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Phoronix brings a bit of weekend cheer for those silly people inside playing video games instead of going fishing:
With Black Mesa's Halloween update released on Thursday, there is a Linux client beta of this Source game. Details via this announcement. Black Mesa is currently on sale for 60% off, putting it at just $7.99 USD.
Mind you, it's a Steam game so your box has to play nicely with Steam as a prerequisite.
[Ed Note: Sale price ends on November 1]
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Black Mesa Now Available For Linux
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There *__is* intelligent life on Earth, but I leave for Texas on Monday.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Monday October 31 2016, @07:48PM
If the first game in the series was released in 1998, then it is 18 years old. There is no arguing that. There is a story starting from the first game and continues through the last episode. You are also going to need some figures to back up your claim of new players picking up episode 2.
Steam certainly made them fat and lazy. They make millions just selling other people shit.
That's the sad truth. A single player game is good for what, 20-40 hours of play time? And for those 20-40 hours how many man hours were needed to make the game? I'm just going to assume around a 2M+ man hours per year for a team of 100 people. Depending on pay I'm just going to guess around $5-10M/yr labor not including the extras like voice actors, motion capture, and scouting IRL locations for design and artwork. The artists have to create entire worlds: trees, foliage, buildings, vehicles, NPC's, terrain, maps, design, story, game play, etc. Shit loads of work. All that work for a game that most people will play through once at a one-time cost of $50-60. Go have a look at that wikia link I posed for the HL2 development story. The amount of time that went in along with the scrapped ideas is staggering. They throw away a few games worth of content along the way of making these things.
Now move to the modern multiplayer FPS with micro transactions for accessories, special items, clothing, you name it, and you have a continuous stream of money coming in. You can analyze those transactions to pick up on trends and focus on those areas of demand maximizing revenue. Maybe the new Game of Thrones season came out and they release a GoT theme item for your games character and charge $1-3 USD. You might get a return on that of a few million dollars from having one or two cheap artists come up with the artwork and the rest to the IP holder for merchandising rights. When you could possibly make a few million from stupid micro transactions for a game that has been paid for over and over again, who wants to invest millions in a single player title that could make or break a studio? Aint nobody got time for that.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by cubancigar11 on Tuesday November 01 2016, @07:48AM
Half Life - 9.3 million copies by December 2008 from 1998
HL 2 - 6.5 million copies of Half-Life 2 were sold at retail by December 3, 2008, (not including Steam sales), from 2004
Considering that most games are bought near release time, and fitting the buying trend as exp(sqrt(delta_year_since_release)), we can safely assume that half of the merchandise is sold within in first 1/3rd of time.
Generously assuming, 5 million copies in first 4 years for HL, while 6.5 million copies sold for HL2 in first 4 years.
There is no way you can argue that HL2 didn't invite new blood. It set the benchmark for its usage of physics and facial expressions. It was so far ahead of HL that it is the primary reason behind HL3 hype.
That is a very sad truth. I don't even expect them to make a good single player FPS (though Doom [steampowered.com] says it is possible). They can make a generic open world game with micro transactions and multiplayer etc. Who says Half-Life ought to linear anyway? But I don't they ever will, because HL IP is not cool anymore and if I remember correctly, the lead of Portal, Kim Swift, said that Valve has little 'push from above' and most people just want to work on 'cool stuff'.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Tuesday November 01 2016, @11:41AM
Thanks for the info but I understood your original post as to say that Episode 2 bought in the new blood.
(Score: 2) by cubancigar11 on Wednesday November 02 2016, @08:22AM
True. HL2:EP2 is almost a DLC and almost on same engine, but it came when DLC was not a mainstream concept. I doubt anyone started playing from HL2:EP2.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by LoRdTAW on Tuesday November 01 2016, @12:01PM
You know what, I cant find the source atm, but I think it was in PC Gamer (the dead tree type), an interview with Gabe or someone working on HL2 before it was released. They specifically stated that HL was going to be somewhat open and dynamic. One of the things that was specifically mentioned was they said something along the lines of "You can set a building on fire, and later when you come back to that area again, you will see that the building is burnt down/out." They wanted it to be dynamic and open but couldn't pull it off I guess.
And I'm 100% with you on the dynamic/open world front. So many interesting looking areas they could have made into towns and so forth. Travelling through the toxic swamps from one town to another, parts of the city you can explore with the car, roam the country side while dodging traps, hunters, and god knows what else. But like you said, its stale IP. But I think with the right push from above, they could pull it off.