THE SITE Main Page News Archive Submit News Search Site Discussion Rules IRC Chat Contact Staff Poll Archive  FEATURES Articles Interviews Mailbags Comics  HL2 GUIDE Walkthrough Secrets & Cheats General Strategy Story Characters Enemies Weapons HL2: Deathmatch  HL2 RESOURCES Overview Media FAQ Review List Press Links Purchase Options Site Links  EPISODIC CONTENT Episode One Screenshots Videos  CS:Source @ CS-Nation Overview FAQ  HOSTED  AFFILIATES Link to us   PC Games Gabe Newell Interview (Translation) Source: PC Games Magazine Original URL: N/A Translation from German by Tek October 25, 2004 On pages 100-101 of PC Games (DE) November issue, there was an interview Valve's Managing Director Gabe Newell. This is the translation: PCGames: Gabe, before you started developing you told the devteam that money does not matter - Only at the end it had to be the best game ever created. Has this worked out for you? Gabe Newell: Yes, now that we're done, I think we achieved what we aimed for. I'm very proud of the team. I don't mean that we want to compare HL2 to other games or to look down upon them but more in the sense of that we had an idea of what the next step would have to be, what we wanted to achieve concerning Characters, the (game) world and gameplay - and I've got the feeling that we did really good. PCG: What are the three most important strengths of HL2? GabeN: Characters and physics would be number one and two. Putting everything together, to bring the integration, the artistic and the acoustic design to the level of the graphical programming, that's probably the third most important factor. PCG: We liked how varying HL2 is: Each chapter has its own feeling. GabeN: The game contains a lot of strands and character developments; there are many factors we considered for the game flow. How often do you scare the player, how often are they fighting or exploring? Additionally we had to take care of the consistent introduction of new gameplay elements. If you take a close look at the timing you will find pretty constant intervals. PCG: What went wrong during the development? GabeN: The greatest catastrophe is our continued inability to keep to schedules once we've made a date public. It's very frustrating for the players, the dealers and of course for us as well. That's probably the greatest problem we have. We know how to reach a certain level of quality, but then we begin to spin when we start to project dates. We haven't been able to do that during the development of HL1 either. PCG: The next Valve project will be the Multiplayer Shooter Team Fortress 2. will we have to wait another six years for Half-Life 3? GabeN: No. I think we're at a point where we will release games much more regularly. We have the tools established, the characters, and the gameplay options, so we can get this rolling a lot faster. Many of what we have done in the past was aimed to bring us to a point where we could efficiently produce games. All aspects of a game have so much complexity, be it a single character or a building. I believe that we're now in a good condition, and for the teams sake we don't want to just disappear another six years. I think our people would run out of the building screaming. PCG: How many people have worked at Half-Life 2? GabeN: The number of internal staff who took part in the HL2 development should be around 50 persons. If you add the dubbing artists or testers it'll be around another 50 persons. PCG: We almost don't dare to ask - but how much did approx. HL2 cost? GabeN: I will wait until we actually start selling before we get to calculate it. At one point our financial guy, Pat Goodwin, said: "Well, we've now spent around 40 Million Dollars" and I replied: "I don't want to hear that anymore, just don't give me updates on these figures anymore!" PCG: Do you still have enough room for creativity and possibly more games in the Half-Life universe? GabeN: We try to set up a framework for interesting stories. I think that the events in Half-Life 2 leave a lot of room for more to come. For example, two of my favorite characters, Alyx and Dog: I would love to have the time to create something new with these two. Other people in our team have their own favorites. We're working towards evaluating the story potential of other characters for other projects. PCG: What action opponent has made you more nervous, FarCry or Doom 3? GabeN: Hard to say, I'm a fan of the original Doom series but don't know that much about FarCry. The release of Doom 3 was very exciting for me, because it was because of Doom that I actually got into the gaming branch - I'm pretty much a Doom fanboy. We're not really concerned because of the other titles - just because I think our branch is no null sum game (?). Many people will have bought Doom 3 right in the beginning and played it through by now. The better it is, the more they're looking forward to the next action game. PCG: On what area of game development is the next breakthrough due? GabeN: We now have so many tools, that we really have to learn how to properly use them. A lot of it is craftsmanship - understanding how to build up dramatical scenes or how to use our non-linear animation system. The result is the interaction of art plus artificial intelligence that take place in the same moment to create this kind of game experience. So, instead of looking for the next great challenge, we're now consolidating. Because we have the feeling that we didn't even scratch the surface yet. HEADLINES Heavy Update Rel.. Day 6: TF2 Update.. Day 5: TF2 Heavy.. German PC Games M.. Day 4: TF2 Update.. MODS HEADLINES Wilson: Second En.. Pirates, Vikings.. Sven Co-op Logo C.. LATEST FILES Left 4 Dead E3 Pr.. Left 4 Dead E3 Tr.. HL2 Wars v0.5 Eternal Silence 3.. Jailbreak Source.. Eternal Silence 3.. 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