From the opinion piece:
Last year, I pointed out how many big publishers came crawlin’ back to Steam after trying their own things: EA, Activision, Microsoft. This year, for the first time ever, two Blizzard games released on Steam: Overwatch and Diablo 4.
It is on indefinite hold. It is still being “developed” in the same way Valve won’t confirm or deny the existence or cancelation of Half-Life 2 Episode 3/Half Life 3, but articles I’ve read previously essentially confirm that no one has been working on it for years.
I’ll happily eat my words if the game does come out because Firewatch was a beautiful game that left me wanting more, but Valve’s internal development structure doesn’t really encourage passion projects.
but Valve’s internal development structure doesn’t really encourage passion projects.
Could you elaborate?
Not the person you’re replying to, but from what I’ve read before Valve is kind of notorious for this because they do encourage people to work on what they want. The problem with this is that it also means it’s hard to get support for your project. For example, in order to get Half-Life: Alyx pushed out, they had to suspend that policy of working only on things that make them happy.
Here’s a quote from the wiki article about HL: Alyx’s development:
Valve abandoned episodic development and made several failed attempts to develop further Half-Life projects. Walker blamed the lack of progress on Valve’s flat management structure, whereby employees decide what to work on themselves. He said the team eventually decided they would be happier if they worked together on a large project, even if it was not their preferred choice.
Here’s some additional info on how they work from an interview:
Robin Walker: We started in February of 2016, I think, with a small team, and we brought out a small prototype. Then people started to play that, understood what we were trying to do afterward, and started joining up. We had 80 people on the team when we were about midway through. The exact size of the team I wouldn’t be able to tell you. The way things work at Valve, people organically join once they’ve finished up what they were doing before, and if what you’re doing makes sense to them. So it was always full steam ahead, I guess, but not in the sense that all 80 people were there from day one.
Jane Ng: I joined the project last year, I think. People just sort of see that “Hey, this project’s getting pretty cool,” and then they roll their desks over when they’re done with whatever they were doing.
Putting a product out requires 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration. The reason so many people make hour long video essays is that they can regurgitate their inspiration directly to a camera while doing little substantive work.
Valve likely has other “1% inspiration” tasks people often choose over the “boring” parts of game development - the bits that don’t excite anyone, and would only be done with the direct promise of a paycheck. Who wants to write up a design document, and go through 8 drafts for feedback?
