Tuesday, February 11All That Matters

Why can’t Valve count to three?

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Seriously?
Where’s portal 3? L4D 3? Half-Life 3? Team fortress 3? Dota 3?
They’re a rich studio with a large fanbase. What do you think is stopping them?

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View Reddit by The_barbarian_seekerView Source

20 Comments

  • Because when you always peak at 2, it’s hard to justify a 3.

    In a more serious answer, it’s probably because Valve’s structure means employees work on what they want to work on, and it gets hard to justify making sequels over and over when you keep wanting to make something entirely new. It’s why they’ve dived head-first into VR; that’s just more interesting for the majority of developers at Valve.

  • ’cause they’re, ultimately, for all the corporate mumbo-jumbo, still guided by perfectionists and artists

    Every game they’ve made has been an attempt to experiment with a new concept – every sequel they’ve made has been an attempt to *refine* that concept

    They don’t make thirds because, usually, they’ve peaked by that point

    There’s no refinement that would result in them further perfecting their creation

    As has been revealed – they’ve ***tried*** to do another half life more times than can be counted. And always ended up scrapping it – because it hasn’t met their standards or progressed the series itself enough to justify it

    Hell, the only reason we got Half Life Alyx was because the VR concept piqued their interest and they’d never *done* a character-narrative story like Alyx before. Hybridizing the two ideas gave them enough of a concept to peruse – and even then, they questioned whether it would be ‘original’ enough to justify the use of the IP

    Which should tell you all you should need to know

    They don’t look at their IPs as something to make a profit – they have steam – they don’t ***need*** to make profit… they look at their IP as something that they need to *justify* using

  • As funny as the cant count to three joke is the past near two decades, it’s really because Steam became their business. The CSGO profits absolutely exploded from the skins in 2014-2018, and a lack of managers. Crucially the lack of managers. As the other person said in this thread they are perfectionists in some ways for how they make their games. And when a perfectionist has literally nobody to report to but themselves, that’s their dream. But when you have all that allocated time to spend and can only settle for what would revolutionize the gaming industry, you have an incredibly small output compared to what would actually suffice.

  • Valve is a company that prioritizes making something new and interesting, then refining it to a more stable and realized product. After 2 games they usually have done everything they wanted to make and refine a game concept, and have no need for a third game.

    They aren’t really in it for the quick buck, they’re in it for the experiments and ideas.

  • Trilogies are a relic of a bygone generation. It died with the likes of halo 3, gears of war 3 etc. Even those franchises made sequels after that with worse quality. As other people have said, valve are perfectionists, and in a way, if they never reach 3, the franchise stays immune from sequel fatigue.

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