What does Valve need to do to "get back in the game"?

[YoloSwag]

So I wanted to make a post and rant about what I would like to see Valve do in upcoming years.

Maybe even plan them here.

^{_{The reason I didn't post on Steam forums is because it's already flooded with these and there's just too much trash there to get a good fun constructive discussion going.}}

 

THE PROBLEM -

VALVE has not released an 'innovative' title in a long time.

They haven't even expressed desire to continue some of the IPs they have.

 

IMO -

You'll see these marketing and money-making schemes in games like Dota 2, TF2, CS:GO, and Artifact where although there isn't much of a Pay-to-Win thing going on (except maybe for Artifact. I don't know) there is however an apparent issue with these since... HELLO - LOOT BOXES! Their entire agenda is basically to make more money, which is what businesses are for really, however I feel like they lost the "we can make money by making good games & services" thing.

 

Why does Valve need to be aggressive? - They're already facing a lot of competition in the online software distribution market. They might consider making proper games again their primary income source. 

 

SOLUTION (Well, ideas for a solution anyway) -

• Hire New Writers! -
  Spoiler

  How does this help?

   - They need a fresh new set of writers to get fresh new ideas going on.

   - Who knows, at least one of those ideas has got to turn into something.

   - They don't need to get something right away. Valve has the liberty of doing nothing for a long time without losing a lot of money. *Coughs *Steam Sales* Cough*

• Acquire/Build A New Game Developer Studio! -
  Spoiler

  How does this help?

   - Basically, if they don't want to make games themselves they might as well get somebody to make games for them. I know they do this and bought 'Campo Santo' to make 'In the Valley of Gods' but I'm saying they need to be more aggressive.

   - I'm saying do what EA did when they bought out a lot of developers but not do what EA did when they sucked those studios dry of creative freedom.

   - I don't think they'd be able to acquire big developers at the moment but they should get started with developers that have great ideas. I think they lost an opportunity to get Obsidian Entertainment as it was acquired by Microsoft just recently in November 2018. (Fear not, 'Outer Worlds' will have a Steam release as it was published by 'Private Division', a subsidiary of Take-Two Interactive)

   

  FUN FACT: Valve is still a privately held company, meaning they are almost immune to external people influencing business decisions directly. Gabe Newell reportedly owns half of Valve (I don't know for sure if it's the top half or the bottom half, ayy). Technically speaking, Gabe does have a huge say on how things ought to be so when things are going stale or bad he does have the responsibility in this regard.

  In 2012, Forbes valued Valve at $3B. This was 6 years ago imagine how much it is worth now.

• Build A New Advanced Game Engine! -
  Spoiler

  How does this help?

   - Do what Epic Games has been doing by making new innovative and advanced game engines that pushes the boundaries of technological advancement making the company more notoriety. 

   - Having a lot of other developers use their game engine will help establish a good market presence.

   - There was a rumor some time ago that Valve's new engine might use ray-tracing. This was in the early days of HL3 or HL2:EP3 rumors. Having a new engine that leverages GPU compute technology for ray-tracing in a very effective way without sacrificing compatibility with GPU manufacturers will help Valve a lot especially if they can get there first and beat a lot of big game engines to it.

   - 'Member the old Source Engine tech demos? Good times... good times. A launch of something ground-breaking an innovative would definitely turn heads especially when people hear that a certain game is being developed with the best game engine there is.

   

• Make A New Original Game
  Spoiler

  RANT -

  BATTLE ROYALE MODE IN CS:GO!? WHAT!?

  A CARD GAME!?!?

  SEASON PASS ON MULTIPLAYER GAMES!?

  ^{_{FYI - They did get a lot of negative reviews for their games on the Steam store for some of the reasons listed above.}}

   

  How does this help?

   - If they're done with their old IPs they might as well make new ones and get cash from there.

   - When I say "original" I mean something with an original story or at least original gameplay.

   - A successful game will definitely help establish Valve as top-tier game developer/publisher once again.

   - I'd prefer if Valve release an MMORPG of Dota. I KNOW, NOT ORIGINAL (Since Blizzard came out with World of Warcraft). But who knows, maybe make a single player campaign with the option to go to world events online would be great. I know there's gonna be monetization schemes in these but I'd buy the game for the lore if they can make it good lol. Not top-down Dota style but more in the hack & slash Warhammer RPG games sort of thing.

• Lastly...
  Spoiler

  HIRE HIDEO KOJIMA!!!

  DO I EVEN NEED TO EXPLAIN WHY!?

  Now depending on who you think is a bigger name...

   

  Why should Valve consider Hideo Kojima?

   - He is one the most creative and talented people of this generation. Story-wise and gameplay-wise he's a genius.

   - Basically, Kojima is loyal to his ideas. Not caring about whether a big company doesn't like his stuff. He's an idealistic person who'd play the game and get paid for playing it good. (Well, "make" it rather)

   - I think he'd be a great creative fit in Valve. I know it's unlikely he'd go under Gaben's payroll since Kojima is a free bird and a bit eccentric to add but a contractual and project-based arrangement might work. Maybe even having a full studio under Valve might be a good idea.

   

  Why should Hideo Kojima consider Valve?

   - He would benefit from a publisher like Valve. (Since Sony releases are more likely to not be cross-platform, not that they don't have any cross-platform games it's just that it's not more than competition). More exposure = Win.

   - I don't know if you guys know this but Japanese corporations have like an underlying brotherhood going on. Meaning if you're in not-so-good terms with one of them, you can expect a bad time with other corporations. This isn't the case with Sony however but seeing as the environment is basically hostile, he might want to consider a western publisher that isn't influenced as much by the outside world.

   - There isn't much of a big release from Valve in the past years. Anything basically that comes from Kojima even from rumors is already a big name. Imagine having made a game that doesn't compete with other releases under the same publisher.

   - Kojima became sort of a meme from when Metal Gear was dying. Imagine having him and another meme, Gaben, under the same roof. I know meme + meme doesn't always work but who even knows what the humor is nowadays. (This is obviously a joke)

   

  Also, me thinking, maybe if there's one guy who could make something innovative out of an old IP, it's definitely this guy. Imagine Half-Life's Xen made by this guy.

   

  Also, Phantom Pain memes -

  Spoiler

   

   

   

[GoldenLag]

Finish Half Life and not dissapoint. That is all they need to do. 

[YoloSwag]

Just now, GoldenLag said:

Finish Half Life and not dissapoint. That is all they need to do. 

It's sad but I don't think it's ever gonna happen soon. What I think is more likely to happen these days is that Valve disassociates itself from being a developer and focuses more on being a publisher. They're either gonna make a studio called whatever they're gonna call it and just use it to develop the likes of Dota 3 and new IPs or just buy other studios.

 

Half-Life is stale in the water unless they get more people with fresh ideas. Good news though is that Erik Wolpaw is at Valve again as a writer so that's something. Sounds like a 2022 release if they are cooking up something.

 

[NuclearPenske7]

Invest into VR like they said they would. Last time they made a HMD they offloaded it to HTC for marketing and production. Their VR demo "The Lab" is nothing short of impressive, if they're to deliver full games like they said they would. 

[YoloSwag]

1 minute ago, NuclearPenske7 said:

Invest into VR like they said they would. Last time they made a HMD they offloaded it to HTC for marketing and production. Their VR demo "The Lab" is nothing short of impressive, if they're to deliver full games like they said they would. 

Yes, I believe this is what they're doing currently. They're optimizing their Source engine for VR. The first VR rumor I heard regarding Valve was the next Half-Life game was supposed to come out with VR support. Not that we'd get that specific game any time soon but I like the idea of a Left4Dead 3 with zombies running up to your face in VR, this would be really terrifying seeing them bite and scratch you around lol.

[NuclearPenske7]

1 minute ago, YoloSwag said:

Yes, I believe this is what they're doing currently. They're optimizing their Source engine for VR. The first VR rumor I heard regarding Valve was the next Half-Life game was supposed to come out with VR support. Not that we'd get that specific game any time soon but I like the idea of a Left4Dead 3 with zombies running up to your face in VR, this would be really terrifying seeing them bite and scratch you around lol.

I'm most impressed by a VR Portal game, but at this point I'll believe it when I see it. They built their reputation like that of a Reddit OP. OP never delivers.

[YoloSwag]

1 minute ago, NuclearPenske7 said:

I'm most impressed by a VR Portal game, but at this point I'll believe it when I see it. They built their reputation like that of a Reddit OP. OP never delivers.

Nice way to put it. I can only hope Valve finally makes a move. Hopefully we don't get announcement of anything disappointing.

I like how majority of the crowd here reacted with an "awww' not like cute but more like the "not this thing" type of "awww".

[sYNTHwAVE]

There is a huge challenge with making HL3. In previous eras there was a lot of room for innovation, advances in hardware enabled more complex engine features that resulted in huge improvements to the percieved experience. My history is not great but, roughly in 10 years::

 

DOOM we went from 2D to 2.5D

QUAKE went full 3D (graphics cards appear?)

QUAKE2 writes the book on networking (internet speeds are increasing fast)

QUAKE3 introduces shaders etc

DOOM3 introduces the modern unified shader architecture, enabling devs complete creative freedom with hardware resources. it implemented dynamic shadows, bump mapping, etc

 

So Half Life 1 came in around QUAKE2 era, and it used a modifed version of that engine called gold source. it basically took those cutting edge graphics and made an actual cinematic gaming experience that, although was kinda lean on story, felt like a real journey through a compelling and evolving environment. not just discrete and kind of arbritrarily arranged levels in an arcade type game. and it had sort of beleivable humans that werent just cannon fodder. Also, counterstrike came out of this beast

 

Half life 2 came around the same time as DOOM 3 and was an even greater technogical leap, not only did it have the unified shader architecture and dynamic shadows but, it did some amazing stuff with baking lights, high dynamic range, cube mapping reflections. the environments were huge at times. along with far cry, it introduced physics into the game, everything was moving! shit didnt move before this folks lol the gravity gun was amazing, you could pick up crap and break it, and the lighting behaved convincingly during these interactions. it introduced ragdolls. these systems interacted dynamically too, you could throw a crate at an enemy and the crate would break and the enemy would ragdoll, and then float in water. and they introduced a completely revolutionary facial animation technique that was WAY ahead of its time. this game was a technological beast.

 

people expect half life 3 to have the same percieved impact, they expect something revolutionary. but look how many incredible devs are pushing boundaries now, how many games are comming out every week? theres a lot of competition. cd projekt red?! what can you do with double, triple, quadruple the compute performance these days? well, you sorta go from red dead redemption 1 to red dead redemption 2. rockstar pushes the boundaries on the 360 and xbone to the max with a huuugeee budget. but, it feels sort of like a predictable evolution of things, nothing that defies expectation and blows everything out of the water.

 

what could valve do. they could jump on the new ray tracing tech, virtual reality, neural networks and artificial intelligence, laser scanning, photogrammetry, etc. they could jump on all these early technologies and start working really hard to implement something ahead of its time that would be paradigm shifting. problem is, alot of it is a gamble. i mean ray tracing in general is a given, but building your entire game engine around it right now would make you exclusive specifically to nvidias current implementation of the tech i think... i dunno. people are going to say i am missing the mark here by overlooking the value of gameplay. im not, the game would need to have ground breaking gameplay also. possibly it would have to be partially open world and introduce huge improvements to artificial intelligence in order to push the gameplay in a new direction. its almost a mind boggling undertaking.

[aezakmi]

9 hours ago, GoldenLag said:

Finish Half Life and not dissapoint. That is all they need to do. 

Half Life finished in that level where you enter a small room to get ammo and the HECU soldiers knock you down, put you in stasis in an underground facility similar to Aperture's one. The Xen aliens and the Combine overlords did existed but killed everyone, gathered resources and left.

What's left of the world can be seen in Portal II ending, nobody has been there in a long time (centuries passed)

 

Portal takes place at the same time as Half-Life as there is a subtle reference to the invasion in the game and also in the ending song.

 

change my mind

[kilgore_T]

the creative process is difficult and fraught with failure especially when a large group of artists is involved,

it seems valve respect the creative process in their game production and only produce something when everyone is creatively invested in it, this can make game development incredibly slow and many projects just wither and die

valve are an anomaly in AAA games industry - no accountants rushing product out the door, no investors destroying the creative output with their desire for revenue....just a whole bunch of people with the freedom to create something wonderful...so fingers crossed, we may be on for a long wait

[YoloSwag]

15 hours ago, sYNTHwAVE said:

im not, the game would need to have ground breaking gameplay also. possibly it would have to be partially open world and introduce huge improvements to artificial intelligence in order to push the gameplay in a new direction. its almost a mind boggling undertaking.

Totally agree with you. I remember Valve's 3D Skybox technology this basically made the sky look realistic since HL2 and it even outclassed games like Doom 3 and Quake 4 in terms of it. Also their fluids were top notch.

 

I think they should partner with probably AMD to create a game engine that utilizes the Vulkan API to it's full potential. I think AMD is better since they won't give you proprietary BS that is so anti-comptetitive.

 

14 hours ago, aezakmi said:

What's left of the world can be seen in Portal II ending, nobody has been there in a long time (centuries passed)

I'd say Portal 2's ending was more of the invasion by combine forces and not the ending. Portal does take place same time as HL1 but Portal 2 does follow almost a few years after compared to the gap between HL1 and HL2. This is how I view the games as both "portal" dimensional technologies from Black Mesa and Aperture Science was developed around the same time. Meaning the Black Mesa incident was not the actual invasion but more like an accident and the government trying to cover it up.

13 hours ago, quakeguy81 said:

Valve doesn't need to do anything to "get back in the game," they already make millions (billions?) off Steam sales alone.  You don't think they let developers sell games without taking a percentage, do you?  Back when Valve first made Half-Life they first distributed it through Sierra On-Line, before Steam even existed.

I meant they stopped making real games. I didn't say Valve was poor. Where did you even draw that from?

 

8 hours ago, kilgore_T said:

just a whole bunch of people with the freedom to create something wonderful...

Yes this is what I wanted to point out! they literally have the option to do so anytime without experiencing pressure that other dev studios experience from publishers.

What are they even doing with these monetization mechanics in-game? I mean they already make a ton of money from software distribution alone it's not like the money they earn is going to pump blood into a new spectacular game anytime soon. I just hope they wake up and not end up like the abandoned warehouse that is Aperture Science.

[Princess Luna]

VALVe will never make another AAA game, they profit nowadays from Steam, it's really that simple... accept it.

[YoloSwag]

15 minutes ago, Princess Cadence said:

VALVe will never make another AAA game, they profit nowadays from Steam, it's really that simple... accept it.

 

Well, if that's gonna be the case I hope they face steep competition soon from other online software distribution platforms just to force them to have a go back to making original games.

[porina]

On 1/21/2019 at 4:45 PM, NuclearPenske7 said:

I'm most impressed by a VR Portal game, but at this point I'll believe it when I see it.

Not that it helps the thread, but there is a fan made mod to Portal for VR. I can't recall the name of it, but it is its own stand alone thing keeping the Portal style. I enjoyed it.

 

If we're doing a wish list, I'd take a Portal 3 over HL3, seeing as I never did the earlier HL games either...

[YoloSwag]

1 minute ago, porina said:

Not that it helps the thread, but there is a fan made mod to Portal for VR. I can't recall the name of it, but it is its own stand alone thing keeping the Portal style. I enjoyed it.

 

If we're doing a wish list, I'd take a Portal 3 over HL3, seeing as I never did the earlier HL games either...

Is the game you're referring to called 'The Lab'? or was it a real VR mod for the game?

 

Also, I think Portal 3 is more likely to show up first given that the games' timeline of events are distant from each other when comparing the sequels IMO. Portal 2 takes place before HL2 as is the way I see it, I may be wrong though.

[porina]

36 minutes ago, YoloSwag said:

Is the game you're referring to called 'The Lab'? or was it a real VR mod for the game?

Found it.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/446750/Portal_Stories_VR/

[Misanthrope]

Something they never had, probably never will, is completely counter to their culture and that henceforth would change them into a different company unrecognizable from the one that created some of the beloved half life classics: Strict hierarchy and accountability to actually get them to commit and do something.

 

You gotta remember that the industry has changed radically and wildly from the days where a relatively unknown and unproven indie dev could come up with a run-away success title. The problem is that we think of Half life as on the quality level of what it would be a AAA game today but it was not created as one would be today and it just wouldn't be feasible for them to compete with the giants of today.

 

So instead of demanding of Valve that get "back in the game" which would mean what I mentioned early: abandon the horizontal organization and freedom they have and become a tyrannical, profit and goal driven developer complete with endless crunch time and millions upon millions of bucks in marketing campaigns, I would be much more happier if they would get into a different game altogether by releasing less ambitions indie projects: Licensing other people's engine, using art style choices to convey their objective instead of really expensive-to-produce high quality assets, etc.

 

Much rather work with this hypothetical Valve that wouldn't even try an AAA game and instead would just release smaller games like Portal far more often but of that same scope, no Half life 3.

[captain_aggravated]

Valve has made I think a total of six games all by themselves:  Half-Life, Ricochet, Half-Life 2, Episode 1, Episode 2, and Team Fortress 2.  

 

All other "Valve" titles are outside work.  Gearbox made Opposing Force, Blue Shift and Decay.  Day of Defeat, Team Fortress Classic, Deathmatch Classic and Counter Strike were community mods.  Portal and Portal 2 started as student projects (Narbacular Drop and Tag:  The Power of Paint respectively)  Alien Swarm was a mod for Unreal Tournament 2004.  Left 4 Dead was a collaboration with Turtle Rock Studios.  Dota 2 was a mod for warcraft III, of all things.  CS: GO is a collab with Hidden Path.  Nearly none of their library is their own IP.  They're like Apple that way.

 

Back in the day, their business model was actually pretty clever.  Like id Software before them, they put their development kit on the disc, giving all players the tools to mod the game, and granted liberal permission to use their original assets.  The result was 4.6*10^14 yeast infection grade mods of the "it's the normal game, but we broke half the textures, made the guns look like cartoon cocks and replaced most of the sound effects with racial slurs screamed in Spanish into the best mic $2.37 could buy in 2001" ilk, and a half-dozen gems that could be turned into proper retail titles.  Valve picked the diamonds out of the rough and called them their own, something id didn't think to do with their own modding scene.  I mean, Team Fortress started as a mod for Quake, not Half-Life.  id could have outright owned Team Fortress instead of Valve.  They just...didn't.

 

Thing is, back in the day, you had to go hunting on the web to find those mods.  They weren't front and center, so the shit ones usually faded into obscurity as fast as they were uploaded.  Wanna see some, look up "jolly wangcore" on youtube.  His commentary, not to mention subtitles, are transcendent.  Now we have Steam, and anyone is allowed to sell a game on Steam. Hunt Down The Freeman gets made and published, For $10 a copy, and Valve gets a cut.  They're not just profiting from the few cherry-picked good ones anymore, they're making a few bucks on the most hideous shovelware the Jimquisition has to offer.  That mechanism for the bad ones to sink into the void and the good ones to rise into the light went away sometime around 2012.

 

Given all that, basically Valve just needs to wall off a section of steam, call it the slush pile, and allow users to filter out the slush pile from search results.  But Valve should keep an eye out for the rare cool thing, just like they used to, and occasionally promote it up out of the slush pile.  Stick their badge on it and show it to people.  I mean, that's how we got a couple dozen totally beloved games.

[Salv8 (sam)]

gabe needs to get over his Triskaphobia (fear of the number 3, also known as triphobia and triophobia)....

although i am unsure if thats its real name as only one source calls it that... (prob a joke)

[Andreas Lilja]

Half-Life 2 was released in the golden age of single-player games. Today it wouldn't bring much shekels. 

 

Even back then it was heavily criticized because it didn't feature multiplayer except CS: Source.

 

I'd rather see them being proactive when it comes to Steam availability, the number of clients is too damn high.

[Rodinski]

On 1/21/2019 at 11:38 AM, NuclearPenske7 said:

Invest into VR like they said they would. Last time they made a HMD they offloaded it to HTC for marketing and production. Their VR demo "The Lab" is nothing short of impressive, if they're to deliver full games like they said they would. 

HL3 VR would be the next step in FPS.  Make an affordable VR too.  HL1's key success was given the revolution of a FPS story driven, mod community, and the ability to run on any hardware.  If HL3 is designed under a similar philosophy, Valve would, once again, revolutionize the gaming industry.

[sYNTHwAVE]

11 hours ago, YoloSwag said:

I think they should partner with probably AMD to create a game engine that utilizes the Vulkan API to it's full potential. I think AMD is better since they won't give you proprietary BS that is so anti-comptetitive.

I am extremely interested to see what can be done with vulkan. The problem we have now is that some (ray tracing) techniques need hardware level features to implement feasably. It's like the old days, when 3D games first came out and you needed a graphics card to run them. I mean, a lot of those early games had some software rendering but it very quickly became impossible. Then obviously, we've had new features that require higher level API's, like you can't run HL2 without at least dx8 level hardware. The API is just the communication layer, most new features represent some fundamental hardware level implementation. I don't really know how exactly this is coordinated, because AMD and NVIDIA both fully support all major APIs.. but theres no way that the teams behind directx and opengl are calling the shots on next gen hardware features.. there must be some kind of coordination going on behind closed doors right? but somehow that coordination has been lost with RTX, because it's NVIDIA specific.. if only there was an effort for this new raytracing architecture to be implemented across all next gen APIs and hardware.. nvidia must have become greedy right, but how is RTX even implemented in engines, i wish i knew more.

 

anyway, this shit makes it impossible for a company like valve to start working on this stuff now. hl3 would have to launch across all major platforms with a consistent experience. perhaps behind closed doors there is more going on than we know, perhaps microsoft and sony already have dev kits for the next gen that include some raytracing tech.

 

to be blatantly honest tho, raytracing is just not the best way to use resources. i really want to see a bigger push for voxel based global illumination techniques. i also think, at this point graphics have gotten a bit too far ahead of other elements; when things look realistic, theres an expectation for them to behave realistically, and when they dont, it can get wierd. seeing hyper realistic human beings in games now, sort of just sleep walking down the streets like hypnotized zombies, not noticing you doing retarded shit, not responding to your interactions, sometimes not even responding to threats like gunfire.. its just wierd.. it gets really wierd when the facial animation is off and they dont make eye contact. also, seeing a super realistic object, then throwing a grenade at it, then.. seeing it completely intact? and walls, and floors.. we all expect them to be excluded from the realm of physics, you can bump into them, and thats about it.. if you could deform and destroy everything it would be a huge challenge just getting the AI to navigate the world properly, all the pathfinding would have to be dynamic.

 

graphics cards need to become more than graphics cards. they need to become general purpose parallel number crunchers, and devs need to be utilizing then to accelerate ai and physics. thats my opinion anyway.

[it_dont_work]

I honestly don't want to see a completed half-life story, like duek forever I doubt it'll be any good or just meet the hype that's placed on it

 

Then again the DeusEx reboot was amazing...

 

Valve like other have said has little to gain from game development, their steam platform is the money maker and primary business they work with. 

[YoloSwag]

20 hours ago, Misanthrope said:

Licensing other people's engine, using art style choices to convey their objective instead of really expensive-to-produce high quality assets, etc.

I believe this is what they originally did since a lot of their games were originally mods. Like what captain_aggravated said.

and I would definitely like them to go back and try out their roots (bloody roots).

 

I still think though one big game changer would them releasing a AAA game engine that beats all others. Nevermind the game releases. If they manage to do this and get external devs to create something from this then that would definitely be a great step in the right direction. Hopefully when declining revenue from Dota 2 and CS:GO starts to happen this would force them to create something new.

 

17 hours ago, captain_aggravated said:

Given all that, basically Valve just needs to wall off a section of steam, call it the slush pile, and allow users to filter out the slush pile from search results.

Ahh yes, I got this vibe from the jimquisition as well. But I think this is why VALVE implemented community ratings instead of just showing ratings from mainstream game critics. Also, you could actually make a curator profile and just list all the trash games there, sadly Jim doesn't do this but he does give positive feedback on a lot of non-mainstream games which I appreciate.

 

15 hours ago, Raskolnikov said:

Steam availability, the number of clients is too damn high.

I didn't understand this part. Could you explain it more? Also, seeing the Metro 20XX series has been good I think VALVE still has a chance since those games had some HL vibes in it.

 

15 hours ago, Rodinski said:

Make an affordable VR too

If by this you mean VALVE should release their own VR Headset I don't think it would happen any time soon. VALVE makes good hardware but I think they don't market it very well. So in this sense it might take a long time before we see VALVE's own VR gear. This is because not everyone has the hardware to run VR games and even those who do, not all of them have VR gear, and those that already have VR gear wouldn't necessarily buy from VALVE if they ever release one. So it's a highly limited market for now.

 

But yeah, I would like to see them make VR gear one day.

 

10 hours ago, sYNTHwAVE said:

if only there was an effort for this new raytracing architecture to be implemented across all next gen APIs and hardware..

I believe AMD was first to announce some open-source stuff regarding ray-tracing. Sadly without the support of the market it didn't get traction. Nvidia's way of doing things is they do sponsor some games to feature their own proprietary stuff. Remember Borderlands 2? The game didn't look that great without PhysX on max and the only way to have this was to use Nvidia hardware.

10 hours ago, sYNTHwAVE said:

it gets really wierd when the facial animation is off and they dont make eye contact.

Yes I do know this. Have you watched Rogue One? The Princess Leia and Governor Tarkin there looked weird like it was an animatronic. All soulless and lifeless.

10 hours ago, sYNTHwAVE said:

graphics cards need to become more than graphics cards. they need to become general purpose parallel number crunchers, and devs need to be utilizing then to accelerate ai and physics. thats my opinion anyway.

This is definitely the strive in the industry for a long time now. Using GPUs for parallel computing and data crunching. The problem is, high GPU compute ability doesn't necessarily translate to great game performance. See how RX VEGA 64 beats the GTX 1080 Ti in a lot of compute stuff but struggles to compete against a GTX 1080. I'm not sure why this is so, probably has something to do with having difficulty translating this to real in-game performance. But solving this would be a step in the right direction.

 

10 hours ago, it_dont_work said:

I honestly don't want to see a completed half-life story, like duek forever I doubt it'll be any good or just meet the hype that's placed on it

 

Then again the DeusEx reboot was amazing...

 

Valve like other have said has little to gain from game development, their steam platform is the money maker and primary business they work with. 

Why wouldn't you want to see it? Just why (???)

Yeah Valve does have little to gain, but any ground they gain from it I think is good ground.

 

On a side note, I think Cyberpunk 2077's world is - well, I think that was what the new Deus Ex games worlds were supposed to be like. AND I AM SAD ABOUT IT.

I'm looking forward to the next Deus Ex game tho, hopefully this is the one that connects Adam Jensen to becoming Icarus the AI as it was being alluded to.

[Misanthrope]

3 hours ago, YoloSwag said:

I believe this is what they originally did since a lot of their games were originally mods. Like what captain_aggravated said.

and I would definitely like them to go back and try out their roots (bloody roots).

 

I still think though one big game changer would them releasing a AAA game engine that beats all others. Nevermind the game releases. If they manage to do this and get external devs to create something from this then that would definitely be a great step in the right direction. Hopefully when declining revenue from Dota 2 and CS:GO starts to happen this would force them to create something new.

Suppose they build a modern engine fit for a modern AAA game, what's next? Sell it? That's not a really good business move lately, specially when you're competing with some pretty big names out there.

 

Use it for in house? We're back at the issue of creating tons of really expensive and hard to make assets to take advantage of the modern AAA engine: it takes guys in major publisher a damn battalion of people and usually multiple studios just to produce those assets. Valve has the money, but they're just not capable of getting down the logistics of a project of such magnitude: what in the past became Valve time a.k.a. "It will be out when it's done" would take so fucking long both the assets and the engine would be outdated by the time they're done. They've never been able to deliver in a consistent fashion and if anything those problems are way worst today than 20 years ago when they were heading into Half life 2

 

But other than that, kudos on the Sepultura reference: I approve, highly.