Battenberg said:
Well aside from anything else I didn't say that the people who don't care are the same people who wouldn't feel a 10 year wait for the sequel would be justified. I also chose the word justified quite carefully, as opposed to talking about what people expect. When Drive Club was delayed people didn't EXPECT any more from it because of this delay. There was (and still is), however an increased need for the developers to produce something that JUSTIFIES or this extra wait. The same can be applied to HL3.
I'm confused as to why Valve must "justify" a seven year wait time on the next installment.
We know next to nothing on what to expect out of the project. In fact, all we do know is that it exists and is in active development to some degree.
It's a media product. A sequel to one, in fact. It's existence, or rather it's development time, doesn't need any justification to anyone but those producing and funding it.
Consumers have the right to factor in that wait when judging the end product, but it's not really something that needs justifying.
Aside from all these semantics I think your argument is flawed. Why can't someone experience both ambivalence and high expectations in relation to one event or object? Not necessarily at the same time but it could be viewed as an if-then-else statement. Currently HL3 doesn't exist and may never exist therefore you cannot have expectations of it in the same way that you cannot have expectations of, for example, aliens. All you can do is speculate about the possibilities of what could be. Should HL3 become a reality then you can expect something of it (or of those creating it if you want to get technical) which allows it succeed or fail in meeting those expectations.
Except it isn't being stated as such.
People are qualifying it as being both anticipated and not anticipated, cared for and not cared for.
When one says, "No one cares about it anymore", while simultaneously saying, "It will never live up to expectations." they are creating state of contradiction. It isn't some 'if-then-else' scenario.
Speculation requires some level of care, some level of investment. If one truly didn't care about a thing, notably a media product, there'd be no reason to speculate on it. Even if one's only concern of a product is speculating on, say, how it will affect it's respective industry, that still implies some degree of investment.
"If Half Life 3 is released I will have exceptionally high expectations of it else I will not concern myself with the ongoing speculation of whether or not it will ever exist"
Of course saying all that I think in the case of a lot of the posts you're referring to people are simply failing to communicate that they're fed up with all the hype, media attention, and discussion that a non-existent game is getting and would rather talk about something else. In fact this is pretty much how I feel about the whole situation. I would like a new Half Life and I would be pleased to see it actually happen however after 10 years of saying the same things over and over and obsessing over what pointlessly small details might mean and a bunch of fakeout announcements/ leaks I don't have much interest in partaking in, or even seeing, any more baseless speculation on the subject. Case in point if this thread title had contained the words "Half Life 3" I likely wouldn't have bothered clicking on the link to read it (and you wouldn't have had to put up with my ramblings).
Fake outs? I'll grant most of the hype surrounding the game has been the result of the gaming media and the community, but the info leaks that have come out of Valve showing hints at Half-Life 3's development were not planned. They literally were unintentional leaks.
Look, I think you and I are actually far more in agreement than either of us realizations. While I too would love to see another entry in the series, I'm not waiting on bated breath for it's release; even though I know it
is in development. This doesn't mean I don't care. On the contrary. It just means I'm not holding any specific expectations.
And that was the crux of my argument. That one can't say they don't care while stating they have expectations.
Oh, and by the way, as a fellow occasional rambler, rambling doesn't bother me in the least. So please, ramble on.
