It’s Valve, their whole MO is finding what would be fun next. They don’t expend money on something for any reason other than, is it fun, is it fun to work on. If either answer is no, then it won’t even see the outside world. There’s rumors they have worked on several games up to relatively advanced levels of development (at least a playable gameplay loop) then dropped them altogether because something didn’t work out, and they never talk about it with anyone unless it is finally decided it will be a launched product. That’s why this closed testing is such a big deal, they’re letting people play it, which means they already played it internally for thousands of hours.
Another interesting pattern is that they don’t make games to tell stories. This has always been a misconception since Half-life has such massive following over the story, and hurt over unfinished plots. But if you check closely, those games where never about the story. Usually Valve makes something with a fun mechanic to play, then they work on writing a creative and cool story/dialogue around that gameplay. Never the other way around. 99% of their games are about gameplay, if you stripped all flavor text, voice dialogue and art from Portal it would still be a solid and extremely fun puzzle game.
Another interesting pattern is that they don’t make games to tell stories. This has always been a misconception since Half-life has such massive following over the story, and hurt over unfinished plots. But if you check closely, those games where never about the story. Usually Valve makes something with a fun mechanic to play, then they work on writing a creative and cool story/dialogue around that gameplay. Never the other way around. 99% of their games are about gameplay, if you stripped all flavor text, voice dialogue and art from Portal it would still be a solid and extremely fun puzzle game.
I think you’ve just uncovered why I like valve games so much 😅
I’m not sure your theory stands up, they did all those comics around TF2. They hired those old man Murray dudes I thought just to work on narrative. They’ve gotten famous actors to do roles!
I think saying halflife was never about story is just wrong.
If you stripped dialog from portal you’d have a significantly worse game. Did you forget all the glados shit that came out after portal? Humor is a major part of those games which is all about dialog.
Story is a major parte of the marketing. It’s not like they don’t care about story, just it isn’t the seed they start from.
If you read Raising up the bar, or watch the documentaries they are upfront about it. Half-life was in its inception a loose collection of levels and set pieces of experimentation to push the limits of the game engine they were working with. They didn’t start with a story then made a game to tell it. They had a game then hired writers to help them string together the levels in a way that told a coherent story. Half-life 2 was also made to construct a new physics system for the source engine. TF2 was the result of experimentation with team based death match gameplay. Left4death was created when they were experimenting with game director and mass numbers of enemies and discovered it was fun to mow down huge numbers of enemies. Alyx is the result of developing gameplay for VR. Portal started literally with the portals system. Dota2 was a polish of MOBAs gameplay. Etc.
They work on world building and story writing only once they find a gameplay breakthrough that is fun. When they tried to make the story first (half-life 2 episode 2), they found it boring to develop so they stopped. Hence why there’s no episode 3. Portal 2 was not made to tell cave Johnson story, it was to make fun puzzles with liquid physics.
I do think you are right, they start out on gameplay; getting that inner game loop to be fun is primary (I kind of though that’s how most (non narrative) game studios worked though).
they don’t make games to tell stories
This was mostly what i was suggesting was incorrect. I also don’t think it’s a major part of marketing. I’m suggesting they don’t bother putting the work of story into something until that inner game loop is fun.
TF2 was the result of experimentation with team based death match gameplay
Didn’t they already know about team fortress? This seems off based on team fortress having already existed, same with wolfenstine enemy territory.
