As Half-Life approached its anniversary final November, I had my clown make-up on the prepared. There had been whisperings all through 2025 that Half-Life 3 was lastly going to materialize, culminating in a bum word, moderately than a roaring crescendo. The expectation amongst leakers and rumor mill aficionados stays that gaming’s most-memed FPS sport ought to arrive sooner or later this 12 months, as data-mining efforts level in direction of a near-finished sport; whether or not that is Half-Life 3 or another beast totally stays to be seen. Naturally, at this level within the improvement cycle, it’s possible you’ll anticipate some to stay their ft up and name it a day. This, as former Valve author Chet Faliszek sarcastically factors out, couldn’t be farther from the reality.
Videogame improvement is a difficult enterprise. People commit years of their careers to a challenge, chiseling away on the marble till one thing that hopefully resembles a Recreation Of The 12 months winner manifests. In fact, it isn’t all clean crusing, as, usually, deadlines grow to be more and more extra unrealistic, and the massive crunch ensues. It is a story as outdated as time, and regardless of efforts throughout the business to enhance working situations, particularly within the post-pandemic period, the difficulty persists.
On Sunday February 1, Valve insider ‘Gabe Follower’ shared a rumor that the developer-publisher is starting to shift these whose Half-Life 3 race is run over onto different initiatives. This was subsequently picked up by shops, together with TheGamer, which Faliszek references. In his response, the previous Valve author places this notion effectively out to pasture.
“They should be proper,” Faliszek begins, “as a result of I can’t consider a time a product has shipped the place, on the finish of the challenge, it isn’t simply leisure; it is hanging out by the lake, perhaps going house early and hanging out with your loved ones… as a result of there’s by no means crunch in direction of the tip of a challenge.
“There’s by no means a rush, there’s by no means a scramble to attempt to repair all of the bugs or get all of the content material in,” he continues. “I’ve by no means heard of a sport delivery the place they scrambled after which needed to launch a day zero patch or perhaps a day one patch.”
Faliszek himself contributed tremendously to the likes of Half-Life, Portal, and was the lead author for the unique Left 4 Useless, so he is aware of a factor or two about what it is really like being on the enterprise finish of late-stage improvement. There might nonetheless be substance to the murmurings talked about by Gabe Follower, however I am not satisfied.
Again in 2020, GamingBolt interviewed Half-Life Alyx designer Greg Coomer. Right here, he says that, whereas “crunch mode is just not the norm” at Valve, “in very uncommon circumstances the place persons are within the final couple of weeks of improvement, a subset of the group will select to work hours which are form of prolonged with a purpose to get by sure durations.”
Whereas there could also be fires to place out, as Faliszek notes, there might very effectively nonetheless be some wiggle room for members of the group who aren’t concerned with these very ultimate pre-launch tweaks. Whether or not there’s sufficient to maneuver our bodies over, I do not know, however for now I am much more inclined to belief the ideas of an business vet over unsubstantiated web ramblings.
