During the debut of his new podcast, GameSlice, video game journalist and executive producer of The Game Awards Geoff Keighley sat down to speak with Valve Co-founder Gabe Newell and Erik Johnson.
Throughout the course of the first episode, which Keighley refers to as an “experiment” and a chance to have “great, in-depth conversations with people who are shaping the technology and video game industries,” the three talk about Valve’s eighteen year history, their recently announced Virtual Reality collaboration with HTC called ‘Vive,’ as well as Valve’s history with video games, both past and future.
When asked about the types of games Valve may be interested in putting out in the future, Newell says that things such as V.R. and Valve’s latest engine, Source 2, give the team a lot “opportunities of things to take advantage of,” and continues, “I think it’s kind of straightforward for gamers to extrapolate, you know, from what we’ve done in the past to what we’re likely to do in the future.”
Newell seems to choose his words very carefully when on the subject of new Valve games. When Keighley mentions fans insistence of making future installments of past franchises, i.e. the long awaited Half-Life 3, possibly being made in new ways with different means of artistic expression, Newell replies, “We love all those games…we have no shortage of opportunities. So, we try to be a little bit strategic in sort of like, ‘okay this is the piece of the puzzle we can solve with this set of technologies we have developed.'”
Newell goes on to explain that as the team comes up with new challenges, they choose the franchise they believe will be most appropriate when figuring out a solution. He uses Dota 2 as an example, which he describes as a solution to “wanting to work on the aspect of having lots and lots of those strongly realized characteristics.”
Newell explains that he understands the fear some fans may have of not seeing a sequel to long awaited franchises but says that “we think at the end of the day customers are going to be really happy with where we’ve spent our time and how we’ve turned that into entertainment for them.”
As far as going back and making a completely “retro” game, Newell says that Valve would only go through with it if a lot of people internally wanted to do it and had a “reasonable explanation” as to why.
In regards to a future Half-Life game, Newell says, “If you want to do another Half-Life game and you want to ignore everything we’ve learned, [in shipping Portal 2 and all the multilayer updates], that seems like a bad choice. So, we’ll keep moving forward, but that doesn’t necessarily always mean what people are worried that it might mean.”
How do you feel about Newell’s answers? Do you think Half-Life 3 will ever come out or is it just a myth at this point? We want to hear your opinions down in the comments.
GameSlice is available on the iOS Podcast app.