The meaning of Half Life?

[Roland Deschain]

I know I'm getting way to philosophical, but I read a lot and I need titles to make sense. So I just wondered what the people at Sierra/Valve were thinking when they christened the game Half Life. Any ideas?

Half-Life in the hard core physical context is simply = ln2/λ (that's why they are so preocupied with the lambda (λ) in Half Life 1). It simply says how long an exponential decaying substance needs to lose half it's mass/number, but that really doesn't give much to the title Half Life.

Any thoughts anybody?

PS: This is a fun post, don't get to factual.

 

[Mr-Fusion]

Hi.

Some people don't really know this, but this topic has been covered many times. I have provided you and other people who are curious about the topic with several links. Each link has an in depth discussion on various aspects of why Half-Life is called half-life. What half-life means, what the lambda symbol means and various other details directly relating to the name half-life. It also discusses possible reasons why Valve chose the name Half-Life.

Good luck reading through those threads and i hope you learn a lot about the wonder and mystery that is the word "Half-Life".

http://www.halflife2.net/forums/showthread.php?t=23972&highlight=half-life

http://www.halflife2.net/forums/showthread.php?t=24038&highlight=half-life+meaning

http://www.halflife2.net/forums/showthread.php?t=18087&highlight=half-life+meaning

 

[Tiddalick]

Well it was quiver or something...
Half-life is much more 'science' like. A title like Half-life gets you thinking in terms of science, much more then calling it Gordans friendly day at work.
You can call something whatever you want, it dosn't mean it will be a good name. Half-life I think is a good name.

 

[Adrien C]

Nice man, helping new people like the Mods said, good work.