How Half-Life changed gaming
Ask George Stephenson or Johann Philipp Reis*, being first to come up with something doesn't necessarily get you the credit for changing the world.
But, although these people may have been true innovators, it is the companies and people that run with the idea, or bring them to the wider audience, that get much of the credit.
Apple didn't invent MP3 players, but it did revolutionise the industry with its iPod, Radiohead didn't invent the honesty box approach to record sales, but it was the band that hit the headlines for it.
Which brings me to Valve software – a company that are so adept at running with great ideas, that it has to be considered one of the companies that has most revolutionised gaming in the past decade.
Why? Two words: Half-Life.
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Half-Life cover art © Valve
Valve
When the original Half-Life came out in 1998, there was little hype for a debut title from a company called Valve founded by ex-Microsoft employees Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington.
But the game itself soon changed the landscape. Half-Life wasn't just good, it was a game that aspired to greatness – a game that captured the imagination of those that played it, brought storytelling back to the world of gaming and showed how scripted events could draw a player in.
In short, Valve had created one of the greatest games of all time.
Using id's Quake engine, anybody who played Half-Life realised within a matter of minutes that this was a game unlike anything they had played before. Instead of thrusting the player headlong into battle, or slapping on the then ubiquitous and generally dull cut-scenes of exposition, the game opens with a man on a monorail going to work.
Half-Life screenshot © Valve
Valve
With the exposition going on around the player – rather than separate to it, courtesy of scripted events and the chatter of others around him – you are inexorably drawn into the game and the events of Black Mesa on one fateful day.
Keeping the player immersed was a major factor in Valve's thinking when it designed the game, and their famous decision to keep their main protagonist stonily silent throughout the experience and its sequel both increased the challenge for the company and improved the experience for the player.
"Never letting Gordon speak makes some dramatic scenes more difficult to create because we run the risk of having dialog that sounds like a soliloquy when another character is alone with Gordon and talking to him, Valve's Doug Lombardi told Tech & Gadgets.
Half-Life screenshot © Valve
Valve
"We get more entertaining scenes when we add another character to the conversation because then more of the dialogue can be between the two characters with Gordon as an observer. There's also the very tempting design crutch in letting the protagonist think aloud to present goals to the player, like "Hmmm, I think I need to get behind that gun emplacement..." which we're happy to do without.
"So yes, having Gordon never speak definitely presents some design challenges, but the end result is an enhanced sense of immersion.
"If Gordon ever spoke, the player would be reminded that they weren't living through the experience personally. It could bring up thoughts along the lines of "my voice doesn't sound like that" or "I wouldn't have said that" which would be counter to the immersion. Since that immersion is so central to the Half-Life franchise, we think the added design headaches are worth it.
"In the name of immersion, we make our jobs more difficult in other ways."
Valve
Even those who had been confident of Half-Life's deserved success could have had little idea of what would come next in the life-cycle of their game.
Although the company's support of so-called modders – unpaid fans who changed and adapted the game to make their own versions – was enthusiastic, the work of Minh "Gooseman" Le and Jess Cliffe changed the landscape forever.
The duo managed to create a 'mod' known as Counter–Strike which saw teams of terrorists and counter terrorists fighting to plant or defuse a bomb or rescue terrorists. The difference was that this game was a team-based online game where all the other players were real people.
The proliferation of faster internet connections, the popularity of the original Half-Life and sheer serendipity ensured that this brilliant game became the most played action game online – helping shape the path of online gaming for a generation and influencing both the PC and console industry to a huge degree.
Half-Life 2 screenshot © Valve
Valve
Counter-Strike's simplicity to learn and difficulty to master not only made it an instant classic, but also made it the foremost team-based online game.
If any are doubts are still harboured about this 1999 game's impact, it may be a surprise to you that it is still being played by hundreds of thousands of people today – an almost unprecedented feat in an era where the focus is normally on cutting-edge graphics and sound.
So how did Valve follow up this success? First of all it hired Cliffe and Le, but the focus was also firmly on changing the very way in which people received and played their games.
The success of Counter-Strike and the growing size of the online industry convinced Valve that it could cut out the middle man (to an extent), selling its games direct to the consumer through download as well as supply the patches and fixes to the games that were still flourishing.
Half-Life 2 screenshot © Valve
Valve
Of course, although the Counter-Strike community would have to be early adopters of the delivery and payment system - called Steam - in order to keep up with the patches (something which stirred huge controversy but was eventually largely accepted) it would take a huge game to truly launch the platform.
And so Half-Life 2 arrived; the birth was anything but simple – a hacker had stolen much of the pre-alpha code from Valve setting the project back by months and an announcement of a September 2003 release, just months after revealing the game at E3, was pushed back more than a year.
However, when it finally did hit computers, unplayable unless you had Steam up and running, the game was a massive hit, selling millions of copies and earning huge critical praise as well.
Half-Life had revolutionised storyline, its successor brought a physics engine that was the envy of the gaming world. Suddenly explosions moved things in the way you would expect, and objects within the game obeyed the laws of physics.
Counter-Strike: Source screenshot © Valve
Valve
With the Steam system in place, Valve had one more ace to play; the delivery system that everyone now had to have active to play their game also allowed them to produce and sell episodic content for the game.
Thus, after Episode One was enthusiastically received, a second 'episode' finally arrived last month.
Of course, Valve being Valve – even this came with some incredible add-ons for those who hadn't yet found the Half-Life world; Team Fortress 2 – a sequel to another of their online gaming hits that has quickly been adopted by the community, and a separate game named Portal which has been an immediate critical hit.
"We definitely feel the pressure," sums up Lombardi. "But in the end I think it leads us to create better games. Mainly it's exciting and gratifying to find the new frontiers to push into and see how the franchise evolves as a result."
* Reis created one of the earliest working telephones and Stephenson invented a safety lamp for mines before Sir Humphry Davy.
Original article: Gaming Goss: How Half-Life changed gaming
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