Portal and Half-Life episodes writer Erik Wolpaw has returned to Valve - Sensationalist Headlines

Episode 3 please.

Erik left because he wanted to do other things, why would he come back just for money? Hell he's probably still swimming in Valve money from his previous employment.

The Bellevue Boys.

Erik Wolpaw will get to enjoy the big pink cookie again! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YR0WN55p_zI

Probably the best reference you can get on Facepunch, sans wickedplayer's post.

missing the great pink cookie

Hopefully this means there are projects that he's interested in working on under development at valve.

https://www.polygon.com/2019/1/4/18168383/valve-erik-wolpaw-portal-half-life#comments Polygon did asking Wolpaw about return to Valve, was... ohhh

Just like people read way too much into him leaving, people are reading way too much into him coming back, he's probably doing contract work or something. There's many reasons a dev would join or leave a studio, a lot of them very pragmatical like "This is the best work offer I have right now".

Here comes Portal 2: Episode 1!

He is, and while I don't expect him to care too much about HL3, I'm sure he does feel somewhat bad about it. And tbh. it's understandable, considering that Valve's been busy with various other projects since the Orange Box came out, and I guess time and years just rolled by, and now they are feeling weird about it.

I just want them to own up to the fact that HL3 is never coming (although I kinda understand they cannot do that) and not do anymore "dohoho we cannot count to three so wacky" jokes. Ever.

Outrage? Bad PR? Oh wait they do not care one iota for that do they?

Because the corporate arm will put a burn notice on anyone who dares try to resurrect Half-Life development or speak about it publicly. Their remaining time there will be miserable, they'll be shunned by everyone else (for fear of the same thing happening to themselves if they don't immediately cut all association), and will be voted out of the company within a year.

And so this is a form of Developer Marketing. Hire some key person, push them to write or blog, then once you’re done with them let them go. The “pawn” won’t complain too much as their career will be enhanced by being associated with your company. What the developer actually writes is actually consensus based mumbo-jumbo. It’s just marketing. It’ll be based off the version of reality the corporate arm wants to market to developers they haven’t recruited yet. Valve re-hiring Eric Wolpaw gives me flashbacks to the "Self-Organising Company" tweets, in the same strain as Richard Garfield coming in for Artifact. If you trust Polygon's interview with Wolpaw, he almost admits it himself. It's different considering Wolpaw has worked with Valve for many years but this has had the desired effect, you're all getting your hopes up for hl3.

portal 4: portal some more

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgs9OhjAE2g

Thats a great fanfic, but not actually evidenced in reality at all.

Oh boy I can't wait for Epistle 4 of the Adventures of Gertrude Fremont

"Anybody who does not wholly accept without any question an exaggerated story pieced together from inconsistent snippets from disgruntled former employees years ago as fact is a blind fanboy" Nobody really knows what's going on inside valve, we only hear vague whispers from time to time. The narrative people have created about valve's internal structure isn't confirmed by any stretch, and calling somebody a blind fanboy because they don't accept it is incredibly childish, grow up.

"anyone who isn't outraged in every post is a fanboy". Maybe some people care about knowing what's actually going on and that doesn't make them fanboys.

you're kinda missing the point

Again, you're assuming that anybody who doesn't accept your extremely specific preconceptions about how valve runs and assume that that's the source of all of their problems, then that person is a eating valve's dick for breakfast. I have no love for valve right now, they've neglected my favorite game to the point of updates coming less than once a year, they're absolutely out of touch as Artifact can attest, and they've turned from a company that pushed boundaries and took risks into a company that hasn't done anything interesting in gaming in years. But that has nothing to do with accepting your unsubstantiated narrative, where you think you know exactly how the company runs when none of us really know anything about it. For example, you could just as easily say that their LACK of oversight over employees is what has led to important things getting neglected, and employees, of their own accord, abandoning things that don't personally interested them. Is valve run by overbearing "barons"? Is it a disorganized mess? Both are feasible, both are equally substantiated by what little info we've gotten about valve's internal structure. But both are completely at odds with each other. So no, valve's not doing what I wish they were, but I don't know WHY they're not doing what I wish they were, and neither do you. We've got no idea what's going on behind those doors.

This sort of "They just don't care about it, they hate Half life!" narrative is just absurd. We haven't been told the exact situation, but from what we do know and what has been said, we have an idea of why it hasn't been revealed - and it's something that's consistent with the way Valve have always operated. Valve are willing to work on something until they feel it's fully ready, which means they're fine with changing their plans even if that means scrapping large parts of their games if they aren't happy. That's something they did with pretty much every one of the games to some extent, with games like TF2 and HL2 seeing the more significant changes that resulted from that (and don't forget TF2 was released nearly a decade after it was announced). As part of that, Gabe has said that they don't want to reveal games before they feel it's nearly done, so they don't announced something and then later go ono on to make changes or have to delay it. That's what happened with Episode 3 in the first place - it was announced well before it was ready, and then their plans changed. Saying they've been "negligent towards their IPs" ignores that they don't see their IPs like that in the first place, there are several interviews/AMAs with Gabe where he explains how they view their games and IP. It's not a case of "We haven't made a _____ game in a while, better do that!", they tend to see their properties as like tools to try out new ideas rather than just making games for the sake of making games .They make games when it fits a purpose and achieves some sort of goal: Products are usually the result of an intersection of technology that we think has traction, a group of people who want to work on that, and one of the game properties that feels like a natural playground for that set of technology and design challenges. When we decided we needed to work on markets, free to play, and user generated content, Team Fortress seemed like the right place to do that. That work ended up informing everything we did in the multiplayer space. Left 4 Dead is a good place for creating shared narratives. https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Gaben/comments/5olhj4/hi_im_gabe_newell_ama/dck76tl/ Episode 3 and 4 were in development until around 2009 and Gabe said the game was still in development in 2010, but since then they've had quite a few big projects that would have taken the a large amount of their attention - Steam Machines, VR, Source 2 (which would have definitely set things back) etc and they only started to get back into full game development in 2017. Saying "they just don't care, they only want money from Steam & Microtransactions now" misses that they aren't a traditional developer in the usual sense.

Being angry at valve doesn't mean you know what's happening in valve. That's literally just your opinion about their games, and that doesn't mean anything when it comes to knowing the inner workings of that company today. And that's what the conversation was about, not if valve games were good or bad. So yes you're 1 completely missing the point and 2 you're screaming at people who arent even talking about what youre mad about and 3 just because you hate valve doesn't mean you have a good understanding of who they are and how they're working right now, which is almost entirely a secret to everyone but them.

"Source: Dude, trust me!"

nah actually his source is a guy who's notoriously melodramatic about everything who claims he'd worked at valve in the 2008-2013 period or so he wrote a super long rant worthy of a philip k dick award that describes valve in the same way templin institute describes santas workshop

Your logic seems to be "I don't like Artifact and their last singleplayer game was in 2011, they must hate games!" which involves being ignorant of the way Valve operates, how they view their products and what they've been working on in the time between those 2 games. The evidence is interviews from Gabe discussing the topic multiple times along with the things that Valve has been doing for the past few years (VR, Source 2, Steam Controller, Steam Machines etc), that lack of games has absolutely nothing to do with microtransactions or anything like that and is just the result of their desire to do try new things.

But they have released games.

valve doesn't owe fans or former fans anything