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Gabe Newell of Valve Software (Steam) recently spoke to 1 NEWS in New Zealand about everything that has been going on and teased a few fun details. For those who didn't know, Newell has been staying in New Zealand since early 2020 and decided to stay after a holiday when COVID-19 got much worse.

Newell continues to talk very highly of New Zealand, even somewhat jokingly mentioning that some Valve staffers appear to strongly want to move their work over there now too. Newell mentioned why there's no reason other game companies couldn't move to New Zealand, and joked how they're a producer of "not-stupidium" seemingly referring to how well New Zealand has dealt with COVID-19.

The real juicy details though come when, as expected, questions were asked about upcoming games. Newell said very clearly "We definitely have games in development that we're going to be announcing — it's fun to ship games," and that "Alyx was great — to be back doing single-player games, that created a lot of momentum inside of the company to do more of that.".

When asked about Half-Life 3 and the other usuals, joking about Valve being afraid of the number 3, Newell said directly "I've successfully not spoken about those things for a long time and I hope to continue to not talk about them until they are moot questions. Then we'll move on to a new set of questions," and that the "nice thing is, by not answering those questions, I avoid the community coming up with new, equally-difficult-to-answer questions.".

It's good to know that the game development fire has been lit under Valve once again. Nice to see they continue to keep Linux in their sights for games too with all their recent games (Artifact, Underlords and Half-Life: Alyx) all having Linux builds, although Alyx is not directly mentioned on the store page for Linux it is available.

What are you hoping their next game announcement will be?

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Philadelphus Jan 21, 2021
I wouldn't call VR a gimmick, exactly, but I don't own a headset and have no plans to, and yes, I've tried it on two different occasions. It was a neat experience for 15 minutes to be sure, and I enjoyed it, but I have zero desire to play games in it based on my gaming preferences. Motion controls for VR are great at handling gross motor functions, but absolutely terrible at handling fine motor functions, because you can't rest your arm on something like when you're using a mouse. I don't mind VR games existing—I think they open up a world of gross motor control to games that is more difficult to replicate with mouse-and-keyboard or controllers, and I'm happy for games existing that other people enjoy even if I don't—I'm just not interested in VR myself, because the vast majority of games I play are ones that require fine motor control. Yes, the immersion is neat, but I don't really need it—my imagination's powerful enough to immerse me as much as I want in a game, without the hassle of not being able to instantly see my surroundings if I have to. (Plus I have a hard enough time with some of the horror segments in HL2+Episodes already just on a monitor, I don't want to be more immersed than that! )

Uh, back on topic, I'd probably like to see Valve come out with something else in the Portal vein, either Portal 3 or else some new wacky off-the-wall game like it.
bubexel Jan 21, 2021
Quoting: orochi_kyo
Quoting: bubexel
Quoting: Whitewolfe80Single player games yes please i would prefer non vr games as i think its a gimmick but as long as linux is support natively sure why not some vr games for people that into that.

Amazing that there is people saying vr is a gimmick on 2021. It's been in market atleast 4 years atm and you didn't tried it yet? do a favour to yourself and buy on second hand market and play half life alyx.

And i really hope the next game from Valve will be VR, i tought i was not experience like i did when i was child with games like doom or quake never in my live, that it was part of be a kid. But Half life Alxy made me feel same feeling, wowing at any corner of the game.

Every single VR user in this forum is the same thing, we don't like VR and you think we haven't tried. Second-hand VR are scarce and according to some VR users they don't approach that 90 FPS to enjoy VR "properly".

Expecting the next valve game to be VR is so selfish but I expect that after seeing comments coming from VR owners on Alyx forums.

Selfish? we just want next gen gaming, just that. It reminds me people saying same at half life 2 because it had no software rendering and no everybody can afford a video accelerated card. When you play for first time 3D games with a good accelerated videogame you don't want anymore software accelerated games. Same feeling i have with VR. I have a problem with flat games atm to be honest.
Arten Jan 21, 2021
[quote=orochi_kyo][quote=bubexel]
Quoting: Whitewolfe80Expecting the next valve game to be VR is so selfish but I expect that after seeing comments coming from VR owners on Alyx forums.

Interesting. Same argument as windows users use about linux support. Why game developers throw money out of window when they support us? It's so selfish want linux/VR to be supported.
Ehvis Jan 21, 2021
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Quoting: bubexelIt reminds me people saying same at half life 2 because it had no software rendering and no everybody can afford a video accelerated card. When you play for first time 3D games with a good accelerated videogame you don't want anymore software accelerated games. Same feeling i have with VR. I have a problem with flat games atm to be honest.

Not the same thing. Hardware accelerated rendering was a better replacement for software rendering. However, VR gaming is not a replacement traditional gaming. It is an entirely different beast that needs a different approach to games. I would love to have more high quality VR games, but I don't want to give up the regular ones.
rustybroomhandle Jan 21, 2021
Quoting: Comandante ÑoñardoValve acquired Campo Santo and cancelled "In the Valley of Gods"

This is not accurate. Valve have a "work on what you want" policy, and the Campo Santo team kind-of just drifted themselves over to Half Life: Alyx. They made the decision themselves, not Valve.
bubexel Jan 21, 2021
Quoting: Ehvis
Quoting: bubexelIt reminds me people saying same at half life 2 because it had no software rendering and no everybody can afford a video accelerated card. When you play for first time 3D games with a good accelerated videogame you don't want anymore software accelerated games. Same feeling i have with VR. I have a problem with flat games atm to be honest.

Not the same thing. Hardware accelerated rendering was a better replacement for software rendering. However, VR gaming is not a replacement traditional gaming. It is an entirely different beast that needs a different approach to games. I would love to have more high quality VR games, but I don't want to give up the regular ones.

It's exactly the same thing. VR is a better replacement of Flat Monitors. 3D games was not replacing tradicional gaming, we still have 2D release gamings.
olivias Jan 21, 2021
I'm a big fan of Half-Life 2 and it was intersting to read
scaine Jan 21, 2021
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Quoting: bubexel
Quoting: Ehvis
Quoting: bubexelIt reminds me people saying same at half life 2 because it had no software rendering and no everybody can afford a video accelerated card. When you play for first time 3D games with a good accelerated videogame you don't want anymore software accelerated games. Same feeling i have with VR. I have a problem with flat games atm to be honest.

Not the same thing. Hardware accelerated rendering was a better replacement for software rendering. However, VR gaming is not a replacement traditional gaming. It is an entirely different beast that needs a different approach to games. I would love to have more high quality VR games, but I don't want to give up the regular ones.

It's exactly the same thing. VR is a better replacement of Flat Monitors. 3D games was not replacing tradicional gaming, we still have 2D release gamings.

Nope, definitely not. Sure, I don't want to play Elite:Dangerous on a monitor anymore. That's literally how good the VR "upgrade" is for that game. It also gets around the "gross motor control" point made by another poster here, because I'm still using my keyboard/mouse (or joystick/HOTAS) and the headset is just for immersion. But my god, the immersion. It's... hard to describe how game-changing it is.

But conversely, I don't want to play Noita in VR. Or indeed, the vast bulk of twitch FPS games I love. And anyway, my desktop is still 2D, so unless a compelling VR-based desktop comes along, I'm still going to play certain games in 2D even if they could benefit from 3D, because I use my desktop while playing them.

Honestly, even if that 3D desktop comes along, I still don't buy that VR is a natural upgrade path from a monitor, simply because the hardware isn't there yet. I played about 5 hours of Elite in one session at the weekend there and when I took the headset off, not only was my hair a mess, but my "panda face" was spectacular, and I had soreness across my cheek bones from where the headset rubs very lightly. Hardware will have to improve by two or more generations before this stuff becomes viable.
BielFPs Jan 21, 2021
I just hope it isn't another VR only title, because while it's can be awesome if done right, it still a very exclusive gimmick.

I wonder how ironic would be another Left 4 Dead game, in response of the new game from the original creators of the franchise.
Tuxee Jan 21, 2021
Quoting: bubexelIt reminds me people saying same at half life 2 because it had no software rendering and no everybody can afford a video accelerated card.

In 2004? I assume you the complainers could be counted on ten fingers. By that time 3D cards had been on the market for about 8 years and Quake II from 1997 had already set the de-facto requirement of a 3D card.
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