The Lack of Half Life 3, Is Not Surprising!!
... Many companies announced great news this E3, and of course, no Half Life 3 as usual. So in this post I say random things I have to say about this game that might not get made.
So I talked with few people in some Discord server, were were talking about the games announced at E3 when I saw this line:
All these games that people weren't expecting another game of be like SURPRISE! We're releasing a new game...
Meanwhile Valve be like F@#%! Fans! Portal 3 HL-3? F!@$ All
Yeah... There's that.
Do you want any Half Life 3 at all, or do you want an amazing Half Life 3?... I rather them not releasing it, if they don't have the "drive" to make it as amazing as they can. (Which if they want to listen to fans, won't happen.)
The Sad Truth About Fandoms
As fans we always tend to disagree on what the next should be... sometimes many of us is seen as the best thing happening to a franchise, others will say it ruins it forever. And we tend to focus on the "problems" between our taste and the product, rather than appreciating the parts the content creators did right.
As someone who content created for some time, I learned that it's better for the content creator to make his own vision. Many fans will hate it, but at least the creators are satisfied for something they could be proud of. If they tried, many fans will love it either way.
That's something I notice a lot in Final Fantasy series, they experiment a lot, and the result isn't always good (FFXIII, maybe FFXV too.) They don't always take a popular system and go with it, they try to make their vision true each time.
Creative Reasons?
But how can you make something you're proud of, when you don't want to?
Fan Demand will only add pressure, and make the game come out faster than it should be. Marketers will try to listen to fans and add more pressure on the development team.
If they want to make HL3, I want them to make it when they are ready... If they don't want to, I'm okay with fan games. Half Life is easy to mod. I don't want a game like this to come as a marketing tool instead of an art.
Pushing our impatience?
On the other hand... Sometimes, it feels if HL3 is going to be released some day, it's going to be used as a "trump card" to save the company from a bad financial situation... Probably saving this secret weapon to use only when needed.
Looking at the state of steam now, (And despite their questionable management of it, because doing it "right" is insanely hard & trying can screw everything up.) They don't need to use their trump card yet.