Half Life 3 has yet to be announced, nor confirmed by Valve. And while it seems like easy money for Valve to finally release a sequel after all these years, Gabe Newell explains why his company didn’t continually churn out sequels to the popular series.
In a recent interview with The Washington Post, Newell says that Valve could have been sucessful in milking the Half Life series, but decided to focus on multiplayer experiences instead.
“When we started out we were a single player video game company that could have been really successful just doing Half Life sequel after Half Life sequel, but we collectively said let’s try to make multiplayer games even though there’s never been a commercially successful multiplayer game,” Newell explained.
This focus on multiplayer hasn’t necessarily killed Half Life 3 at this point, Newell has spoken about the game over the year, but no concrete information about its development has surfaced in some time. In the Washington Post interview, Newell says that the decentralized decision making process of Valve as a company has let them work on many projects at once.
This includes Steam, DOTA 2, Left 4 Dead, Team Fortress, and new hardware and software initiatives looking to expand the Steam universe. Is Half Life 3 tucked somewhere in this pipeline? Last year, a tour to Valve caught a screenshot that hinted at work being done on a new Source Engine, a new Left 4 Dead game, and yes, Half Life 3.
