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Comment by randombytes6869 | Hacker News Reader

I heard lack of effective management structure was a far worse consequence of Valve's unusual structure. Heard influence became based on connections and favors, not good results or ideas. Heard many good projects died, even ones that would make sense to a third grader (HL3 L4D3). Hearsay but its all over internet if you're curious

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> Heard many good projects died

Part of me will never fully forgive them for just letting Half-Life 2: Episode 3 die, never officially cancelling it (even to this day), and refusing to communicate with their fans about it.

People meme about HL3, but most of us Half-Life fans just wanted Episode 3. Episode 2 ends on the most heartbreaking cliffhanger, and we just wanted some sort of conclusion to that story.

I was one of these people until I played Half-Life: Alyx. They've earned back some of the trust that was previously squandered.

I've been playing it as well, but I'm not too far in. It hasn't grabbed me much yet. Part of that might just be that 2020 has me in a bad headspace, so it's hard to enjoy things as much.

Felt just like you a few chapters back (I'm on 6th now). But now I wish it doesn't end too soon.

Could you share a few spoiler-free thoughts about HL:A as a dedicated series fan?

I'm in the same boat. Loved HL1, then HL2 even more, it's one of the very rare games I regard as perfect. Then both Episode 1 and Episode 2 surpassed my expectations, and I was very disappointed with Valve's refusal to say anything at all for years. The HL:A announcement took me by surprise, as I had given up on more HL.

Do you find HL:A to be a good Half-Life game first and foremost? Do you feel it has the top-notch environmental storytelling and attention to detail that the series is known for? Does it make good use of VR's potential?

I'm considering upgrading my PC this year, largely for HL:A and Cyberpunk 2077. The last time I tried VR was with the Oculus Rift in 2016, and it felt underwhelming to me. Very cool for an evening, but then the novelty wore off and the actual gaming felt less satisfying than traditional non-VR.

> Does it make good use of VR's potential?

Of the handful of games I've played in VR, Alyx by far feels the most like I am physically present and able to interact with the world. The one time I've ever been tricked by the illusion was when I bent down to look under furniture in a room, and then I tried to push on said furniture to help me stand back up, oops.

Like other Half-Life games it has great physics. You can pick up a marker and write on a pane of glass; you can shake a bottle and see the liquid inside slosh around. The gravity gun concept returns and it is as much fun in VR as when you first picked it up in HL2.

I won't go too much into VR-centric game mechanics for spoiler reasons, but I'm impressed with how creative they got with hand tracking. As one example, reloading is combat is tense because I have to actually go through the motions of getting out a new clip, ejecting the spent one, chambering a round, etc. while a zombie lumbers toward me.

The other comment did a great job of explaining HL:A specifically, but I'll answer a few other parts of your comment.

> Do you find HL:A to be a good Half-Life game first and foremost

Absolutely, it's raw HL. The game itself is in the 12 hour range, which is very much in the HL1/HL2 range. It does feel a bit shorter (narratively), but it still is full of content switching between puzzles, combat and story telling.

> Do you feel it has the top-notch environmental storytelling and attention to detail that the series is known for?

Absolutely. It is a bit different, since this is a VR game, but if anything I would say it's even stronger here. The focus is different to fit the controls, but there are truly "WOW" moments. I still remember having my mind blown in HL2 when the huge tower falls as you ride the boat. This game similarly amazes, but in an even more immersive way.

> The last time I tried VR was with the Oculus Rift in 2016, and it felt underwhelming to me

As someone who has had the original Oculus prototype, then the HTC Vive, then the Valve Index. I will say that each iteration made an order of magnitude difference in almost every metric: immersion, comfort, motion sickness, etc. With the latest setup, I would easily spend 3-4 hours straight in Alyx, until the point where my legs started hurting (before my face/stomach, which was the case before).

> I regard as perfect

Unfortunately, I think this is why it ultimately took them so long. It was truly hard to follow up all those great games, and they wanted something they could really be happy with. HL:A does mostly deliver that, though partly sidestep the issue by switching to a different medium, where the standards of a perfect game have not yet been created.

At the end of the day, it does very much feel like a HL game, to a veteran who has played their games over and over.

> Do you find HL:A to be a good Half-Life game first and foremost? Do you feel it has the top-notch environmental storytelling and attention to detail that the series is known for? Does it make good use of VR's potential?

Yes, 100%. It's the best VR game I've played and I own ~30. Its the only VR game I've played for more than ~1.5 hours straight (I finished Alyx in 2 4 hour sessions and 1 3 hour session).

It's not a novelty. There's segments in the game (particularly at the end) that are incredibly engrossing as a result of VR.

From my estimations they could not release Episode 3 as public hype eclipsed anything any game studio could produce. The anticipation became too strong as people expect nothing less than perfection. They used Alyx to re-anchor expectations

Edit: I believe a similar phenomenon occurred with Disney's Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, objectively some mistakes were made, but the sheer outcry from fans is an order of magnitude stronger than the mistakes made, imo this is caused from the mismatch of the idea of what Star Wars can be/means to you versus what you can concretely produce (with technical and cultural constraints)

Have you tried HL:Alyx, you might want to.

EDIT: just saw your reply below. I hope you get through it. It is GOTY for me.

I don’t understand why they released a VR game. Seriously limiting their market. I’m not going to spend hundreds and hundreds just to play one game.

Probably because they don't need the money and felt the game would be better as a VR game.

I had thought the same, until I actually played it, and then it made complete sense. It's hard to express how difficult it would have been to have designed a non-VR counterpart with it until you're in the game experiencing it -- the pacing, the environments, the Combine, etc. I feel it's completely different than any Half-Life game, or FPS game that I've played, but familiar at the same time.

As far why they did a VR game at all: I suppose they like to test the waters.

They are the sellers of a VR headset, and want to increase the odds of that market taking off by adding a great game to it. Business decision wasn’t based around the game’s ability to sell well, but it’s ability to sell headsets. While this one game isn’t going to get me to buy a Vr headset, enough games at this level could, and there 100% are people who bought the headset just to play Alyx.

Which isn’t to say that Alyx could have been made as a non-VR game, from what I know VR is completely integral to the experience. But in choosing to make a different game that could have sold gangbusters vs making this game to support their hardware, they chose the latter.

Edit: Oh also they are so loaded they can do whatever they want basically and as a private company have no authority to answer to that can force them to pursue profit. I get the feeling Gaben is entirely happy with his current level of ludicrous net worth and values seeing a big change in the landscape of gaming in his lifetime over making more money. (It’s also possible that attempting to make new markets for Valve to take a 30% cut of is the best long term strategy to make money regardless)

This is my own analysis, as a Valve veteran for 20 years and someone who has followed every twist and turns. People will say they made this game to sell VR headsets, but from my vantage point, it's the opposite. They actually created VR mostly for Half-Life.

In one part, HL games were always a place for innovation and pushing the gaming boundary forward. It may have just been fun games to you, but HL1 defined storytelling in FPS games, and HL2 defined physics puzzles and grand landscapes. Each game was better than the previous and eventually they got stuck no being able to make something they were truly happy with.

Valve has always been more satisfied creating something new than more of the same. They experimented with a lot in the past decade. They tried making a horror game with biometric sensors, which did not work but lead to the Steam Controller. They tried a lot more things but VR finally fit the bit. It allowed them to partly sidestep the "perfect game" issue, by switching into a new area that wasn't yet explored and allowed for innovation again.

So yes, they made a VR game because they are once again able to push gaming forward and create a truly unique game, which is the only way they will be satisfied enough to release a game.

People talk a lot of shit about Valve without having a clue, a consequence of their secrecy and their position as a premier game developer. I wouldn't trust anything that is said about Valve that didn't come from someone who has worked there.

Tyler McVicker/Valve "News" Network is a major component of this. His interviews with Valve are great. His speculation is trash.

Wasn’t his Alyx speculation on point?

To be fair every broken clock will be right twice a day. He throws out a lot of stuff, so of course some will be right sometimes.

a lot of these comments about valve stem from the somewhat infamous tweets of a former valve dev, though

here's the first link i found https://www.pcgamer.com/ex-valve-employee-describes-ruthless...

Yea but thats still ONE guy who might be bitter for one reason or another. It's hard to get an objective look at Valve like this.

What we get is utterly filtered.

He has been getting better recently. But he absolutely still needs to realize how much weight his words have.

hL3 and L4D3 make no sense anymore commercially. Valve is a lot more profitable as a market and store than as a developer.

Making money makes no sense commercially because you're already making more money?

So let's say you make 10 bazillions dollars per day just by running your store, and releasing a new game that takes a lot of efforts and 3 years of work would only result in 0.001 bazillion dollar in 3 years of sales, does it make sense to sweat making games anymore? The maths speak for themselves.

Let's say you make 10 bazillion dollars per day running your store, then you pay someone else 0.0001 bazillion dollars to make 0.001 bazillion dollars in 3 years.

The math does speak for itself.

1. Steam became a success because of the games Valve developed.

2. Epic created Fortnite, which you likely know is a popular release. That game is leading to the Epic store getting off the ground and gaining traction. This is causing a rather large loss in revenue for Valve.

That's why games are important. If you control the top games, you control the users, and you control the platform.

Probably a large loss for epic too with how much they give away to con people into their terrible service.

Epic Store is light years behind Steam. It is very barebones and primitive. In Steam when you go to the games in your library you see a lot of content, you see your DLCS, achievements, community content, etc. In Epic Store you don't even have a page for each game in your library, just a small cover to launch the game. Steam has Play on TV, Play on phone/table and Remote Play together which are great features. Also Epic catalog is so much smaller than Steam's.

Also, it is interesting to have some context of Epic Games. I remember when it was Epic MegaGames and they released the original Unreal games, THAT was the hit that defined the company as they also started to license their Unreal Engine (which they still do today).

Long story short, around 2012 the massive chinese giant Tencent acquired a big portion of Epic Games (40%) that allows Tencent to nominate directors, and the company shifted towards GaaS (Game as a Service). Many long time Epic Game employees left the company around that time.

Epic Games used one of their games, Fortnite: Save the World, to develop Fortnite Battle Royale, which was a huge success.

It's very important to note that Fortnite's biggest competitor, PlayerUnkown's Battlegrounds (PUBG), is owned and developed by Tencent.

Also note that Tencent owns 100% of Riot Games, as well as having various stakes at different gaming studios.

All no doubt very good points, but they also don't meaningfully matter. The cold fact is that Epic is doing way better than most people want it to, regardless of how bad it is or how shady it's investors are.

Eh, you only need strong games to get your platform started. As you pointed out, HL/CS helped really kick starts Steam, and similarly Fortnite helped kickstarts Epic. But once your store picks up, I don't think game exclusives are as necessary as you imply to keep it going. Do you think all Steam games are just going to leave if Valve never makes a game ever again?

> Steam became a success because of the games Valve developed.

So what? That was years ago, and that says nothing about the present state of affairs.

> This is causing a rather large loss in revenue for Valve.

No it isn't, because you are missing the fact that the gaming market is not a zero-sum game, fix-cake that you can only get a share of. It's constantly growing, and new games create new public the whole time.

> So what? That was years ago, and that says nothing about the present state of affairs.

You overlooked my second point, about Fortnite leading to the Epic store gaining traction, which is the present state of affairs. Also look at EA Games launches their store in the past by using their AAA games as leverage. All these gaming stores and trying to use games as a way to get their foot in the door, so I think you're wrong by saying it's no longer a valid approach. In fact, it's the only approach that seems to work.

> No it isn't, because you are missing the fact that the gaming market is not a zero-sum game, fix-cake that you can only get a share of. It's constantly growing, and new games create new public the whole time.

It's very much a zero-sum situation when these stores sell the majority of the same games. When you spend your $60 buying Grand Theft Auto on the Epic store, that's a $60 loss for Steam, because you're not going to buy the game twice. When one store wins your sale, the other loses it.

> influence became based on connections and favors

Just like every other corporation, in other words.

No, it's worse at flat management companies like Valve. Since you don't have anyone in charge, and everybody works on what they want, there is no objective measure of whether or not you're doing well. Everything comes down to politics, from bonuses, to who gets laid off during downsizing, being very good at your job isn't enough. That's how it's been at the flat management company I worked at, and how it seems everyone who's worked at one describes it.

Yeah, I think the complaint was that Valve is/was theoretically flat, in that people could self-manage, but in practice, it had an implicit hierarchy that was obscured by the officially "flat" structure (which, let's be honest, was always kind of a lie, because I guarantee you there's someone there who can fire other people, which means it's not actually flat). And an implicit hierarchy means that there's no way to say "I had these goals and objectively achieved them"; you aren't making your case to a defined supervisor, you're making a case to the informal supervisor. That'll almost always wind up with favoritism without any potential escape.

Some of these problems exist in any company, but at least in a standard hierarchy, if your boss is sabotaging you or ignoring you, there are routes you can take (go to their boss, go to HR) to (imperfectly) route around that. In a flat structure, you're grasping at ghosts - after all, no one's your manager, so it shouldn't matter if one person has it out for you, but of course, if they're politically entrenched, it absolutely does matter. And there's no one in the company to complain to, because the company's official position is "this is impossible, we're a flat company", and your complaints are minimized if you complain externally, through some combination of "sour grapes" + "but it's a flat system!".

Honestly, it's a great trick on management's part - everybody has the responsibilities of management, but no one is an official manager, and there's an easy playbook to run on anyone who complains.

> no objective measure

Any "objective measure" that a regular company uses is mostly a way for management to pose and bluster about what they actually want. Corporations are fundamentally all the same.

They are extremely successful compared to more classical approaches to management.

Especially since the more classical approaches to management have insane weaknesses that everyone constantly complains about even on this site.

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