Are we gamers our own worst enemy?

[hanselthecaretaker]

Example -

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/new...Will-Probably-Never-Happen-Says-Valve-Insider

Basically, it won't happen because expectations are too high to bother trying, so they just instead try to drown out even entertaining the prospect. I think also resting on the laurels of Steam is a big part of it too, but oh well.

It does seem like there's a big "impossible to please" factor at play though, and there are more than enough examples of it every year in not only this industry but practically every other entertainment medium as well. Having said that, do you think that trying and failing is still better than not trying at all? We all know you can't please everyone, but at least it's better to risk disappointing a few than, well, everyone.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Valve can rationalize it anyway they want it, but Half-Life 3 doesn't exist because they didn't make it.

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

It doesn't help that Half Life 2 was a good story bolted onto the most generic shooter I've played in ages.

*gasps from the crowd*

No, really, I'm serious!

The gunplay was bog standard outside of some occasional gravity gun shenanigans, It was constantly interrupted by annoying physics puzzles where you're unable to proceed until you find all the bricks/barrels of air/refrigerators to make a ramp work, the boat chase segment and highway from hell segments went on for WAY too long and weren't all that fun, etc.

Yeah, Ravenholm was fun. Trying to maintain your ammo supplies by using traps and tons of gravity gun shenanigans was awesome, and the place had a lot of good ambiance.

But everything else just left me feeling "meh".

So I highly doubt that 3 would have turned out all that great. :s

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

Pretty sure power outages are the Gamer's worst enemy. Have many casualties has a sudden outage caused among our brothers and sisters? Too many...too many...

2nd worst is clearly giant spiders. Bastards are always eating my co-op partners.

3rd is game media/journalism. People get too riled up and angry and lash out for no reason at meaningless bullshit, while clickbate writers laugh all the way to the Gaming expo to get free room/board and food and games and merch.

 

[DrownedAmmet]

Don't blame people for having standards, blame Valve for being pussies. Half-Life 1 is one of the best damn games of all time, Half-Life 2 was a disappointment but revolutionary, it's a crying shame that they aren't making a third one

It would be like if the Beatles stopped making music after their second album and opened a record store

 

[Xprimentyl]

Either way one sees, it I can?t say you?re wrong. I don?t blame Valve for not wanting to even try to meet the lofty expectations gamers have built up for a Half-Life 3 in their minds, but I can hold them accountable for stringing gamers along and taking this long to come to such a conclusion. I don?t blame gamers for wanting a sequel to a much-beloved and classic title, I can hold them accountable as invariably hard-to-please whiners for whom nothing except exactly what they each individually expect is ever good enough.

It?s complicated. Half-Life 2 is THIRTEEN, years old. it?s legacy spans three console generations. As a developer, where do you even pick up to start to meet expectations that have been through so many ringers? You can?t do more of the same because, character depth and level design aside, Half-Life 2 has aged poorly mechanically; all of the physics stuff that was groundbreaking and a huge selling point a decade and a third ago are old hat and commonplace now. The short answer is: ?if you seriously wanted to capitalize, you should have started a decade ago.?

I wonder if gamers who claim to want HL3 have even stopped to think what they?d expect from one? ?Where?s Half-Life 3? is basically autonomic phrase spewed from the mouth of any gamer 27 years old and up, but the relevance? I don?t think most have a clue what they want, and far be it from a developer to invest the millions upon MILLIONS it?d take to assume and deliver something that will ultimately be torn to shreds for everything it?s ?not? and ?was supposed to be after all this time.? Conversely, I?m sure the folks at Valve are savvy enough to have come to the conclusion they couldn?t deliver another lightning in a bottle LONG ago, and have been slowly but surely stepping away from their solid house of cards and its blind devotees on the empty promise that a third story (both ?tale? and ?level of a building?, #AnalogyWin) are coming.

The cake IS a lie, arrows to the knee can indeed end careers and Half-Life 3 is never coming out; no shit.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

Don't blame people for having standards, blame Valve for being pussies. Half-Life 1 is one of the best damn games of all time, Half-Life 2 was a disappointment but revolutionary, it's a crying shame that they aren't making a third one

It would be like if the Beatles stopped making music after their second album and opened a record store

Ha! You should send that to their twitter or something.

Pretty sure power outages are the Gamer's worst enemy. Have many casualties has a sudden outage caused among our brothers and sisters? Too many...too many...

2nd worst is clearly giant spiders. Bastards are always eating my co-op partners.

3rd is game media/journalism. People get too riled up and angry and lash out for no reason at meaningless bullshit, while clickbate writers laugh all the way to the Gaming expo to get free room/board and food and games and merch.

I like the 2nd worst! The spider in Demon's Souls was one of my favorites, and I actually felt bad for dispatching it. Oh, those horrible cries of agony shrieking from its mouth...just tears me up!!

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

SNIP

I'm getting my newspaper

 

[Fox12]

Valve built those expectations themselves. They ended their story on multiple cliff hangers, and promised they were working on a sequel they have no interest in continuing. And like a kid that keeps forgetting their homework, they'd rather take a zero then ask the teacher if they can turn it in late for partial credit.

It would be like George Lucas quitting Star Wars after empire strikes back. At some point Valve has to take personal responsibility.

 

[KissingSunlight]

Half-Life 2 is not the best game in the Orange Box. It was Portal.

In the case of Half-Life 3, it was just the manner of Valve being willing to make the game. After 13 years, it's clear that they don't want to. I am OK with that. I do think gamers do have a right to complain about getting strung along by teases by Valve that they will make that game.

In general, gamers are consumers and fans. Sometimes, it's a good idea to give them what they want. Other times, it's better to give them what they didn't know that they wanted. Like with any form of entertainment, sometimes gamers financially support games that stunt the medium progress. So, the companies consistently put out games that doesn't improve on growing the medium. I think we are at one of those moment in the cycle. Videogame and console makers are at a loss of how to improve the genre, or what gamers want from them. I have seen this before. Sooner or later, someone will come up with a solid innovation that will renew interest in gaming.

 

[WhiteFangofWhoa]

How dare we have high expectations of a game over a decade in development, produced by one of the most acclaimed producers in the business! See also: Duke Nukem Forever, except remove the 'most acclaimed producer' part.

If this was actually an obstacle to releasing the game, you know what could have been done? Just announce that you're not making it. Then if you ever actually did make enough of a game to make some previews, you'd give your customers quite a welcome surprise to be sure.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

HYPE is something I never understood. Just what do you think whatever hyped game is going to that you've never experienced before? Very very few games revolutionize anything, just being good/great at established norms is perfectly fine and can serve to be great games. One thing that would make any game great is just having good gameplay with *gasp* actual good writing. What can Half-Life 3 (or any FPS) do that will blow you away? It's just like with every other hyped game, what do you even see that makes you think a game will have such greatness never before seen? I'll list a few examples of hyped games:

-Watch Dogs: There were several fully demoed missions from the game before launch. Watch Dogs was exactly the game I expected it to based on what was demoed. It was basically a 3rd-person FarCry set in a city with hacking, and that's exactly what Ubisoft showed. There was some minor disappointments (I though the hacking could use more variety) and some minor surprises like the shooting and controls were outstanding for an open world TPS. Of course, there was the graphics downgrade but so what? Would anyone have thought the game was that amazing if it had those initial graphics but the same gameplay?

-No Man's Sky: How the fuck did anyone think this was going to be the most amazing game ever? I can understand space enthusists being all over it. It was basically a niche exploration game at best (even if it had delivered). How much of the gamer population really digs just exploring? Yeah, it's cool and all to come upon a planet with basically large dinosaurs (which isn't in the game I realize). But there's nothing really to actually do, and nothing in the gameplay videos were actually doing stuff. How long will that hold the average gamer's interest really? Those moments shown were great but there's only going to be so many of those moments and being a huge galaxy and randomly generated, how much uninteresting time and gameplay will be between each of those great moments? No Man's Sky always sorta felt like it would be an extremely stretched out version of Journey in space.

-Destiny & The Division: There were betas for these games!!! What the fuck did you think these games were going to be? I was done with both of these games an hour into both betas.

It just seems like the average gamer doesn't know what they want. Watch Dogs gave you exactly what was shown, you should've known if you wanted that. Even if No Man's Sky delivered everything that was shown, how many people would actually liked that type of game to begin with?

 

[ZeD [taken 0]]

People are way overplaying the expectations for it.

The game doesn't have to revolutionise shit. It just has to be a top notch quality game, and that's something Valve is good at.

Which is also why I'm confident the game will come out. Just gotta get them VR shenanigans rolling first.

 

[CaitSeith]

The same thing Square Enix kept saying for years about not wanting to make a Final Fantasy VII remake because it wouldn't live up to fans expectations...

Just saying.

 

[Hawki]

Short answer, "yes, kind of", but Half-Life 3 isn't an example you should use. Even if people didn't often act like entitled brats and take to the rooftops to declare their grieviances, and launch campaigns like "take back Mass Effect!," Half-Life 3 would still be vapourware.

 

[Weaver]

Then can we just get like a fucking webcomic or animation or something finishing the bloody story? I just want to know what happened to Eli.

 

[Hawki]

I just want to know what happened to Eli.

Um, isn't he dead? Like, really dead? Like, his story ended thanks to be murdered in front of your very eyes dead?

 

[JamesStone]

Example -

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/new...Will-Probably-Never-Happen-Says-Valve-Insider

Basically, it won't happen because expectations are too high to bother trying, so they just instead try to drown out even entertaining the prospect. I think also resting on the laurels of Steam is a big part of it too, but oh well.

It does seem like there's a big "impossible to please" factor at play though, and there are more than enough examples of it every year in not only this industry but practically every other entertainment medium as well. Having said that, do you think that trying and failing is still better than not trying at all? We all know you can't please everyone, but at least it's better to risk disappointing a few than, well, everyone.

The exponential growth of expectation given time passed isn't in any way, shape or form exclusive to video games. Based on your argument your question is basically "are we humans our own worst enemies?".

Half-Life 3 isn't coming out more likely than not for financial interests. A big disappointment damages the brand and therefore its value far more than nothing, so until (and if, big one) they have the certainty they can make an industry-revolutionizing game like Half Life 1 and 2 were, they're gonna stay quiet and hope the wave goes by quietly.


My bet for Half Life 3's release will be VR. Valve has invested somewhat in VR and I wouldn't be surprised they'd try to make Half Life 3 their flagship for using the hardware for "hardcore gaming" or whatever. It's the only way I imagine Half Life 3 will see the light of day.

 

[DOOM GUY]

I've accepted that they're probably not going to be making Half-Life 3... at least not until they start losing profits... but it's never been a big deal to me anyway. I mean, Half-Life is pretty damn top-tier, one of the best FPS games of all time, but even Half-Life 2 didn't live up to that.

But no, I don't think gamers are their own worst enemy, having standards is not a bad thing!