Valve Half-Life 2: Episode One Interview March 21, 2006 John JCal Callaham

Introduction

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FiringSquad: First, Valve will have a booth at this year's GDC expo. What will the company be demoing at their booth both in front of and behind closed
doors?

Doug Lombardi: We're actually not demo'ing a thing. We're simply setting up a booth with a few meeting rooms so we may speak with anyone
interested in utilizing Steam, the Source engine, or maybe working at Valve.

FiringSquad: Valve has secured a number of licenses for its Source engine from both big and small developers. Overall is Valve happy with the amount of
interest in the engine and does it plan to expand its licenses in the future?

Doug Lombardi: We feel like this effort is just beginning. We're very interested in getting the word out to the community that Source is
available for 3rd party licensing, it's a flexible set of technology, and we'll be announcing a next generation console version (created in house at Valve) very, very soon.

FiringSquad: Even more attention is being made over Valve's Steam service. Has Valve been surprised by the amount of interest in using Steam to
distribute games?

Doug Lombardi: What's been surprising is how successful Steam has been for the 3rd parties. The Red Orchestra team saw their project become profitable through Steam pre-orders alone. It's always nice to turn a profit before your game has shipped. The Introversion guys made more from Steam sales of Darwinia in two weeks than from months of retails sales of the same product. Also, after forming a relationship with us to ship their games via Steam, both the Rag Doll and Red Orchestra teams found retail distribution deals.

FiringSquad: In a recent article you mentioned that Half-Life 2: Episode 1 will be more complex and have more depth than Half-Life 2. Can you be more
specific on how Episode 1 will accomplish this?

Doug Lombardi: It's just a matter of having a tighter focus, really: The Episode One team is focusing on delivering a strong new single player experience, designed to be four to six hours in length. Freed from having to tie together 15-plus hours of gameplay into a cohesive experience, the team now has the ability to pack each room, each set piece, etc., full of primary and secondary interactions, story reveals, and more.
SIDEBAR: Nearly eight years after its debut, the original Half-Life still has nearly 50,000 players online at one time today.

Valve Interview (con'd)

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Doug Lombardi: Focusing on a four to six hour stand-alone experience is, almost by definition, a more manageable project than a 15 to 20 hour project. And, as such, it will be a more detailed experience. In the end, making strong gameplay isn't easy. But we're seeing stronger results from an equal amount of effort.

FiringSquad: Will there be a Half-Life 3 at some point from Valve or will it now concentrate solely on episodic gaming?

Doug Lombardi: What is Half-Life 3?

FiringSquad: What sort of graphical improvements, if any, will Episode 1 have over the original Half-Life 2?

Doug Lombardi: Episode One will include support for HDR and the Commentary system introduced in Lost Coast. With each new episode, we
intend to carry forward and leverage the latest Source engine enhancements available.

FiringSquad: Even though Valve uses Steam it is still selling boxed versions of its games in retail stores. Can you reveal how many copies of Half-Life
2 have been sold via Steam versus retail store sales and do you anticipate a time when Valve may do away with retail games entirely and focus on online sales?

Doug Lombardi: We're open to selling our products in as many viable channels as possible. If someday people stop going to stores, we'll stop making boxes. Until then...

FiringSquad: Valve has primarily been a PC game publisher but it has released two games for the original Xbox. Looking ahead to the next generation
console systems, is Valve planning on releasing any games for the PS3, Xbox 360 and Revolution and which console will Valve concentrate its efforts on?

Doug Lombardi: We're very interested in the next generation systems and we'll be announcing Source support for one of those systems very soon. We are, however, still very committed to the PC.


SIDEBAR: Valve collaborator Turtle Rock Studios recently announced plans for their own Source engine game.

Valve Interview (con'd)

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FiringSquad: Since Valve is heavily into digital distribution does it have any plans for supporting Xbox Live Arcade?

Doug Lombardi: Nothing to announce today.

mods for Half-Life 2 that Valve likes and might considered acquiring?

Doug Lombardi: We're always interested in speaking to new folks about distributing more games via Steam - be that Source MOD or a complete 3rd party creation. Red Orchestra is a pretty good example of this.

FiringSquad: Where does Valve see PC games going, especially with things like physics cards and Windows Vista/DirectX10 on the horizon?

Doug Lombardi: The PC games business has never been more interesting. The transition to the next generation consoles is taking a bit longer than everyone expected, and leaving a crater in the industry's revenue projections. Meanwhile, the graphics and processing power available on the PC today already rivals what's to come on those consoles, and the online business models for PC gaming is already light years ahead of the consoles with services such as Steam and money-printing phenomena such as World of WarCraft and Lineage.

FiringSquad: Finally are there any other hints you can give us about Valve's plans at GDC or their overall future plans?

Doug Lombardi: Nothing more at this time. Thanks for the interview.

On behalf of FiringSquad, we’d like to thank Valve’s Doug Lombardi for taking part in this interview. Valve’s episodic content model with Half-Life 2: Episode One is certainly an intriguing idea that an increasing number of game developers are beginning to embrace.