magic_lobster_party

My day is no longer fine

The problem of being faster than light is that you can only live in darkness

When they started with episode 3 they’ve already worked on Half Life 2 for more than 8 years. Most good ideas had already been explored, and they struggled to come up with new ones.

At that point it’s easier to start with something fresh where they’re not confined with the expectations of what a Half Life 2 should be.

Some that come into my mind:

Sekiro Devil May Cry 1 & 3 Wonderful 101 Armored Core 6

I think these games are better on the subsequent playthroughs. Sekiro also has that itch no other game is able to scratch.

I think it shows that Valve has built a strong culture for creativity that’s hard to replicate. Their approach to play testing. The “flat” company structure.

What’s evident from the HL2 documentary is that there’s no single mastermind behind the game. There’s no Hideo Kojima or Will Wright. It’s the creative output of many individuals.

I watched the full documentary now. It’s clear they were burned out of Half Life when they started with Episode 3. The idea to deliver a new episode every 12 months wasn’t creatively sustainable. So they put it on hold while they worked on L4D and other projects.

They hoped the episodic delivery of games would be the future. Especially alongside a digital distribution platform like Steam. I suspect they realized episodes wasn’t the way after the release of Orange Box, so they moved on from that.

It’s confirmed real by other (less serious) news sources.

It was a few years ago, but I still panic when I hear the incoming call sound. One of the worst sounds ever made.

Now it was a few years ago I used it regularly last time, but moving to Slack was a huge relief.

One thing I remember with teams is that sending files was always a hassle. Sometimes files didn’t arrive. Files couldn’t have the same name as other previously sent files (because everything was in a onedrive folder).

Slack has much better search. It felt like I could finally find the messages I wanted to find. With teams it was a gamble.

And then there’s much better bot integration. At my work we have multiple bots that send messages when there’s e.g. production errors. We can then start thread discussions directly on that posts about the error, or link it to other channels to escalate the issue. And with a working search engine we can easily find the conversation again as a reference.

It got many small things that just adds value.

Apparently it’s super successful. Has made $3 billion within a year.