-
Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
In the Valley of Gods (Campo Santo's next game) is officially on-hold
- Thread starter Deleted member 5322
- Start date
I mean honestly with how quick it sorta got dropped sounds like they sorta wanted to work on other stuff for a while.
thats a fact that almost no one will argue with but okay you do you
I mean they can and maybe they will but they're no longer in that zone, and they'll come out of Half Life with a new perspective that's likely going to change whatever the original vision was.
I swear I saw someone say this would happen months ago when they were bought.
Highlander rules always in effect for black folk.
I find it hard to believe they suddenly don't want to make the game they were making. It looked great.
Anything they can do with Half-Life is surely going to be better than Firewatch, so this is good news imo
indie studios often have to make games for existential reasons
indie studios often have to make games for existential reasons
Sad news
Old Idle Thumbs fan here. Hoping they would pick up their podcast hats again. (Loved their design talks, especially on systemic games) Guess that's swallow by Valve Time too :(
side note: Maybe they'll finally make their version of Far Cry 2, in Half-Life setting?
Old Idle Thumbs fan here. Hoping they would pick up their podcast hats again. (Loved their design talks, especially on systemic games) Guess that's swallow by Valve Time too :(
side note: Maybe they'll finally make their version of Far Cry 2, in Half-Life setting?
people out here really getting attached to 2 minute years old trailers. smh
still got a steam page.
still got a steam page.
How Valve operates at a core level is not PR. Valve does not have management telling you what to work on. If you are a Valve employee, you choose what to work on. Once Campo Santo joined Valve, every individual at Campo Santo was free to choose how to use their time, not directed what to work on.
Valve Employee Handbook, p.8 "What to Work On"
PSA: 95% of developers in most studios don't decide what game to make, what type of game, the direction of the game, etc. They just make the game the owners or executives decide to make.
Most of the Campo Santo devs probably don't have a very high attachment to the new IP, so when they had the chance to work on Half Life instead, why not take it?
Most of the Campo Santo devs probably don't have a very high attachment to the new IP, so when they had the chance to work on Half Life instead, why not take it?
Well it's no surprise, like many others have said. The best you can hope for is either the team comes back to work on it and release it or Campo Santo devs leave, use the knowledge they gained from working on Dota, HL: Alyx, and other stuff and use it to release "In The Valley of..." on their own. Valve doesn't keep other devs' IPs before they got absorbed into Valve so there's that chance.
If the team has disbanded to multiple other projects, this sounds as good as cancelled tbh. Which sucks. I was really looking forward to this one.
Weren't people extremely dismissive about this being the eventual outcome? Seems like it's on brand.
Didn't even one of the devs snap back at people on Twitter about making statements about people just changing their bios?
If this is what the team wants, then I'm happy for them despite my personal desire.
Didn't even one of the devs snap back at people on Twitter about making statements about people just changing their bios?
If this is what the team wants, then I'm happy for them despite my personal desire.
It's disappointing, but after how long we went without much word on it I'm not that surprised. I liked and was interested in what little we saw of it.
Was really looking forward to this one. :( I hope the Campo Santo team are excited about their current slate of projects, of course.
This doesn't sound like a reality of working life at Valve from people that have spoken about being there. Also games would never be finished if there was literally no one giving any direction to anyones work so yehhhhhhhh sure
That was reality for me. With that said, I can't speak for everyone, and Valve is a big company.
In my experience, there are "shadow structures" and politics that will happen at any company that adopts flat/no management. Certain people's opinions are very important, and you figure out who those people are pretty quick.
You are very much at liberty to work on whatever you deem important, and it's in your best interest to convince others the thing you want to work on are the right things, or else you'll have a hard time recruiting people to work on it with you. It's not hard to believe a lot of Campo Santo joined Valve and decided their time was better spent on other prominent Valve projects.
Rough to see a studio that that made a game as good as fire watch just be dissolved into AAA quagmire. I'm going to be petty for a second and call them sellouts, and then acknowledge that it's more complicated than that. Shit situation for fans, but good for them if that's what they wanted.
Haha ok fair enough then! Still seems weird though - if people can work on whatever the hell they want why did it take so long for Half Life to get this prequel? No one wanted to work on a half life game for 12 years? Anyway people that worked there obviously have a better idea than me so I'll shut up and take their word for it!
I'm seeing a lot of fluff there that mostly just suggests a lot of social pressures and "recruiting". Never mind that they ask employees to base their work on what will be most valuable.
Either way, it's very fortuitous for GabeN that Campo Santo up and decided to abandon the project they'd been working on for years to put their efforts behind the project they need to push their VR hardware and Dota.
Imagine being bought by Valve and then learning that there's a new Half-Life game in the works and you have the opportunity to work on it. I have to wonder how many people would pass that up. You'll always have that in your CV now.
Anyways, on hold doesn't mean cancelled. The way some of the ex campos have been gushing about Source 2, I wouldn't be surprised if Valley gets moved to Source 2 after they ship Alyx.
Anyways, on hold doesn't mean cancelled. The way some of the ex campos have been gushing about Source 2, I wouldn't be surprised if Valley gets moved to Source 2 after they ship Alyx.
"but it certainly feels like a project people can and may return to"
That is not a very promising statement.
---
This was almost certainly Valve's intention. Their management structure isn't one that would reward folks for remaining on the game instead of Valve's other sexier and/or more profitable ventures.
That is not a very promising statement.
---
This was almost certainly Valve's intention. Their management structure isn't one that would reward folks for remaining on the game instead of Valve's other sexier and/or more profitable ventures.
There is a documentary about valve and half Life Alyx that is coming, with the first episode already out. You could start watching that instead of insinuating whatever you feel its happening right there
Valve has always had an iterative process when it comes to game design. They'll design and redesign, write and rewrite until something matches their standards. Since they have no strict project deadlines, they can keep iterating until the team decides it's finally good enough.
From what I understand, HL:EP3 has been worked on for a long time . . . they've just never made a version they were satisfied with.
Valve is crazy about VR hardware -> Needs a killer app to move sales and the tech forward -> "uhh, what can we use that will interest people... Oh, Half-Life of course"
And that's it.
Things like DOTA, Steam, CS, and TF2 were all low hanging fruit with lots of potential. Half-Life was mildly terrifying to work on.
Also, at Valve, your overall compensation is highly tied to success of the things you work on. It has changed a bit over the last couple of years since they restructured base comp to be higher and less of total comp tired to year-end bonus, but that was the case when I was there.
This has been detailed in the interview for HL: A, I think, but lots of potential options were explored for their first big flagship VR title, and lots of options were explored for continuing HL, and none of them made anyone excited at the time, so nobody worked on it.
It's totally possible that before the acquisition they talked to Campo Santo and scoped out whether they'd be excited to work on other things as part of their merger. But this isn't big bad Valve making Campo Santo abandon their life's work or something.