ik kick dit topic even. Op PlanetHalflife staat nl. een
heel interessante post van Fragmaster, vertrekkende oprichter van PHL die nu niet meer aan zijn NDA gebonden is.
Kort gezegd maakt hij duidelijk waarom Valve zolang totale radiostilte in acht heeft genomen, en eigenlijk nog steeds niet officieel heeft aangekondigd wanneer HL2 uitkomt. Hij kaart ook nog veel meer problemen bij Valve aan, en beschrijft hoezeer het bedrijf veranderd is sinds Half-Life.
Nogmaals, heel interessant en heel verhelderend.
Even wat interessante passages:
over het uitstellen van de release en de verwarrende statements van Vivendi vs. Valve:
Unfortunately Valve -- for whatever reason -- refused to own up to the fact that Half-Life 2 was going to be delayed. Gabe made that ridiculous "First time I've heard about this" response, and other sites overreacted and assumed that this meant that Vivendi's announcement was a mistake. This situation was further complicated by Vivendi's backtracking: after Valve essentially refused to confirm the delay news, Vivendi was forced to (kind of) retract their original delay announcement. So tons of people incorrectly assumed this meant HL2 was still coming out on time.
I visited Valve in early September to conduct interviews for the Behind the Scenes book. It was quite a bit of fun, but I was a little disturbed by a few things. I won't get into the specifics, but information wasn't matching up. Things said during the E3 demo turned out to be either misleading or untrue, for example. I don't want to say exactly what kind of state the game was in when I was there, but you'll recall that when other fan sites visited Valve later that month (BEFORE the source code leak, even), they were unable to see the game. Now, if the game was in a playable state and supposedly ready to go gold within a couple of days, don't you think they would have shown it off?
Over de source leak:
At first, Valve claimed that only 1/3rd of the source code was stolen, but once people compiled working versions of the game, well...
The Anonymous Leaker, despite being an asshole such as myself, was basically correct. HL2 wasn't nearly as far along as Valve was hinting at, and a lot of the things Valve showed in the E3 demo were misrepresented. Did he really release all the work Valve had done on HL2? To be honest, I don't know for sure. It's a possibility. Valve certainly made little effort to dispute his claims.
Now, I could go on and on, talking about Steam, all the screw-ups with Counter-Strike: Condition Zero (I mean, JESUS, how do you declare a game GOLD, say it's FINISHED, and then not ship it until NEARLY SIX MONTHS LATER?), how Valve has messed up their relationships with Ritual, Gearbox, Vivendi (do you think Vivendi is a big fan of Steam?), and ATI...
I feel most of the problems at Valve are due to the ineptitude of one individual in particular. I'm not going to name names, but you can probably guess who I'm talking about (Gabe Newell -Gunp01nt). This person is easily the worst person I've ever met during my time within the "video game industry," and that's saying a lot, considering that this business is filled with superstar jerkwads like... well... me. I don't feel that he does his job properly, and he isn't what I'd consider to be a decent, trustworthy, or moral human being.
Een laatste sneer van iemand die net zijn baan heeft verloren, het resultaat van verbitterdheid na een verslechterde persrelatie met Valve, of de harde waarheid? Gabe Newell krijgt iig stevige kritiek over zich heen, en gezien de problemen met Steam, de source code, totale mis- en noncommunicatie, en doodgewoon liegen van Valve's kant ben ik geneigd het als redelijk geloofwaardig te bestempelen.
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Voor 74% gewijzigd door
Not Pingu op 21-04-2004 19:42
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