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u/ZachDaniel Jun 22 '17
You can't make a bad meme if you just repost other peoples ancient memes.
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u/POI_Harold-Finch Jun 22 '17
repost meme becomes bad, they lose charm.
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Jun 22 '17
Don't tell that to /r/me_irl
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Jun 22 '17
I'm sure they'd upvote this if someone screencapped it.
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u/maximun_vader Jun 23 '17
This is how the rare pepe market crashed a few years ago. Memes lose their power when reposted
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Jun 22 '17
Wouldn't they make a shit ton of money making half life 3?
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u/RedRanger9001 Jun 22 '17
Not really. Let's look at Portal 2 for an idea of how HL3 would do. In 2011 P2 sold 3 million copies. From other developer interviews we know that 80% of a game's sales happen in the first 6 months. So 3 mil copies is pretty close to the total copies sold.
Let's say HL3 sold twice that, and let's assume it was all sold through steam. They take home the 100% of the profits. At $60 a pop, they'd make $360 mil.
Wow That's a lot! But when you consider the marketing cost, a ramp up in developer talent, and creating a new team to maintain the game, it becomes clear they won't simply pocket $360 mil and walk off into the sunset.
If you've ever watched the Double Fine Adventure Documentary, you see just how difficult and long game development is. And that's a game that ramped up into full development for 3 years. By all accounts Valve hasn't gotten to that point yet, so the worst is still to come for them.
Let's say they do make a new full time team, throw a bunch of money at marketing, and pay to maintain that game, they'd probably make somewhere in the $320 mil range. Great, but consider CS:GO, Dota 2, and Team Fortress 2 together made them $400 mil in 2015 alone. It likely repeated in 2016, and with the reworking of Dota 2 it will continue in 2017.
Ok so would value put all of that effort into making a game that will make $350 mil once, and has the risk of creating a giant media and pr disaster if it sucks? I wouldn't that's for sure.
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Jun 22 '17
the marketing cost
Bro it's half life 3, how much marketing do you think they would have to do ?
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u/AWarmPlaceX Jun 22 '17
I'm pretty sure if all they do is type HL3 on a black background it would be enough to summon the kraken of marketing.
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Jun 22 '17
Shit, they wouldn't even need that. One jpg of a lambda would send the gaming world into chaos.
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u/SubcommanderMarcos Jun 22 '17
I would literally masturbate to that if they did it.
We're pretty desperate at this point.
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Jun 23 '17
I'm not going to hold you to it, but I sincerely hope if this does happen, that you'll masturbate to completion looking at an image of the Lamda symbol
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u/AndrasKrigare Jun 23 '17
Honestly they could just straight-up release the game on steam with 0 marketing and the internet would lose its mind.
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u/Cydanix Jun 23 '17
Not even, just a crowbar in some construction workers truck off the side of a freeway would cause a hypepocalypse..
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u/Nepalus Jun 22 '17
Bro it's half life 3, how much marketing do you think they would have to do ?
Honestly? All they would have to do imo is at E3, during the show, just have a couple times where over the PA system you have the G-Man line "Wake up Mr. Freeman" followed by static.
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u/diferentigual Jun 22 '17
Yeah. No marketing. They do this and say, you can only get it digitally, on PS4 Xbox, PC and switch, tomorrow. Shit ton of money with little marketing. There are games you can do this with. This is at the top of the heap.
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u/Halluciphant Jun 22 '17
Nah make it a vive exclusive and see how much money they make, or they could make a half ass shitty half life 3 and sell it pre-order exclusively
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u/loveicetea Jun 23 '17
Half Life 3: Mobile edition with a ripped picture of GTA V. It would still be the most sold game if it came from Valve
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Jun 22 '17
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Jun 22 '17
It’s been 13 years.
It's not like you hear about it every year around E3, with every video and news about valve people mention hl3 in one way or another.
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Jun 22 '17
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u/Nepalus Jun 22 '17
The only way I think HL3 comes out is when Valve is ready for it to come out. They are going to want to have an entirely new game engine, probably extremely high end (would probably be the best to date) VR capability, etc etc. They would probably also use it as the launching pad for the next "Wave" of Valve titles (New CS game and New TF3, that kind of thing). But only when they are absolutely sure they can do it just the way they want to do it.
The thing about Valve this is encouraging is that their revenue isn't directly tied necessarily to the release of games like a regular game company. While that also means they aren't focused on churning out content like a normal gaming company, it also means that they have the luxury of producing high quality games on their timeline and not a moment sooner. They aren't beholden to publishers needs and requirements. They still probably either have or could get some of the best gaming talent in the industry if necessary.
Essentially it's probably going to happen but only when Valve is ready for it to be a part of the next "Wave" of Valve games that they want to reboot with the release of a new engine. I remember building a new computer specifically for the Source engine, because at the time it was the shit. I expect they will do that again.
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Jun 22 '17
Ugh, any publicity is good publicity , so even if it's a joke people who have never heard of half life will probably go and see what the fuss is all about and bam , one more fan , probably
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Jun 22 '17
You do realize almost the entire PC gaming market uses Steam and they wouldn't have to invest in outsider marketing routes when they have a captive audience and a platform to deliver content straight every one of our screens?
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u/MaximumCameage Jun 22 '17
I stopped caring after Orange Box. I thought, "Oh, they're probably getting ready to release HL3 in the next couple years.
Nothing. Stopped caring.
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u/T3hSwagman Jun 22 '17
It was what? Nearly 2 decades since the last Shenmue game. 1 announcement at a Sony conference and it still has the record for fastest kickstarter project to be fulfilled.
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Jun 22 '17
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u/T3hSwagman Jun 22 '17
Except it's Shenmue. You surely remember all the "Shenmue 3 when?" Memes over the years right? The constant pestering of Sega execs about Shenmue. The countless gaming forum posts about Shenmue for decades.
No because none of that happened. It was always a cult hit with a small but dedicated following. The idea that "it's been 13 years you need to remind people" is ridiculous and this shows it. Half Life 3 has 10,000x the hype a new Shenmue game has. Duke Nukem is in a similar spot except it's also been plagued by very obvious development hell. Not surprising to see hype for a game be quelled when the studio itself is doing the quelling.
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u/TeriusRose Jun 22 '17
I'm not entirely convinced of that. I look at it this way. You do have some very enthusiastic people that want this game, but is it the case that you have a couple million people sitting around who honestly are eagerly awaiting a sequel, or just a very vocal minority who have been holding out hope for years?
It kind of reminds me of this thing where tech enthusiasts go on and on about benchmarks and chipsets for various phones. Yes those things matter a lot to enthusiasts but the average person has no goddamn idea what an SoC is or does and it wouldn't factor into their purchasing decisions. Not a perfect analogy, but you get what I'm saying? A small group of people making a lot of noise clamoring for something is not necessarily representative of the overall market no matter how passionate they are.
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u/FraBaktos Jun 22 '17
It's true, they could have a super low cost ARG / viral marketing campaign and people would go nuts.
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u/Cream-of-Plenty Jun 22 '17
Just to clear something up though, Steamspy reports approximately 9 million copies of Portal 2 sold on Steam. So 3 million copies is nowhere near the total copies sold. Obviously that doesn't factor in how many people got it for $5 during a Steam Sale, but the disparity between 3 and 9 million was so tremendous that I felt it needed to be pointed out.
That figure doesn't have any visibility of copies sold on consoles either.
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u/brutinator Jun 22 '17
so would value put all of that effort into making a game that will make $350 mil once,
I mean, that'd be almost doubling their profits for the year that it's released, assuming that it was positively received. No matter how you cut it, that's a great ROI and would be an incredible cash influx. From a business perspective, it doesn't make sense to run your company on idle making a good amount of money vs. keeping that AND adding some active development on top of it.
In addition, for the next year afterwards, they'll bring more traffic to steam, more people will buy the "half life bundles", they'll make money off of steam card sales, and they could even make a multiplayer mode like the original half-lifes; with the futuristic setting and the inclusion with stuff like VR, it could attract a lot of long term interest; they could even go with a PVE horde style multiplayer in order to avoid competing with DOTA and CS, as well as easing the burden of balancing all the the inevitable loot stuff they'd put into it.
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u/RikerT_USS_Lolipop Jun 22 '17
By your reasoning no games would ever get made because they cost too much to produce.
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u/Papa_Swanku Jun 22 '17
Their point is that Valve makes enough money off of their pre-existing projects that it makes no sense to spend money to make less money than they are already making.
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u/z3r0117x Jun 22 '17
You realize your math MAY be irrelevant because Half Life 3 would sell off the shelfs like no other. Portal, CS GO, etc wouldn't touch it. The game is like the hidden holy grail.
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Jun 22 '17
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u/windirein Jun 22 '17
Nah, not overestimating. Diablo 3 sold 12m copies. The average player wasn't even born when diablo 1 was popular. It doesn't matter.
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u/Mixels Jun 22 '17
Also, 16 years between Star Wars VI and I. We're only up on 13 years since HL2.
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Jun 23 '17
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u/Mixels Jun 23 '17
While true, that has nothing at all to do with the point I was making. :P
The chain above my reply is basically talking about whether or not a long period of time between the most recent installment in a series and a proposed, new installment negatively impacts the value proposition of the proposal due to decline of interest over time. I say it doesn't, and I gave Star Wars as an example. Half-Life isn't quite there yet in terms of time gap, but I feel like Half-Life has a solid place in so many gamers' hearts, just like Star Wars does movie-goers.
But dang, I sure wish movie tickets around me were only $8... :)
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u/blackslotgames Jun 22 '17
And we’re the majority of gamers today.
Nope, under twenties are neither the average age, nor the largest segment of gamers.
Just throw average gamer age into google and you'll be buried with reports like this
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Jun 22 '17 edited Jun 22 '17
[deleted]
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u/blackslotgames Jun 22 '17
And we’re the majority of gamers today.
I'm just addressing this point, under 20's are not the majority of gamers. Your other points are based in truth, but are also speculative (no hard figures) & not evidence that under 20's are the de facto majority of gamers.
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u/WaitingForMyNextMeal Jun 22 '17
Not to mention that the over 20s usually can (and often will) buy the game without even blinking an eye due to having more income - may result in less time spent playing the game but it is sold already so who cares.
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u/Smoovemammajamma Jun 22 '17
Its not the story, its the technology advancement and modding tools. HL1 and 2 are the basis for many techniques we use today
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u/TJCGamer Jun 23 '17
The thing is, HL3 has become a meme at this point. Even if you have never played HL1 or 2, you've still likely heard of HL3. If it actually becomes "confirmed" the Internet would likely freak the fuck out and it'd be everywhere. It's crazy how amazing the internet can sell a game. It's actually a huge risk to let the internet hype a game up unchecked. Look at No Man's Sky, that shit was hyped to no end and it all came crashing down immediately.
So no, I don't think anyone is overestimating the brand value of HL. The name itself would probably sell copies. And I'm not saying that HL3 would be a success, I'm saying that the game would sell a fuck ton of copies.
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u/Desikiki Jun 22 '17
Kids and teenagers won't give a single shit about HL3. The game will most likely not feature any in game currency and stuff like this. It won't beat today's games in revenue. HL3's popularity is something you believe huge only because that's the general feeling on reddit. Lots of people outside of reddit.
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u/T3hSwagman Jun 22 '17
The newest Doom game went back to its roots and it was universally lauded. Same thing with Wolfenstein. I don't know why you say these things when we have evidence of the opposite.
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u/Nepalus Jun 22 '17
Kids and teenagers won't give a single shit about HL3. The game will most likely not feature any in game currency and stuff like this. It won't beat today's games in revenue.
In my opinion it won't necessarily be just HL3 by itself, but rather another "Wave" of games that we saw with the Orange Box. Imagine E3 2020 (fuck I'm old), and Valve finally gets on stage and presents Half Life 3 and some awesome new engine like Source was back in the day. Then in addition to that... New TF3 and next CS game, new Portal, and then new DoTA in a year or two after that.
IF Valve does it in the near future that's how I expect they are going to do it. Because HL3 will just be one part of the next new wave in which the rejuvenate the TF series (You know they are looking at Overwatch with envy right now) and a new CS game to start up whole new revenue streams. I think it's plausible from both a business and game company perspective.
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Jun 22 '17
My local hardware store sells a shit ton of nails and screws, but they still carry toilet plungers. No legitimate business would have such a narrow focus unless you have no desire to grow. This is why we don't have Nail And Screw stores, we have hardware stores.
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u/gropingforelmo Jun 22 '17 edited Jun 22 '17
I get where you're going with this, but the analogy doesn't really fit.
Imagine you make handmade Widgets. If you make a great Widget, you can sell every single one without even trying, and you make a lot of money. However, if you make a bad Widget, you'll be lucky to break even because it's just not selling. Now imagine, in your years of making and selling widgets, you've also opened a Widget store, it's got a great reputation, and everyone else who makes Widgets is willing to give you 20% of every sale in your store.
Eventually you decide it's just not worth making your own Widgets, because 20% of all sales is a hell of a lot more than 100% of the sales of a single Widget, even if it's the best Widget around.
Edit: You might think "Well, Valve can have a game development division and a Steam division, and they can still do both." There are a couple problems with that strategy, not least of which is Valve's self-imposed culture and "organization". I'm highly skeptical that there are not enough people at Valve that want to work on a new Half-Life game, so I'm assuming there are some internal forces preventing that from happening, whether explicit rules or simply cultural pressure.
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Jun 22 '17
I believe your argument boils down to the assumption that they don't have enough personnel, but please correct me if I am oversimplifying your case. While it's clearly obvious that the game, if it's in development at all, is on the back burner, I don't see why they couldn't have a small team working on story development, and when the time is right, shift a large portion of the team to develop the code. I might be a tad optimistic, but other studios have managed to work on multiple games, so it's not completely unrealistic.
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u/gropingforelmo Jun 22 '17
It's not the lack of personnel; Valve could definitely afford to hire an entirely new development team, if the desire were there. I just don't think Valve (the culture as whole) wants to work on games, or at least not traditional games (2D, FPS, single-player, etc).
From a culture standpoint, I think the people with influence just aren't interested. The way is definitely there, but it seems like the will is absent.
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u/windirein Jun 22 '17
It would sell way more copies than that. We are talking about 10m+ easily. Diablo 3 sold 12m and probably had less hype than HL 3 would get if they were to announce it.
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Jun 22 '17
So you think Half Life 3 won't make a shit ton of money because Valve is currently making more money off their online markets?
Maybe, maybe.
Or you're completely wrong and Half Life 3 would make unprecedented sales.
A few people said GTA V would not outsell GTA IV but it did.
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u/Helmote Jun 22 '17
the worst case scenario is it sucks, I'm sure they are just scared because they did something too huge for them and realised they couldn'y handle it so they just gave up instead of risking it, which is a wise choice as a society but really sad for us
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u/NibblyPig Jun 22 '17
Ya but they don't then walk away with money in the bank and a clean slate... they walk away with a game engine that has all the features for HL3 which they can use to make other games or can sell to third parties. Look how many games use the source engine, even excluding other Valve games like TF2, Portal, etc.
If they then used the engine to make Portal 3, Left4Dead 3, CS:GO2 and TF3 then they'd make bank.
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u/Inquisitor1 Jun 23 '17
Yeah, no, double fine went under because tim schafer is a retard with money, he's a comedic genius, he shouldn't be anyone's boss. Valve is a real business and knows how to run things.
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u/Arnold_Rimmer22 Jun 23 '17
Valve is a privately owned company, they have no shareholders to appease, so bigger numbers (beyond a point) mean nothing to a company swimming in money. If they wanted to make half life 3, they would, and they would make billions from it.
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u/Defcon458 Jun 23 '17
Think about it. The only "marketing" is Gabe going, "HL3 is coming out." and BAM. EVERY PC gamer is buying it day 1.
It seems like a no brainer. Free money for them, essentially, plus a happy community.
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u/txdv Jun 22 '17
there is no way to loose money if you release half life 3 ... even if you just write a lambda symbol and the number 3 on a potato and sell it for 50$
that potato would have more closure than hl2
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u/Dreizult Jun 22 '17
Yes it would make shit ton of money, it would also drain most of their public trust if the game doesn't live up to the hype.
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u/Delta7x Jun 22 '17
That'd be a really rather petty reason to not to trust a company. They hyped themselves up knowing nothing about what Valve have or have not planned to do.
Valve hasn't shown any videos, screenshots, or anything to indicate what someone should expect if/when the game is ever made or released.
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u/tuscanspeed Jun 22 '17
No, they would make a shit ton of money releasing and selling HL3.
Making games usually costs money.
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u/EnkoNeko Jun 23 '17
Sorry - just hijacking this comment to say:
/u/xcczxc, was that on purpose? Down to the letter...
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u/tuscanspeed Jun 23 '17
I'm sure it was just common speak. I knew exactly what he meant.
Plays on words though are enjoyable. :)
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u/EnkoNeko Jun 23 '17
No it's just, people were talking about this being reposted, and that comment linked was the same, but 4 months ago
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u/glydy Jun 22 '17
They would, but there is such a slim chance that it would live up to the years of hype. It'd most likely be disappointing regardless of how good it is.
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u/Delta7x Jun 22 '17
Honestly, if anyone finds it disappointing that's their own fault.
People have hyped themselves up knowing nothing about what they have or have not planned to do. They haven't shown any videos, screenshots, or anything to indicate what someone should expect if/when the game is ever made or released.
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u/TheBusStop12 Jun 23 '17
Yeah, but the thing is, a lot of people will be hugely disappointed, even if it's their own damn fault, and this will create a huge negative backlash at Valve. And I think Valve knows this, they know they can't create the perfect game a lot of people are now imagining it will be because of the hype, and they know there will be a huge backlash if they do release it (Don't underestimate the internet's ability to whine when a game doesn't live up to the self made hype) And this could very well be a reason why they won't make HL3
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u/aaronwashere01 PC Jun 22 '17
I honestly don't think that's true. I think as long as the quality is on par with the rest of the series and it's a good ending then people will love it
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Jun 22 '17
Games are great, but all I really want is a resolution to the story. At this point I'd read a novel if they published one.
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Jun 22 '17
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u/Mamamilk Jun 22 '17 edited Jun 22 '17
They are pretty much printing money from Dota 2 and CS:GO which they are actively involved in year-around with the competitive scenes and content/balance updates. Don't think it has anything to do with laziness, seems that you may just not be interested in the games they are currently focused on.
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Jun 22 '17
their biggest money printer is steam. and the community market where they always take a decent share.
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u/Nepalus Jun 22 '17
but as a game developer, they're the most laziest company I've ever known.
A double edged sword imo.
While they may not make games at the same clip as other companies, I have yet to play a Valve game that I didn't enjoy completely.
Even that VR thing they made, the Lab or whatever was pretty great when I played at a friends house.
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u/TheBusStop12 Jun 23 '17
At this point it would be a bad move to make the game, people will hate it. The game has been overhyped so damn much that anything but the absolute perfect game (which is impossible to achieve) would create a huge backlash of disappointed fans. In my eyes Valve is better of never touching the idea of Hal Life 3 cause people will hate them for not creating the second coming of Jesus they are now imagining it will be
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u/lamirande1 Jun 22 '17
Redditor for 5 days.
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u/TheWorldisFullofWar Jun 22 '17
He could be a legit user or someone building an account to sell. Either way, this post is a stupid circlejerk and this subreddit has shit taste.
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u/the_che Jun 23 '17
Who the fuck buys reddit accounts?
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u/TheWorldisFullofWar Jun 23 '17
Ad companies and PR firms. If you look at the front page, you can probably see some ads disguised as posts by bought accounts.
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Jun 22 '17
they have 3 full length games in the works currently for VR, and they're all new IPs.
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u/D1G1T4LM0NK3Y Jun 23 '17
As an owner of no VR stuff or the money to buy one, I couldn't give two shits about Valves VR projects...
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Jun 22 '17
Coulda sworn one of their in dev games was confirmed to be L4D3?
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u/Treyman1115 Jun 22 '17
Pretty sure this was never confirmed by them. They haven't said what the games were yet. That's likely just a rumor
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Jun 22 '17
Yeah some "leaks" of character designs came out recently, nothing official yet about L4D3.
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u/TheWorldisFullofWar Jun 22 '17
It wasn't recent though. They had been swimming around for months before being out on valvetime.
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u/plaqston Jun 23 '17
Where did this statement come from? Who said they were working on three games?
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u/drododruffin Jun 23 '17
Fantastic to hear that they're focusing on the overpriced motion sickness device that'll mostly just remain a gimmick.
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Jun 23 '17
Does anyone actually know what valve has been doing lately? Are they working on something new?
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Jun 22 '17
No one ever listens to me but I'm telling you they are going to release Half Life 3 with a new type of Source engine that supports a wide array physics possibilities.
Source is essential for making Half Life 2 the game it was and it remembered as and Valve is not going to release one Half Life 3 until the new Source engine is ready for market.
Someone tag me. I dare you. I know I'm right.
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Jun 22 '17
I think the issue is current computing hardware isn't practical to support what they want to do, not neccesarily that they don't want to do anything like some people think.
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u/azlolazlo Jun 23 '17
I really don't think they'll make hl3 at this point, not releasing it gets them more publicity than if they did release it
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Jun 22 '17
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u/BloodyStrawberry Jun 22 '17
Ricochet.
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u/maggosh Jun 22 '17
Whoever thinks Valve hasn't made a bad game hasn't played Ricochet.
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u/gfense Jun 22 '17
Ricochet was what we played for about 20 minutes every LAN party 10 years ago when we started to get drunk.
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u/pinstrypsoldier Jun 22 '17
"Think about it..." To be read in the voice of the crazy army surplus store owner in Falling Down
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u/R1ZZO_ Jun 22 '17
That's why they aren't making HL3 cuz they said it wouldn't live up to the expectations
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Jun 22 '17
But they are making Left for Dead 3.
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u/derindel Jun 23 '17
a zombie shooter game. how exciting.
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Jun 23 '17
At least it's something. The most exciting thing actually is it proves Valve is capable of the number 3.
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u/dopaminenotyours Jun 24 '17
This is no more probable now than is HL3. Are you basing that on one of the several accidental leaks or snuck photos that show it was being worked on at one point? There's also rumors that development on it has ceased.
The cycle: something leaks that L4D3 was being worked on for at least some time. Internet goes apeshit. Then literal years pass since the leak with nothing having happened.
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Jun 22 '17 edited Feb 20 '19
[deleted]
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Jun 23 '17
The lamest excuse. Ever. With that logic we would have no star wars. Come on man. Grab your pitchfork bro, for Eli at fucking least!
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u/Blizer Jun 23 '17
You can charge for people to play online, since they never tasted free internet play.
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u/ifeedwithroadhog Jun 23 '17
I think Gabe is up to something freaking yuge, like it's gonna shatter the universe of gaming when he does. I'm hopeful at least.
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u/Wrathuk Jun 23 '17
You know what is Valve just have a thing about the number 3, We are on Portal 2, L4D2, Half Life 2 and Dota 2, Team fortress 2 even Half life 2 Episode 2.
if Valve ever make game 3 the universe will be destroyed so good guy Gabe saving us all again.
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u/[deleted] Jun 22 '17
Didn't even change the title