"Half-Life 3" is one of the gaming world's biggest dead ends. After "Half-Life 2" and it's two mini-sequels were first released, the entire gaming world was waiting on bated breath for the epic third installment.
And in ten years, there's been absolutely no news on "Half-Life 3."
According to KpopStarz, there were rumors circulating that "Half-Life 3" would be making an appearance at this year's E3 convention, but now E3 has come and gone and there's been no "Half-Life 3" news at all.
Then, another rumor came from AirHerald.com, that a sponsorship for "Half-Life 3" was spotted on a race car in Nürburgring, Germany. But that, too, ended up being a falsehood- it turned out that the sponsorship was the work of a die-hard "Half-Life" fan with an odd sense of humor and a deep, deep desire to see "Half-LIfe 3" finally get released.
However, in a new interview with The Washington Post, "Half-Life" visionary and Valve founder Gabe Newell sheds light on just why the company hasn't done anything about the third "Half-Life" game for ten years.
Here's what Newell had to say:
"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 multi-player games even though there's never been a commercial successful multi-player game.
Then we tried to do Steam. There were a bunch of people internally who thought Steam was a really bad idea, but what they didn't think was that they would tell the people who were working on Steam what to do with their time. They were like 'that's what you want to do wit your time, that's fine, but we're going to spend our time working on Half-Life 2. We think you're kind of wasting your time, but it's your time to waste.'
In retrospect, it was a great idea, right? So the key thing was that people bear the consequences of their own choices, so if I spend my time on it the only persons time I'm wasting is mine. Over time, I think people sort of recognize how useful it is for people to vote with their time. There is a huge amount of wisdom in people's decisions about what they personally want to work on next."
And there you have it- Gabe Newell and Valve do what they feel is best, and sometimes what they feel isn't a "Half-Life" sequel. And it hasn't been for the past ten years, apparently.
What do you think? Would you want Valve to just go ahead and make "Half-Life 3" anyways, or wait until they feel the time is right? Leave a comment below, or share your thoughts on Facebook and Twitter.
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