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Gabe Newell comments on Valve's move from Half-Life to multiplayer games

Opiate

Member
Its also kind of hard to argue that Valve's choice of focusing on online cash cows has come at the expense of their games. I'm sure DOTA2 is a very solid MOBA and all that but I don't see too many people rushing to call it game of the year because outside of the crowd that plays that style of game, it has limited appeal.

Couldn't you say the exact same thing for something like Half Life? Let's say I don't care about single player, story driven games. In that case, Half Life wouldn't interest me in the same way DotA2 doesn't interest you. Every game has "limited appeal" outside those who choose to play them.

For me (and I'd wager a majority of regular gamers) Valve has made exactly one game worth playing in the past few years (Portal 2).

How do you reconcile this belief with the fact that DotA2 is by a huge margin the most popular game on Steam? How do you reconcile this belief with the fact that Valve is expressly telling you the opposite -- that most gamers want these type of multiplayer games, and that Valve are following consumer preference?
 
That's Fair. I'd say its less of a game and more of a service. If there was a "Gaming Service of the Year" award I'm sure it would merit consideration. And yes I've said from the start it's very successful for Valve. Blizzard did the same thing with WoW. Unlike Valve however, they still found the time and effort to make Starcraft and Diablo sequels and make money off those too (whether you like the actual games themselves or not). My point was that if you like traditional narrative driven games or even solo experiences like Civilization, Valve (the developer not the Steam curator) has done absolutely nothing for you since Portal 2.

Dota 2 just came out of beta the summer.

I'm pretty sure the sequels you are talking about that Blizzard made, they didn't make them 1 or 2 years after they made WOW. They made them 6+ years later.

So again, you continue to make comparisons that make no sense.

You are okay with Blizzard making their first non-WOW game 6 years after WOW's release, but you have an issue with Valve not releasing their next non-Dota 2 game... less than 6 months after Dota 2 came out.

What the hell!
 

NervousXtian

Thought Emoji Movie was good. Take that as you will.
Blizzard is the wrong dev to bring up in this conversation. Admittedly they are considerably worse than Valve when it comes to delivering on long asked for things.

Diablo 3 added all the kinds of things Valve talks about.. and did it poorly.

They spent way too many years between D2 and SC for the sequels.

Hearthstone can be seen as jumping on the social MT bandwagon.. and guess what they have a MOBA in the works.

...expect Blizzard made it's name off RTS games and they've never abandoned them. Blizzard has taken quite a bit of flack for it's recent choices none-the-less.
 

Woo-Fu

Banned
That's very narrow minded of you.
Who knows what Valve is working on to revolutionize the genre. It's something I'm sure you've never thought of. They've done it twice and I'm sure they are planning to do it again.
At least, I hope that's why it's taking this long.

They didn't do it twice, arguably they didn't even do it the first time. Physics ala the grav-gun has proven to be fluff for almost every other game out there. The first game managed better AI than most of their competition, I'll give you that. It wasn't a revolution, it was an evolution.

The odds of them coming up with something profound, something that has no application in multiplayer gaming is vanishingly slim.

If there is a huge demand for singleplayer FPS that is being ignored by the large publishers---I don't think there is---then projects like that will show up on kickstarter and be well-funded.
 

Opiate

Member
Without speaking specifically of infinite's viewpoint, I do feel there remains a general sense inside the traditional single player community that multiplayer games are this fringe element in gaming which may exist but is limited in scope or appeal. This doesn't just refer to competitive gaming, mind you; it also refers to social and casual games, too. While most recognize games like Farmville have lots of players, we perceive those players to be "non-gamers" and thus their preferences don't count, as they are, by definition, not gamers.

In short, the tendency is to think of single player games as the "center" of gaming and think of everything else as peripheral. It's also why single player games with no multiplayer are completely acceptable, but games like Titanfall which are all multiplayer and no single player still cause quite a stir. I think this viewpoint is not tenable, as multiplayer gaming of all stripes (competitive, social, casual, whatever else) continues to rise in popularity. In the year 2000 this may have been a reasonable position to hold, but in 2014, it isn't logical.
 
Hell, do they even make games anymore? :p

Nope, all they do is work on their cash cow of an engine. They are nothing more of a vendor selling middleware. Let the others make the games, why waste money and put effort in them when you can just sit and collect the cash?

I mean where's Unreal Tournament 2014? They haven't made a single game since UTIII in 2007. A single game!

What a joke. But I'm sure the Epic cult will soon appear and try to silence me. If any other company had done that people would make 10000 angry threads about their practices. But nope, not Epic. They are *special* and they can do no wrong. :rollseyes
 

water_wendi

Water is not wet!
One thing that has started to bug me about Valve is seeing them go deeper down the OCD achievement hole with cards, badges etc. Entirely optional but a trend in gaming that I dislike as it tends to be at the forefront of everything now. Hooked on unlocks rather than the meat of the game.

The cards and badges are much worse because Valve basically monetized achievements.
 
Without speaking specifically of infinite's viewpoint, I do feel there remains a general sense inside the traditional single player community that multiplayer games are this fringe element in gaming which may exist but is limited in scope or appeal. This doesn't just refer to competitive gaming, mind you; it also refers to social and casual games, too. While most recognize games like Farmville have lots of players, we perceive those players to be "non-gamers" and thus their preferences don't count, as they are, by definition, not gamers.

In short, the tendency is to think of single player games as the "center" of gaming and think of everything else as peripheral. It's also why single player games with no multiplayer are completely acceptable, but games like Titanfall which are all multiplayer and no single player still cause quite a stir. I think this viewpoint is not tenable, as multiplayer gaming of all stripes (competitive, social, casual, whatever else) continues to rise in popularity. In the year 2000 this may have been a reasonable position to hold, but in 2014, it isn't logical.

Actually I think that Titanfall is a great thing for gaming in general because I hope it pushes more people to completely separate the single/multi experiences. There are a lot of games that should be single player experiences that have shoehorned multiplayer into it just to tick some check box for a publisher (Dead Space/Mass Effect/God Of War). This diverts resources away from the campaign and actually alters things as subtle as level design (so devs can reuse maps in the multiplayer) for a multiplayer mode that isn't going to be that successful anyway. On the flip side it would have been much better for everybody concerned if DICE hadn't even bothered with a campaign in BF4 and focused on making sure the multiplayer actually worked out of the box.

And no I don't look down on "social multiplayer" gaming. I recognize there are plenty of sorts of gamers and there needs to be variety in gaming to cater to them. I'm not particularly fond of it but I recognize there is a huge market for it. I don't like reality TV either but tonnes of people (including my fiance) would disagree and I'm fine with it. It just seems weird when one of the pioneers of modern campaign driven gaming comes out and pretty much writes off what is still an enormous market.
 

Sneds

Member
Show us your source for those numbers.

I don't have one. I'm assuming. I think it's a fair assumption. Are you suggesting that Valve don't make a considerable profit from TF2 and Dota given their player base and monetization efforts?

Do you think given all of Valve's varIous sources of income that they can't afford to give up some of that 75%?
 
Without speaking specifically of infinite's viewpoint, I do feel there remains a general sense inside the traditional single player community that multiplayer games are this fringe element in gaming which may exist but is limited in scope or appeal. This doesn't just refer to competitive gaming, mind you; it also refers to social and casual games, too. While most recognize games like Farmville have lots of players, we perceive those players to be "non-gamers" and thus their preferences don't count, as they are, by definition, not gamers.

In short, the tendency is to think of single player games as the "center" of gaming and think of everything else as peripheral. It's also why single player games with no multiplayer are completely acceptable, but games like Titanfall which are all multiplayer and no single player still cause quite a stir. I think this viewpoint is not tenable, as multiplayer gaming of all stripes (competitive, social, casual, whatever else) continues to rise in popularity. In the year 2000 this may have been a reasonable position to hold, but in 2014, it isn't logical.

Completely agree.

There's a fair amount of people who want nothing to do with multiplayer, and that's fine, but that's not what many, many others are saying with their time and wallets--quite the opposite.

I remember a thread on here a few years ago where Cerny mentioned that traditional single player games were going the way of the dodo, and a lot of posters gave him crap for it...Valve, and a few other places all realized the same thing.

That doesn't mean the absolute death of single player games, but I'd say you'll see more stuff related to multiplayer or some type of social integration into the single player as a hook for multiplayer.

Mass Effect 3 is an interesting example, as the multiplayer could easily stand on its own, right now, as a separate release (which, I think it was a different game at first, but I can't remember). It affected the single player game as well (whether it's ideal or not is up to you).

The Club, The Division, Titanfall, etc are the wave of the future. Not all of them will work, but there's going to be a lot of effort put behind MP-only games over the coming years.
 

Sneds

Member
They didn't do it twice, arguably they didn't even do it the first time. Physics ala the grav-gun has proven to be fluff for almost every other game out there. The first game managed better AI than most of their competition, I'll give you that. It wasn't a revolution, it was an evolution.

The odds of them coming up with something profound, something that has no application in multiplayer gaming is vanishingly slim.

If there is a huge demand for singleplayer FPS that is being ignored by the large publishers---I don't think there is---then projects like that will show up on kickstarter and be well-funded.

Bioshock Infinite sold well didn't it?

Half Life's use of the first person perspective with scripting and lack of levels was revolutionary at the time.
 
Without speaking specifically of infinite's viewpoint, I do feel there remains a general sense inside the traditional single player community that multiplayer games are this fringe element in gaming which may exist but is limited in scope or appeal. This doesn't just refer to competitive gaming, mind you; it also refers to social and casual games, too. While most recognize games like Farmville have lots of players, we perceive those players to be "non-gamers" and thus their preferences don't count, as they are, by definition, not gamers.

In short, the tendency is to think of single player games as the "center" of gaming and think of everything else as peripheral. It's also why single player games with no multiplayer are completely acceptable, but games like Titanfall which are all multiplayer and no single player still cause quite a stir. I think this viewpoint is not tenable, as multiplayer gaming of all stripes (competitive, social, casual, whatever else) continues to rise in popularity. In the year 2000 this may have been a reasonable position to hold, but in 2014, it isn't logical.

BTW Newell believes multiplayer games will have to go through changes as well. He believes they can no longer be able to get away with their super simple worlds. They need to adopt the rich worlds, SP games have. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uCBMD2tpM7oE-NTZCzKRToP31_PcF0uB_7c-bToh928/preview

I don’t think you can continue to have the super-simplified world and story-structures that multi-player games have and be able to get away with it. We need to combine the richness of the worlds and authored experiences of the single-player games and allow for more people to participate in that and that’s a big design challenge. Either way, you’re going to need to figure out how to update it really frequently, pull the audience into the participation and creation of it and then also figure out how to make movies and comics around that.

L4D was probably a good first step towards that direction.
 

gafneo

Banned
The only Mp game I liked by Valve was Half Life 2 Mp. Gravity gun, plus user created levels galore. L4D and Counter Strike are decent, but don't stand out unless you are a diehard enthusiast.
 

spekkeh

Banned
If people at Valve are so free to work on their own projects, then what does it say if ostensibly none of them feel inclined to finish a story.
 

Robot Pants

Member
Wow, that's.... he didn't threaten your mother, buddy.
Nah, you're taking me too seriously. All I'm saying is Valve could very well be working on something that none of US have ever thought of. Or thought could be possible yet.

They didn't do it twice, arguably they didn't even do it the first time. Physics ala the grav-gun has proven to be fluff for almost every other game out there. The first game managed better AI than most of their competition, I'll give you that. It wasn't a revolution, it was an evolution.

The odds of them coming up with something profound, something that has no application in multiplayer gaming is vanishingly slim.

If there is a huge demand for singleplayer FPS that is being ignored by the large publishers---I don't think there is---then projects like that will show up on kickstarter and be well-funded.

Well, I dunno. I think most of the world is gonna disagree that they didn't revolutionize FPS games twice.
And plus, this isn't just some yearly Modern Warfare FPS. This is fucking Half-Life. It's in it's own league, so it's unfair to lump them together when you say FPS' aren't evolving.
 
As cliche as it is to bring this game up on GAF, Dark Souls solved a ton of the problems of firmly integrating multiplayer with an experience that is still obviously meant for single player. PvP, PvE, covenants that have formal conflicts with each other, and most of it buried beneath the surface so as not to mess with the single player experience. And as an added bonus all of it works within the lore rather than being a mode you select.

I expect the future of single player to iterate on what From quietly started.

I feel that:

DS multiplayerized the typical SP experience
and
L4D singleplayerized the typical MP experience.

;)
 
Valve make a considerable profit from Dota and TF2. They can afford to give content creators a better deal than 25%

I hope you realize the irony and fallacy in saying it's bad that Valve gets more money but people should get more money.

I mean, I don't even understand why I'm even replying to you anymore. Your response to people making enough money to pay for their lives is "well, they aren't making more".

Why don't you just say you hate corporations and get it over with?
 

NervousXtian

Thought Emoji Movie was good. Take that as you will.
I hope you realize the irony and fallacy in saying it's bad that Valve gets more money but people should get more money.

I mean, I don't even understand why I'm even replying to you anymore. Your response to people making enough money to pay for their lives is "well, they aren't making more".

Why don't you just say you hate corporations and get it over with?

Actually, the question is why are you so insulted his opinion that Valve should give a higher share of the revenue to content producers?

Think about that for a bit, it irks you so much you continue to respond to him.
 

HK-47

Oh, bitch bitch bitch.
Valve make a considerable profit from Dota and TF2. They can afford to give content creators a better deal than 25%

Yeah look at all those other games with better rates for fan created content? Oh wait what, they dont exist?
 

Sneds

Member
I hope you realize the irony and fallacy in saying it's bad that Valve gets more money but people should get more money.

I mean, I don't even understand why I'm even replying to you anymore. Your response to people making enough money to pay for their lives is "well, they aren't making more".

Why don't you just say you hate corporations and get it over with?

That isn't fallacious and it certainly isn't ironic. I'm happy that Valve get money for making great games. Good for them. But I think the content creators deserve more than 25% for their efforts and work. I didn't realise that would be so contentious! This one criticism of Valve means I hate corporations? Bizarre.

Yeah look at all those other games with better rates for fan created content? Oh wait what, they dont exist?

That's not an argument. Valve might be better than their peers but that doesn't mean that they can't still improve.
 

Bluth54

Member
Show us your source for those numbers.
There's this TF2 blog post from about 6 months ago.


Valve has paid out $10 million to people who made TF2 items, which means they've made $30 with their 75%.

Of course this doesn't include Valve made items and keys, which Valve makes 100% cut of (and keys are usually the best selling item in the store). They've made a lot of money on TF2.

Still I've never seen a single TF2 item creator complain about only getting a 25% cut and the items creators typically seem very happy with the amount of money they make.
 
Actually, the question is why are you so insulted his opinion that Valve should give a higher share of the revenue to content producers?

Think about that for a bit, it irks you so much you continue to respond to him.

Wait, seriously? Did you just accuse me of being Ebenezer Scrooge?
 

joeblow

Member
I'll go on record and say Gabe's comments are a ruse. He is deflecting attention from HL3's development, and I expect a free-with-SteamBox announcement when it is ready to be shown to the world.
 

Jharp

Member
At this point, it's much less that I'm dying for more Half-Life gameplay, but rather that I'm dying to know how the fucking story ends. It's their goddamn fault for insisting on episodic installments and completely fucking it up, and it's their fault for ending the last one on a cliffhanger over six years ago, and NEVER finishing it. One of the most important characters in the series is dead, and the rebels are seemingly fucked with one shot at hope in the Borealis, and...

I don't care if they finish the story in a book, or a comic, or a movie, or a miniseries, or whatever, I just want the goddamn story to be finished. The fans never asked for cliffhangers OR episodic content, but we got it, and they fucked it up. I've since moved onto enjoying my singleplayer first person games far differently in games more focused on innovation and openness, like Dishonored and Stalker. The ultra-linear narrative FPS is kind of dull to me now (BioShock: Infinite was a goddamn bore), so I don't give a shit if we get a proper game called Half-Life 3, I just want to know how the story that I've been following since I was in junior high fucking ends.

And they're assholes for not telling us.
 

wizzbang

Banned
How do you reconcile this belief with the fact that DotA2 is by a huge margin the most popular game on Steam? How do you reconcile this belief with the fact that Valve is expressly telling you the opposite -- that most gamers want these type of multiplayer games, and that Valve are following consumer preference?



I can understand you disagreeing with several things the person you're quoting is saying but that particular sentence you're trying to rebut is pretty open ended and quite logical. I am one of those people who most certainly is only focused in SP games - Portal 2 was the last product Valve released I give a shit about.
I am however not salty about this whole HL3 thing or the apparent delay in games, if all their SP content is as good as Portal 2? Take as long as you like. It's EXCEEDINGLY rare for me to finish a game 4 times.
 

wizzbang

Banned
Actually I think that Titanfall is a great thing for gaming in general because I hope it pushes more people to completely separate the single/multi experiences. There are a lot of games that should be single player experiences that have shoehorned multiplayer into it just to tick some check box for a publisher (Dead Space/Mass Effect/God Of War).


I haven't read all the apparent dumb stuff you've said in this thread but I can tell you one thing, I like you.
SP for life! Unless it's an exceptionally good MP game which feels like an SP experience (L4D1)
 
All that Gabe is saying is that sometimes you must choose the anti-fanbase course.

Even if it hurts the company, if the fruits of the other choice surpass the negative effect on not deliver HL³ as soon as we want. It wil be worth.

But i believe that sometimes in this century we'll have HL3 =/
 
I have a feeling that "how much should a gaming company pay it's layman content creators" could well be it's own thread.

Some none-junior want to create one?
 

HariKari

Member
I have a feeling that "how much should a gaming company pay it's layman content creators" could well be it's own thread.

Some none-junior want to create one?

How about we run the full course of it right now? Content creators are not obligated to create content. Studios are not obligated to pay them. The content exists because the game exists. The monetization of it exists because the studio allows it.

There is zero leverage on the part of content creators beyond fans saying "ooh, I want this." 25% is pretty generous in that regard. There is no industry wide notion that modders and whatnot should be compensated for their work. Most studios lock down their games and actively discourage such things.

If we someday arrive at a point in the future where independent content creators making content for most every game is a thing, then we can discuss 'standards' and what an acceptable offered cut is. Even then, there's nothing wrong with saying "You get 10%, take it or leave it." Your game might not attract talented content creators in that instance. But if said game is extremely popular, it still might be worth the time and effort.

tl;dr there is no leverage. Take what you can. 25% is generous.
 
Content creators deserve to be payed for their work, but I don't think that the current revenue split is unfair. As I said before, Valve provide a lot of things to the creators, including a platform to work on, a way to distribute their products and integrate them into games and, perhaps most importantly, a massive audience to sell to. Providing that huge infrastructure is certainly more valuable than making a hat or a map.
 
I'll go on record and say Gabe's comments are a ruse. He is deflecting attention from HL3's development, and I expect a free-with-SteamBox announcement when it is ready to be shown to the world.

It has happened before... A couple of weeks after Gabe said on a podcast that the PS3 has to be more open to provide value similar to the Mac platform (that they had recently started supporting) and that "I mean Uncharted 2 is a great game but it can't compare to x PC game [I don't remember which one he named] in terms of value", Gabe announced that Portal 2 and a form of Steam were coming to the PS3.

A couple of weeks!

He was basically teasing "if only the PS3 was more open! If only!" to later appear on stage and praise Sony for opening their platform.
 

Nzyme32

Member
It has happened before... A couple of weeks after Gabe said on a podcast that the PS3 has to be more open to provide value similar to the Mac platform (that they had recently started supporting) and that "I mean Uncharted 2 is a great game but it can't compare to x PC game [I don't remember which one he named] in terms of value", Gabe announced that Portal 2 and a form of Steam were coming to the PS3.

A couple of weeks!

He was basically teasing "if only the PS3 was more open! If only!" to later appear on stage and praise Sony for opening their platform.
Here's some food for thought. Ces has a bunch of OEMS trying to show off what their machines can do, there's one opertunity to show off something new, but the really interesting one is at steam dev days in a couple of weeks where valve show off their "2 years in the future” VR prototype. What better way to show that off than with a game from 2 years in the future
 
Here's some food for thought. Ces has a bunch of OEMS trying to show off what their machines can do, there's one opertunity to show off something new, but the really interesting one is at steam dev days in a couple of weeks where valve show off their "2 years in the future” VR prototype. What better way to show that off than with a game from 2 years in the future

Valve's economist who is NOT a gamer and doesn't know much about them said the VR prototype Valve showed him had a realistic alien move around him in the room.

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showpost.php?p=34134658&postcount=1

HL3 character? :p

He was eight feet tall, and stood out behind the technician. The first thing I noticed was his expressive red eyes and the scales he was covered in. Faint steam emanated from his nostrils. With slow, steady steps, he moved to the right, revealing all of himself from behind the technician, who was obviously having fun with my expression. As prepared as I was, the sight of the alien took my breath away.

It’s not a small deal to see a virtual but highly realistic alien stand beside a real human in the same room with you, walk around the room and wink at you.
 

Nzyme32

Member
Valve's economist who is NOT a gamer and doesn't know much about them said the VR prototype Valve showed him had a realistic alien move around him in the room.

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showpost.php?p=34134658&postcount=1

HL3 character? :p
This was actually one of the more secretive AR projects that valve called vortex. It was a set of contact lenses. It may have been cancelled after some of the other AR projects were cancelled when they prioritised VR
 

HariKari

Member
Valve's economist who is NOT a gamer and doesn't know much about them said the VR prototype Valve showed him had a realistic alien move around him in the room.

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showpost.php?p=34134658&postcount=1

HL3 character? :p

brb, investing in the adult diaper sector.

“Despite the fact I could see the technician moving him around with small adjustments to her console, his presence was absolutely real to me. His every step not only seemed, but sounded real (obviously, through stereoscopic speakers that gave the necessary depth to the sounds he made), his breath as well, even the sounds he made as he dragged his clawed hand against the wall, making my hair stand on end.”

Apparently, “the technician told [him] it’s going to take years before they get the necessary FDA approvals, in order to get the technology to market. The reason is that no one knows what impact such realistic presences might have to a person’s psyche, especially if they’re prone to schizophrenia.”

And, holy shit, they are contact lenses?
 

Lulubop

Member
When is that Valve developers conference thing? Next week? Also where the fuck are the AAA game announcements coming naively to SteamOS that were to be announced within weeks of the official reveal?
 
When is that Valve developers conference thing? Next week? Also where the fuck are the AAA game announcements coming naively to SteamOS that were to be announced within weeks of the official reveal?

Well, weeks in Valve Time equal to years so...
 
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