Krylock said:
When was the last time Valve [http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/meanwhile.jpg] announced a completely new series? L4D...how long ago was it?
Now they just announced Portal 2...or should I say Portal: More of the Same."
I mean, at least they could have it on a new engine, but NO!
They have used the same engine for an entire decade.
WOW!
Not to mention they have completely forgotten their best franchise! Hey guys! Remember Dr. Freeman! You know, the whole of Earth and stuff!
There should have been no "episodes" in the first place for HL2, and they should have all come out in the same year considering around five minutes were put into each section.
They are the perfect example of a lazy company, stop using the nasty Source engine, and get their engineers to make something that doesn't have Gamecube graphics.
I give up. I can't be pacified with TF2 updates forever. If Valve doesn't announce Episode 3, or HL3 running on a new engine soon I'm just done with them as a developer.
Actually I think they were done with Ep. 3 a long time ago, Gabe just ate it.
What do you think about the company?
Oh boy, here we go. Okay, cool your jets for a bit there buddy. While Valve is infamous for their games and their release dates, that doesn't mean that they've completely forgotten about their fan base. Plus with their newest jump to the playstation they hope to expand their horizons. Also with current times the way they are, believe it or not, even game publishers are having to make budget cuts. So in a time like this, Valve, as well as all other companies out there, are going to stick to their money makers until they can receive enough funding to hire new people to bring in ideas.
Plus look at it this way, not ALL new ideas are game worthy or will make people want to buy them. Taking a step back from Valve how many big-name companies can you think of recently release a completely never before thought of game, and makes people do a double take when they saw who published it? Not a very big list right? Most of these new games that are slowly becoming noticed are the "Indie games". *For more on this topic please view the following video:
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/extra-credits/1923-Innovation
I'm not really one to take a side on this matter, but I do think you're being a bit unreasonable. Video games, no matter how long or short, take a while to make. A decent game that can provide about 20-30 hours of gameplay will roughly take a development team at least a year to make because of all that's involved. You've got the:
1. Brainstorming of ideas
2. The writing of the story
3. The writing of the script
4. The casting of voice actors
5. The recording of all of the dialogue and sounds within the game
6. Writing the score for the game
7. The development of the characters
8. The development of the environments
9. The animations that the characters can do
10. The coding of these elements
11. The rendering
12. The polishing
13. The marketing
14. The testing
15. The revisions to fix the bugs the testers discovered
16. The re-testing
17. The Distribution
This is a lot of work that needs to be done, and that doesn't include screw-ups or computer freezes (Because game companies are not exempt from those). Extra things such as coding for different systems is also something to take into account that takes time.
Also for your comment about Valve using the same engine for a decade...do you realize how far gaming has come since the year 2000? We were just emerging from the era of 16- to 32-bit consoles where characters could only express a handful of expressions, and hands were still big colorful blocks. And now look at our games. In ten years' time we've gone from this:
to this:
Plus your assumption is a bit off, Valve's Source Engine is only six years old. It debuted in June of 2004, after using the Quake engine for about 8 years. So you might have gotten the Source engine mixed up with Steam which is a digital distribution software that has been in existence since 1998.
All in all, as far as industry standards go, Valve is doing pretty good. They have a strong fan-base, they make patches and improvements to their online community games, they offer downloads of current, indie, and yester-year games for bargain prices, and they make attempts to keep their fans happy by developing new installments of games that made a big splash in their history (as well as small side stories to current popular games such as the weekly mods for Left for Dead 2. I believe they are called Mutations). Sure Half-Life episode 3 has been in development for a good while, but when you really consider all that they've done in the long run, they are no different from Bungie's Halo franchise, Nintendo's various franchises with staple games series as the Legend of Zelda, and Mario, Capcom's Devil May Cry, Street Fighter, Mega Man and Resident Evil franchises and the struggling Sega with its Sonic series. So basically, you can't fault one company for something that all big-name companies are doing in order to make a profit from our nostalgia.
). The source engine is one of the smoothest running engines I've ever seen, even on older hardware. It is one of the most stable, and one of the easiest to Mod. Valve is always upgrading the engine so it looks a little bit nicer each iteration, and if you think source has "gamecube graphics" go friggin' play a source game. I might agree with TF2 looking like a gamecube, but that's the art style... so...
