Half Life 2: Episode 3 - Not Anytime Soon

Unfourtunately for Half Life fans, you won’t be seeing EP3 for a long time. Valve’s Doug Lombardi confirms the release distance will be much larger than it was with Half Life 2 to Episode 1 and Episode 1 to Episode 2. However, Valve may show you a piece of Episode 3 later this year.

Lombardi: Yeah, the next time you play as Gordon will be longer than the distance between HL2 to Ep1, and Ep1 to Ep2.

VALVe Doesn’t Mind Being Acquired

 

Having Independent game studios/publishers is always a good thing, independent studios place emphasis over quality instead of quantity and you’re always guaranteed a good game. Valve is probably the largest independent developer around and has some of the most popular and best selling titles in it’s portfolio. Unfortunately, that also makes it an attractive target for biggest companies like Activision, EA and Ubisoft. How does Valve feel about being acquired?

Doug Lombardi talks:

If anyone is interested in acquiring Valve, VP Doug Lombardi is “happy to have that conversation,” 

“EA was very progressive about saying, ‘We understand who you guys are. We understand what Steam is. We don’t want Steam to go away.’ Well, they might want Steam to go away, but they’re not asking us to make Steam go away.”

The “valuable add” of EA’s distribution power to Valve’s business was all the company needed from EA. “And [EA Partners] is obviously in a sweet spot right now. I mean, all publishers go through personality changes, and that caused them to be at better points in time,” said Lombardi.

Ofcourse, If Valve was acquired, they would actually release titles/content on time. Which, hey, no one would mind.

Half Life 2: Episode 3 to No Show E3

Sadly, the next installment of Half Life franchise won’t be making an appearance at E3. According to Doug Lombardi, instead of Half Life 2: Episode 3, Valve will be hosting a playable version of Left 4 Dead in their private suite.

Doug Lombardi talks about PC Gaming

Shacknews had a chance to chat up Valve’s Doug Lombardi, and Lombardi had tons of things to say regarding PC gaming:

Shack: Do you guys ever get tired of the same old “PC Gaming Is Dying” stories?

Doug Lombardi: I mean, I think, we sort of laugh at it. Because we’ve been wildly successful–we’re very fortunate, you know. Our games have all done really, really well, Steam has taken off and become this whole other business for us, Valve has never been in better shape–and yet everybody is talking about how in the PC world, the sky is falling. And we’re like, we’ve been doing this for 10 years now–actually 12 years since the company started, 10 years since the first game came out–and we’ve never been in better shape, financially or otherwise. The company is over 160 people now–it was 20 people when we shipped Half-Life. We’ve got multiple projects going–we were always a one-project-at-a-time group.

Valve’s Doug Lombardi talks Portal 2, Left 4 Dead and future plans

At the recent EA games showcase in london, CVG sat down with Valve’s Dough Lombardi to discuss Valve’s upcoming game Left 4 Dead. Lombardi also talked about Portal 2, Source engine and Valve’s expansion into new genres. Here’s a snip:

How much has the Source engine been updated for L4D since Half-Life 2?

Lombardi: I would say that almost half the code has been developed since Half-Life 2 was released. We introduced new lighting effects, we did a lot of character animation work for HL2: Episode 2, added support for multi-core PCs, we worked on the physics for Portal and new AI added for L4D.

We look at Source as a set of tools, not necessarily as an engine that we’ve built that we’ll use until it expires and throw away. We see it as this organic thing that we’re constantly tweaking and building. It’s more of a toolkit than a set engine.

Valve talks Portal sequel; More Innovative than original

CVG scored an interview with Valve’s Doug Lombardi, Valve have revealed few details about how they’re going to go about Portal 2. Here’s a snip:

“It could have been one of those things that 20,000 people thought was really cool and everybody else just scratched their heads and thought ‘What the hell is this, I don’t get it’,” added Lombardi.

Of course, the game was huge, which makes a sequel crucial. “Now we’ve got this challenge of living up to what we did with that.

Valve: “NPD Group is to blame”

Recently, “PC Gaming is dying” has been a hot topic across many, many forums. This argument was originally sparked when Crysis was released; Crysis was critcised heavily for being overly resource intensive and alienating a large player base by demanding a powerful PC to run on. Hence most people assumed PC gaming had peaked and it was time for it to go downhill… If that wasn’t bad enough, recent NPD sales charts showing poor sales have added fuel to the fire. If that wasn’t bad enough, developers have starting blaming piracy and statements like “Trying to make a game for PC is a freaking nightmare” certainly don’t help. Valve’s Dough Lombardi sat down with GamaSutra to for a QnA session discuss all these matters. Here’s a snippet from the interview:

Lombardi blames the retail-heavy NPD report for the anxiety wave. “That totally ignores the money changing hands, and properties like World of Warcraft with their monthly subscriptions. That totally ignores Steam sales, and any other MMOs and online distribution systems and a host of others… it also ignores things like PopCap games. Peggle’s not in that number.”

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