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Comment by bitwize | Hacker News Reader

Valve playtests the shit out of their games. A lot of Portal's theming is based on their extensive testing culture and the ways they've developed to manipulate the player through testing. For example, the Weighted Companion Cube came about because they wanted a level where you solve puzzles while carrying an object. But the playtesters kept leaving the damn object behind. So Valve's solution was to tell them it was a "character" they had to care for.

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And then players wouldn't leave it behind and tried to drag the cube with them for the entire rest of the game. So they gave the Companion Cube a dramatic death scene at the end of the level.

Reminds me of the achievement for carrying a gnome through Half Life 2 Episode 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_qF3onDNCo

Maybe this used to be true (I am not making a claim one way or the other) but it seems unlikely they would have that approach and end up with their latest offering - Artifact. I realize not every game is going to be a hit but that game doesn't seem to be liked by just about anybody.

It’s not a game that I, a long time Valve fan would have any interest in, but I’ve been told by friends who are into card games that the actual game was fun, it was the awful pricing that killed it.

I played Artifact, it was fun until it died, but a very tough set of lessons for Valve to swallow:

1) Their reputation really has been damaged over no HL3/Dota 2 money grabs.

2) That they can't just publish anything onto Steam anymore with little to no upfront communication.

3) Not all monetisation models are viable - especially with the recent loot-box fiascos. If they wanted a card economy the game should've been free with random cards, with the option to purchase cards to have your own collection.

The past few months they've definitely started to change over the response to Artifact. Dota Underlords was shipped in only 5 months, so it just shows what they're capable of with a little pressure.

It's a game that is very fun for people who are already invested in card games. The pricing was a big issue, but another one was that the game just isn't that fun for more casual players. It's a game that is very sensitive to misplays, has much more visible RNG than other card games (but I'd argue not much more RNG total) and a lot of the game's play patterns push you into lines where the right play is to just do nothing.

Artifact is a case study in how user testing alone goes wrong.

They did extensively test Artifact but user testing will get you stuck in local maxima. You still need someone with a good wholistic vision to make a great product.

I heard they had a lot of feedback along the lines of "I really like this game, but I'm not sure if other people will" (this from a friend who is friends with one of the artifact devs, so take it with a healthy dose of salt).

>wholistic

Holistic?

I support wholistic as an alternate spelling of holistic. You're actually likely to come to a good idea of what it means even if you've had no exposure to real word before.

Eggcorns are neat.

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/06/01/411231029...

They are both equally correct terms, with the same meaning.

D'oh. Count this in the things I've learned and then forgot.[1]

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15313367

I'm not sure, by default I parse that as 'who' not 'whole' and that takes me down a very misleading path.

Teams changed too. Companies try to develop identities and cultures but it's often just the sum of its people.

Valve also has a unique decentralized structure where teams work independently on games, as has been noted many times before with their handbook (not sure how accurate that is today). So it's possible you're just seeing the results of a completely different team.

Reminds me of what CroTeam did with The Talos Principle. They started with puzzles and wrote a story and a world. They had human players for testing in addition to an automated bot, and also many variants of the puzzles have been tried.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VYnkVKpvBZc

Brings TDD to another level!

I wonder how long they are going to play test half life 3? Infiniti?

They are working on Half-Life VR[0].

Also, there's a community-made HL3[1] in the works!

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OijNv8mFcIc

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIwjZDUbNJc

If the last Half-Life fan game is anything to go by, don't get too excited about that.

Which one was that?

BlackMesa (a fan remake of Half-Life 1 on a modern engine) is outstanding.

He's on about Hunt Down The Freeman, which was awful. Nay, not fit for purpose.

They also employed YouTubers as actors which made the game bizarre to play since they were the type you were likely to know if you play games.

I've always assumed BlackMesa was made by Valve for some reason, that's cool. But yes, as someone else said, I was referring to Hunt Down the Freeman. At least a couple of the Youtubers involved made videos about their experiences and how poorly the project was managed.

Project Borealis also looks promising!

Half Life Echoes and Black Mesa are spectacular fan made HL games. HDTF was stupid, though.

As far as I understand, Valve stopped HL3 development a long time ago.

One of the writers posted a script for HL3 which made it pretty clear that the project was dead.

https://twitter.com/marc_laidlaw/status/900902074954661888?s...

Ther are efforts underway to turn that script into a game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIwjZDUbNJc

The release of that script was really personal for me having grown up on Half Life and following many of the theories about the nature of g-man and the crossover between portal and Half Life with the Borealis ship being the primary setting of the script.

It was released after Marc Laidlaw (writer of Half Life 1 and 2) had resigned due to the constant postponing of Half Life 3 and the erosion of Valve's original values as a company.

It was really sad, but also provided some a much needed conclusion. I could finally say "it's over, half life 3 isn't coming". And even if it does eventually get released it won't be made under the vision of its original spectacular writer.

Valve is all about the benjamins now and has been for a long time. They are 100% business model first, game second. I wouldn't be surprised if they no longer had the talent to make HL3.

Do you have a source for more of these stories?

Portal 1 and 2 have amazing in-game developer commentary modes. Would highly recommend a replay with the commentary enabled to anyone interested in game design at all.

Can't watch with sound at the moment to confirm it's a good video, but this comes up in youtube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0uVg9nuaS0

I wish more games had dev commentary like this. It's neat to peek into the minds of the developers, and can give good informal lessons on designing games and levels.

Check Johnatan Blow videos on You Tube

Team Fortress 2 as well.

I don't know where the parent got their info, but I learned this through the original Portal's in-game "developer commentary" system. If you turn on the dev commentary in Portal they talk about this fact during that level.

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