Recently, Kotaku UK reported that a very peculiar file has been found in “Dota 2 Reborn”, the new version of Valve’s popular MOBA Dota 2 which runs on Source Engine 2. The file, titled “hl3.txt”, contains quite a few lines of seemingly random code – parts of it revolve around AI, parts of it are about VR (as in, Oculus Rift support), there are mentions of procedural generation and open world and there’s even a line about ziplines in there. All of this, combined with the text file’s name and the fact that it wasn’t “leaked” by some anonymous fan with dubious connections to Valve, but was found right in the database one of their games and can be accessed by anyone with the right tools, have renewed fans’ hopes that a third instalment of the extremely popular franchise might be on the way. After all, it has been eight years since we got the last game set in the Half-Life universe (“Portal 2” notwithstanding – while the game is in the Half-Life universe, it’s also very much its own beast), which was just an expansion for “Half-Life 2”, the second of three planned. It has been 11 years since we saw “Half-Life 2” hit store shelves. Just for reference, the difference between “Half-Life 1” and “Half-Life 2” was only 5 years. Considering the fact that both games can easily be considered among the best ever, with “Half-Life 2” winning Spike Video Game Awards’ Game of the Decade award, suffice to say that the wait has left the fans anxious. It has reached the point where there’s a very popular meme of finding “Half-Life 3” confirmations in literally everything. Well, I’m here to say one thing – don’t wait. It’s not happening. Like, ever. Not next year. Not in five years. Not in ten years. Never. Never ever. The sooner you accept it, the less it’ll hurt.
Let’s analyze the txt file first real quick. It really does not prove anything at all. As a matter of fact, lots of Source Engine games have a hl2.txt file which lists basic functions that appear in the engine, but nothing too concrete about “Half-Life 2”. Similarly, a text file titled hl.txt was found in games using the “Half-Life 1” engine, such as “Team Fortress Classic”. Do those files contain shocking revelations about their respective games? No, not really. I mean, now that we’ve got intimate knowledge of the first two “Half-Life” games we may be able to find SOME connections, but there’s also a lot of things in them that are nowhere to be found in “Half-Life”, such as a system for RPG elements (which is also found in hl3.txt). But you could make the argument that the existence of hl3.txt must confirm “Half-Life 3”, since there’s also hl.txt and hl2.txt in other games, and we already have “Half-Life” and “Half-Life 2”. Why would Valve make a file titled hl3.txt if there wasn’t a “Half-Life 3” to go with it? Absolutely fair enough. Let’s pretend that this file is, in fact, part of “Half-Life 3”. Which part? I mean, it’s got all kinds of stuff in it – citizen AI, procedural generation data, VR output support and so much else. There’s scripts for so many systems in there that aren’t even remotely related. In videogames, generally different elements are tied to different systems – there’s a series of scripts that control the AI, there’s another series which crafts the procedurally generated world, etc. They all work independently of each other – the PC or console is viewing the data for AI and calculating that while also taking care of stuff like dynamic lighting/shadows and other world effects, as well as the mechanics of the game, such as jumping, shooting and moving around (and some weapons might require additional processes on top of that, such as grenades or homing missiles, both of which are staples of Half-Life). Running everything from the same script is ludicrous and makes absolutely no sense. And if it wasn’t meant to be run from that script, then why is it there? Did Valve just put random scripts from “Half-Life 3” into a txt file and then accidentally left it lying around in one of their games? I don’t think so. More likely than not, some of those scripts are just placed there by default, as an option that could be loaded should a certain game using Source Engine 2 require it. For example, if “Portal 3” has VR support, the scripts to call it and enable it would be taken from hl3.txt.
But let’s look at this from another angle. The Half-Life series has always been known for being a highly linear, cinematic experience. Every single little part of Gordon Freeman’s journey is always meticulously crafted down to the finest detail to ensure the best possible player experience. If you read “Raising the Bar” – a book about the creation of “Half-Life” and “Half-Life 2” you can see just how detailed the designers at Valve were in their desire to ensure that the game plays exactly the way they want it to, to the point where they spent time making minor adjustments that no one would even consciously perceive. This crazy attention to detail to the specific experience seems to have worked wonders for them up until now… So why replace that with an open, procedurally generated world? That seems to go completely against everything that Half-Life is. The same goes for the assumptions that the new game would have a quest systems where citizens placed around the world would give Gordon Freeman quests, much like they would in an MMORPG. This, again, goes against the basic principles of Half-Life’s cinematic experience, which is more akin to a smooth train ride (to the point where it doesn’t even have cutscenes – all important story moments happen right in front of the player, with no loss of control) than to an MMO-like grind. Half-Life has always felt more like an interactive movie than a videogame, and thus making it less focused and more game-y seems like steps in all the wrong directions. Ziplines make sense, of course, as does VR support, but then again, should we really be surprised that Valve wants to add VR support to their engine considering the impending release of the SteamVR?
Releasing “Half-Life 3” also doesn’t make sense from a purely financial point of view. “Half-Life” and “Half-Life 2” were made in a different era, when Valve was primarily a game developer. Now they’re something a lot more different, in no small part thanks to Steam – the marketplace which revolutionized PC gaming, to the point where over 90% of all PC games sales in the world are done through Steam. And with Valve taking between 15% and 30% (with some sources claiming their share could be as high as 40%, for games that have received a lot of exposure on the store), that amounts to a whole lot of money. Additionally, Valve are currently operating “Dota 2” and “Team Fortress 2” – two of the most popular online games in the world, especially the former, which is placed just a little bit behind the world leader “League of Legends”. Those two games alone are bringing them millions every single day, in addition to all the money Steam is making. There are thousands upon thousands of games on Steam (the official Steam page lists them as over 3500, but I’m pretty sure the number could be as high as 10 times that number, considering that only the action games currently available on the store are about 5000 – and that’s just one genre, out of ten), each of which sells an average of 32,000 copies. It’s impossible to do the math because of just how much that amounts to, as each game is sold for a different price, but it amounts to millions.
To this day, “Half-Life 2” has sold 12 million copies, but A) it’s an immensely popular 11 year old game, B) it was included in the brilliant “Orange Box” bundle which sold 5 fantastic games for the price of 1, and C) it’s often on sale on the Steam store, usually for about a dollar or two. But hey, let’s say, purely for the sake of argument, that “Half-Life 3” will match it in sales and will also sell 12 million copies, all of them at the full price of $60. From those $60, Valve will only get about $40 due to taxes (even less if it was on console, but we’ll assume that the game was a PC exclusive and sold on Valve’s own store, where they don’t need to pay a commission fee). That amounts to about half a billion in profits, which might sound like a whole lot of money (it’s definitely more than most of us will even be anywhere near in our lifetime), but removing the development and marketing budget (which, for a big title like this, would be about $200m), you’re left with about $280 million in net profits… Which is about the same as what Steam and Dota do in a good trimester. Keep in mind – that’s an “absolute best case” scenario, which will definitely not happen, as even hotly anticipated games such as “Metal Gear Solid V” only managed to sell about 4-5 million copies, and “MGSV” in particular came out on pretty much everything ever instead of being PC-exclusive as “Half-Life 3” will presumably be. At the end of the day, the development hassle would just be too much to be worth the financial risk. Here, I’ll leave this Gabe Newell look-alike explain.
So yeah, what I’m trying to say is that you really shouldn’t be holding your breath for “Half-Life 3”. That game just doesn’t fit with Valve’s priorities right now. Best case scenario, we MIGHT get “Portal 3” or another IP from them eventually, but chances are that for the foreseeable future they’ll just focus on running the store and updating “Dota 2” and “Team Fortress 2”. But instead of holding out hope for a game that’ll never get made, why don’t you just focus on anticipating the games that will actually be released, such as “Beyond Good & Evil 2”! Wait…