A.I.
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- Jul 19, 2003
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I've been asking myself a last few weeks about this probably the most notorious HL2 delay in gaming history - how could this happen? I believe this delay is very different apart from all the others because of various reasons:
1. the game was in production for 5 years in total silence, what is unusual, considering that HL1 was such a big success, but none of the media discovered what is going on in the VALVe's offices.
2. on last year's E3, the hell breaks loose out of the blue with the 25 min vid, showing the things to come. What became to good to be true later on was the date - Gabe claimed the game will be released on 30th September 2003, that's less than 6 months! The masses freaked out, of course, being even more encouraged by very good PR work that mostly Gabe was doing. The question follows: how could be Gabe so sure about the 9/30 release to the very last few weeks/days? What made him believe that?
3. The theft. There are some conspiracy theories, but we'll try to avoid them. Gabe has repeatedly said that the game would have been delayed anyway what directs us to the question in the second part. Although, it must have contributed to delay of the game to some extent, but it seems that was not the crucial contributor to the delay. Then what was it? After the stolen build was all over the internet, and playing it myself, it all came clear to me (just a few minutes ago, while writing this
).
The probable cause of the delay
The stolen build was a copy of a version before E3 version was done. We can see this in the maps from E3, which aren't finished yet. On the contrary, the basic structure of the game had been already set, or in some places even completely done. The game as it was, would have probably been done by the date Gabe's promised. But something went wrong. Gabe was mentioning in August that the final playtesting and tuning of the gameplay is taking place. He said, that they put Gabe's father in front of the computer and made him play HL2 and then asking him, what was fun and what not. The same they did with a lot of people to figure out what the game should be like. But you can't do that with a game in an early phase, when it's buggy crashy and has chess-like textures, right? Gabe said: "Rest assured, if we delay the game, it'll be only to blow your socks off even more when it finally releases." And there's also a Gabe's moto back from HL1: ""C'mon, people, you can't show the player a really big bomb and not let them blow it up." To conclude these facts, the delay is probably because they found out that the tech they made can be used in much more fun ways they could ever imagine.
1. the game was in production for 5 years in total silence, what is unusual, considering that HL1 was such a big success, but none of the media discovered what is going on in the VALVe's offices.
2. on last year's E3, the hell breaks loose out of the blue with the 25 min vid, showing the things to come. What became to good to be true later on was the date - Gabe claimed the game will be released on 30th September 2003, that's less than 6 months! The masses freaked out, of course, being even more encouraged by very good PR work that mostly Gabe was doing. The question follows: how could be Gabe so sure about the 9/30 release to the very last few weeks/days? What made him believe that?
3. The theft. There are some conspiracy theories, but we'll try to avoid them. Gabe has repeatedly said that the game would have been delayed anyway what directs us to the question in the second part. Although, it must have contributed to delay of the game to some extent, but it seems that was not the crucial contributor to the delay. Then what was it? After the stolen build was all over the internet, and playing it myself, it all came clear to me (just a few minutes ago, while writing this
).The probable cause of the delay
The stolen build was a copy of a version before E3 version was done. We can see this in the maps from E3, which aren't finished yet. On the contrary, the basic structure of the game had been already set, or in some places even completely done. The game as it was, would have probably been done by the date Gabe's promised. But something went wrong. Gabe was mentioning in August that the final playtesting and tuning of the gameplay is taking place. He said, that they put Gabe's father in front of the computer and made him play HL2 and then asking him, what was fun and what not. The same they did with a lot of people to figure out what the game should be like. But you can't do that with a game in an early phase, when it's buggy crashy and has chess-like textures, right? Gabe said: "Rest assured, if we delay the game, it'll be only to blow your socks off even more when it finally releases." And there's also a Gabe's moto back from HL1: ""C'mon, people, you can't show the player a really big bomb and not let them blow it up." To conclude these facts, the delay is probably because they found out that the tech they made can be used in much more fun ways they could ever imagine.
