Half Life 3 is super late
this post was submitted on 18 Nov 2023
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You've just added another month to the release date.
Made the release date ONE MONTH BETTER.
The release date can be calculated as:
x = gabe(n)
Where the function gabe multiplies the number of mentions of the game (signified by n) by months since it’s last mention
We're fucked then
Half Life Alyx was sick and demonstrated everything VR could be. I will standby that statement and tolerate the flamers.
Hard agree. That game is what I hope the future of games is like. Meeting Jeff is one of my favorite moments in gaming.
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At some point the Late vs Suck balance will tip the scales of So Late That the Customers Lost Interest or Died
I played hl2 as a teen.
One of my kids just finished episode 2 and asked me when the next one was coming out. I was like "oh bud I got some bad news for ya".
It's generational disappointment at this point.
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tbf that's a lot easier to say when you're the president of one of the richest companies in the industry. I don't disagree, but not everybody has the resources to just keep developing forever, and that's easy to forget too.
But he's also president of one of the richest companies in the industry because he always said this.
And while your point is valid for smaller studios, it feels like it's usually used by the big ones that do have the resources, but would rather give more money to investors.
Yeah, no one has a problem with small indie groups doing early access, aka terraria, rimworld, factorio, minecraft. It's about keeping expectations in check and having a good fun base game.
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In the documentary this quote is from he said that about thr development of HL1. To be fair the devs themselves said they voluntairily crunched quite a bit and had some time constraints at the end of the game.
Fun Pimps were a smaller company and they have been developing 7 Days since my gramps was in nappies!
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However, delay also doesn't mean a better product. It's possible for a game to be delayed a ton, and then still really suck.
Delay doesn't equal good. DN: Forever and Aliens: Colonial Marines made that clear.
Didn't colonial marine turn out to actually have really good AI that totally changed the game feel that had been broken by a single misplaced semi-colon or something?
https://www.polygon.com/2018/7/15/17574248/aliens-colonial-marines-fixing-code-typo-ai-xenomorphs yep, a code typo broke the alien AI. Unfortunately for that game though no amount of delays could've helped it, there were many more problems besides the AI. The AI was just the biggest problem.
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Still better than if they released the same game earlier. Unless of course they kept adding features or content.
The real question is... Can indie games publishers afford the delay of a game?
Valve was a completely new company then. They weren't going indie, but Sierra didn't pay them for the remake of Half-Life. In the documentary they talk about financing it by creating Half-Life: Day One.
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Me disappoint you long time
I mean, Miyamoto said pretty much the same thing long ago. Glad to see Gaben being on the same wavelength.
suck is forever
Why is the consumer just expected to roll over and take it when a game sucks instead of the responsibility being on the publisher to release updates until the game resembles what was originally advertised? Games aren't on ROM cartridges anymore, you can still improve the game after it's released.
Look, No Man's Sky set the precedent for what you're supposed to do when your game sucks at launch. And we should expect nothing less from game studios with ten times the person-power and money.
CP2077 had a bunch of issues on release as well. Much better now. I feel like they(developers) need to bring in different testers near release. If you have the same testers whom have been testing builds for years it can probably be hard to see the issues with the same clarity.
Also stop having release dates. Just use vague terms like 2nd half 2024. When you get the release build, anounce a date, like a month later, give your devs a couple weeks off as there will be missed bugs after release. Hard release dates aren’t helping these situations.
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Because people will pre-order games to the point that it's made a healthy profit even before it's even released. Consumers vote with their wallet and for some reason gamers just constantly choose to show publishers that shoddy, half-assed products are good enough for them.
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Game developers seem to be very afraid to change core features or the story of the game in a major way (even if the actual work would not be too extensive) after release. But there are enough examples where games improved a lot after release.
Sure, the initial impression of the game might be ruined, but that is more a consequence for the producers that most often where responsible for the rushed release, than for the gamers or developers, of the game is fixed afterwards.
“Suck is forever”
That’s some Gen X Yoda shit.
While this was true in a pre-Steam world, it hasn't been true for a while.
See Terraria (which didn't suck, but was lackluster compared to how the game is now), No Man's Sky, Cyberpunk 2077.
There's also a recent trend of "forever games", where it's clear that the goal is to keep you playing it perpetually. It has both upsides and downsides. These games tend to change intensely over the years. Minecraft is such an example.
I don't have a problem when small studios do it for games like Terraria and No Man's Sky. It keeps them solvent without having to attach themselves to a big publisher.
I do have a problem when a giant, established company does it, as is the case for Cyberpunk 2077.
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Joke on him, often game gets delayed under this exact pretext and it suck anyway.
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Makes me think of old school Blizzard. Rest in peace.
I always thought that Miyamoto quote was real too!
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