Valve's The Gaben Reddit AMA Ask Me Anything Update
Gabe Newell's AYN (Answer You Nothing) as elliptical as Hideo Kojima and Yoda
Man eats own hat on webternetz, hell freezes over and not even the gods believed Gabe Newell would be on an AMA Reddit session again - especially so close to rumour they'd be no Half-Life 3. Or 3 anything. Maybe Valve should just skip to 4?
As you should know by now, every game in Valve's portfolio only goes up to the number "2". The first "3" should've been appended to Half-Life over a decade ago. In the intervening years, Valve has released great new franchises with Left 4 Dead, Portal, Team Fortress and DOTA all waiting for that enigmatic three to hit any title.
The Gaben gets this big time. One of the reasons he held the Reddit AMA was to help raise money for a pediatric cardiology unit at a Children's Hospital through his love of racing Porsches in the GT America SportsCar Championship. Gaben said:
"When they asked me what number I wanted for the car I asked for "3" and they said "nope." Irony."
The Gaben also gave a straight "Yes" on the Marvel style shared multiverse for forthcoming Half-Life and Portal films after the geeks in love session he had with JJ at Dice 2013. Could it be us gamers finally lift the curse of game-to-movie tie-ins after Assasins Creed and Warcraft bombed. In 23 years and 41 movies, not one game to movie has scored over 50 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes. Ok, that's thanks mainly to schlock auteur Uwe Boll making most of them. But even Adam Sandler films are higher rated. Even Adam bloody Sandler. PRIMAL SCREAM: "ARRGGGHH!!."
Geeks in love: JJ Abrams and Gabe Newell dated at Dice 2013.
The Gaben confirmed it is working on a single player campaign and a native VR game. But after dissing rumours there'd be no Half-Life 3 after hinting you shouldn't believe everything you read on the internet, The Gaben went full Yoda and Kojima on his answers:
"There’s no information in my response about what we’ll do in the future. It’s simply easier for me to be a fan of things that in which I was less directive. “If you are involved in a game, everything ends up being a set of trade-offs. Anything in a game is a sacrifice of things not in the game. I just feel those more personally about Half-Life for a bunch of reasons.”
Even more wilfully obscure was his answer on Left 4 Dead:
“Products are usually the result of an intersection of technology that we think has traction, a group of people who want to work on that, and one of the game properties that feels like a natural playground for that set of technology and design challenges. When we decided we needed to work on markets, free to play, and user generated content, Team Fortress seemed like the right place to do that. That work ended up informing everything we did in the multiplayer space. Left 4 Dead is a good place for creating shared narratives."
Simultaneously a yes, no and maybe, possibly ripping a hole in the space time continuum that is the internet. Make of that what you will.