probably based all their work on Quake and work of other people (for example Portal is based on Narbacular Drop and Prey, thought Valve hired ND team ).

[Dr. Shadowborg]

Can't speak for scar3crow, but this is my opinion regarding Valve's game "quality" having played the original Half-Life:

Sure you can test something until it works and doesn't crash (i.e. this is what I call stability), but...

How can you call a game that has zero replay value quality?

Example: The scene with the grunts hiding in a dark room knocking out Freeman in a badass power suit with a single punch might be funny once, but gets real old and nonsensical by the time of the second playthrough (I mean seriously, a single punch can stop a man in a power suit capable of stopping even the most powerful rockets?)...Imagine how much more replay value might have been had, had they made it such that you could suprise the grunts instead spinning the storyline off on a different tangent? Hell you wouldn't even have to stop there, you could add storyline branches at various points throughout the game!

Having played Half-Life, it's two missionpacks OpForce and BlueShift, I can't really say that it has the replay value of say Doom, Quake, DN3D, etc. (indeed, the level design in some of those three listed have levels that can be played in at least two or three different ways through use of divergent paths!)

There's only one way to play Half-Life, often with very little deviation for even secrets, and always with only one way to get into a room, let alone exit it. Contrast that with something like SiN for example, SiN has TONS of replay value simply because you can do actions in one level that will affect later levels, and frequently has different routes you can take to finish the map unit / mission at hand.

And this is the biggest problem I have with Valve. Confusing game stability with game quality.

[daemonicky]

Can't speak for scar3crow, but this is my opinion regarding Valve's game "quality" having played the original Half-Life:

Sure you can test something until it works and doesn't crash (i.e. this is what I call stability), but...

How can you call a game that has zero replay value quality?

Hmm, I replayed Half Life maybe twice, and I don't mind playing it again. I claim that Duke, Quake and Doom have no story (what is there seems like a filler between levels and necessary intro and outro) Call Of Cthulhu:Dark Corners Of The Earth , I think, had a good strory but I don't need to replay it. It does not mean that no/bad story = has/good replay, thought.

I think more truth is that nowadays games are made as one path only, they used to be done as mazes. That seems to gets rid of exploring and trying a lot of ideas, finding new ways to accomplish level. It helps story telling; stories are one path only (there are gamebooks as exception). I sometimes got stuck in these mazes, so it is not so bad to not have them. On the other hand extreme linear games as Virtua Cop are fun, and Devil May Cry too.

DMC is similar to Quake in something. For example there are switches which You have to slash until they unlock You path or gave You some item ... This is gamish - You use Your main action instead of some "use" button. And in DMC it depends HOW You slash it, You mustn't be too repetitive or slow. Something similar -item which You use for interaction (instead of arificial "do something" button) - in Half Life 2 was gravity gun.

They tested playability too. I think Valve's methods of testing (...) improved since Half Life Anyways I think lot of people like how Half Life 2 is done. I enjoyed playing it, I thought that I have not seen much similarly polished games.

BTW stability is something which has to be there by default. Reasons why there are unstable games is that their programmers are bad.

I once read artice in Gamasutra about Valve's design process (there is direct link and there is more). Valve get cool stuff from art (movies, comics, games ...) and packed it together ... I think it is same as with Duke 3D.

So You can say that Valve did not made a game, they made a movie.

[Spike]

there are two sorts of games.
action.
adventure.

quake is action.
halflife is adventure, merely intersperced with action.

the difference being the number of levels required before you actually get to kill anything, the amount of sitting around you have to do waiting for things to trigger (while being able to see only random bits of scenery that you cannot get close to), and the amount of puzzles involving the environment instead of things that are actually fun to kill.

linearity does reduce replayability, sure, but then so does anything which involves puzzles you've solved before, if they are not fun puzzles in their own right. If you enjoy the puzzles, you won't mind the fact that you can't skip them quite so much.
you can have multiple ways to solve a specific puzzle to increase replayability, but you might find that this makes the puzzle somewhat trivial to solve, or much more complex to comprehend (or implement), which would make it too confusing for anyone with no patience or attention span (ie: people who play computer games :P ).
most people only play through the game once, anyway, so why bother?

they're different sorts of games.
dnf is an even more extreeme version of halflife, imho...
not played halflife2, so can't comment on that.

[Squirt]

@Spike: I totally agree
@Dr.Shadowborg: I agree

HL1 was too boring for me to finish. I still enjoy Q1 SP, playing 1 or 2 random maps sometimes.

[frag.machine]

Quake is all about immediately jumping into action, grab the best weapon you can get, shoot everything that moves. The monsters are stupid and there just to be shot, there's a small fragment of story and the maps are there primarily to serve the onslaught, either against monsters or against other players. In this regard, Quake follows Carmack's philosophy of "games needs a story as much as porn movies". And it's all right with that, because the final result is quite enjoyable if you're playing it for what it is.

Half Life is a different animal. It tries to tell a story. Okay, a B-movie story, full of cliches, but stills a story. Sure, there's some action and puzzles, there are monsters here and there, but the main objective is to tell a story. they're not only there to be mauled; they are telling you a story. Every Black Mesa laboratory, depot or room, every scientist attacked by a headcrab, every Barney clone, every soldier. It's as close of an interactive movie as you could be back in 1998. And it's all right with that, because the final result is quite enjoyable if you're playing it for what it is.

Personally, I don't see why I should dislike one because I like other. They're different, and they're great games that stand higher among the crowd.

BTW, if there's anyone here that never saw it before, I suggest checking out the Freeman's Mind machinima series. You'll never see Half Life the same way again.

[mankrip]

The best thing Valve did in HL was ditching morph-target animation in favor of skeletal animation.

It was this that made mods like G-Man Invasion possible, something which simply can't be achieved to the same extents in Quake.

[scar3crow]

Expunged as in, just removed without a note. Without record of its significance or presence.

Ludology - Half-Life was the first game I truly felt mitigated as a player, "you can't go there, its a decoration", "you can't do that, we don't want it", and so on. In previous games things were usually logically inaccessible, but in HL I felt lead on, strung along and trapped. My decisions mattered for very little. Sure Quake doesn't have some huge decision structure - but it also doesn't appear that you would.

Quality - The sounds were poor on release, texture misalignments abounded, and the whole world is just inconsistent.

Originality - They billed it as original, unique, with twists, and being a "thinking man's shooter", what we got was a Blake Stone ripoff in the Quake engine. There was no tribute or nod to this, but they marketed it heavily as being intelligent, to the point of implicit mockery of other first person shooters. Keep in mind, until its release I was a huge Half-Life fan, because I believed them about how alive the world was and how great the AI was and how it was such an expansive moment in gaming.

Dr Shadowborg is not able to speak for me, but he says much of what I would have said myself. Not only does the game lack in replay value (which casts serious doubt on how much "play" is in the original play value), it lacks consistency and strings itself along.

I've replayed HL twice, and I tried to get more out of it, to find moments where different decisions could be made or scenes could play out differently. There isn't exactly much in that respect, and as a player, I felt rather insignificant to the game world.

I consider HL to be an excellent game in contrast with HL2. If Valve wants to make movies (they apparently do judging by the degree of player choice they offer) they should update their renderer, and get better writers, because now they are going to be compared with movies, and I personally prefer books, and they're not ready to go up against that heritage.

frag.machine; I got just as much story from Quake, Doom, Blood... Because they didn't interrupt the actions (what the story is actually made of), rather they told things at major arcs. I was never shackled by story other than perhaps e1m8 of Doom where you die in order to reach Hell. And the story was never incongruent with my actions.

[Labman]

Totally over-hyped. I mean HL wasn't a bad adventure/action rail shooter. It just wasn't as awesome as they said it was.
* AI didn't really seem that smart
* Everything was scripted
* Almost totally linear with a small amount of backtracking

Unreal came out earlier the same year (May 22, 1998 vs November 19, 1998 for halflife) and to me Unreal felt like it had smarter AI, had some multi path levels, more optional areas in general, limited amount of scripted events and looked better.

Everyone does seem to love HL however...

[revelator]

mostly like the story the engine im less impressed about (yeah im a sucker for sci-fi adventures).

agree unreal looked more polished but then unreal is not as story driven as half-life, i think what caught most peoples attention with HL was the story (its not "half" bad phun intended).

half-life 2 engine is still quite solid allthough the age is starting to show but its nowhere near horribly dated looking.

newer incarnations of the source engine actually looks quite fine compared with say crysis (at less than half the gfx load).

in the end if its a good game then i could care less about not having the latest of the latest stuff as long as i enjoy myself

[Ranger366]

Half-Life's weapons were awesome, would like to see them in Quake though.
I already ported some over, but I can't release them... because of Valve :roll:

I'm sure following the developement of HL was interesting, the people out there are collecting media and other content from the beta versions of HL. You can find alot in the official SDK.