CrazyMAC Posted April 20, 2004 Report Posted April 20, 2004 http://www.forumplanet.com/planethalflife/topic.asp?fid=6549&tid=1352802 Quote
KidDynamite Posted April 20, 2004 Report Posted April 20, 2004 ((((((((( wuts it say i'm at work and can't read it, firewall settings block phl and alot of game websites Quote
madcow Posted April 21, 2004 Report Posted April 21, 2004 The post.. Now that I'm leaving PlanetHalfLife and resigning as Site Director, I'd like to be a drama queen, burn a bridge or two, and possibly maybe explain a few things. I apologize in advance the incoherence of this babbling, but it's not like you're being forced to read this crap. I started PHL in 1998, just after Half-Life hit store shelves. Half-Life: Day One absolutely blew me away. It was incredible. The full game was even better. I loved everything about Half-Life and I threw myself into the community. I made maps, I wrote horrible fan fiction (Walter's World), I spent hours playing HLDM (mostly on Gasworks). Half-Life is easily one of the best games of all-time (well, IMHO, at least) and nothing will ever change that. I reluctantly left PHL in 1999 due to my increasing workload. During my first stint at PHL, I was mildly irked by things like the TFC delay, PowerPlay, and the confusion over TF2 (it's an expansion pack! Oh wait, it's not!), but these were just minor inconveniences and as whole I liked the way Valve did business. Their support of the mod community in those early days is the reason why Half-Life is still so popular today. I quit GameSpy in 2000 and came back in mid-2002. When I took over PHL again, things had changed. Half-Life was clearly past its prime. Valve clearly wasn't the same company it once was. In early April 2003, Half-Life 2 rumors started to leak out. Print magazines were given the exclusive on all Half-Life 2 information and online sites weren't allowed to post screenshots or previews until 5/8/03. I felt this was a pretty stupid thing to do -- forcing people to jump through hoops and hunt down low-quality, blurry magazine scans to get a glimpse of the sequel they've been waiting five years for -- but hey, that's just my opinion and I'm obviously biased about the viability of the print medium. Valve's doing essentially the same thing again this year; print mags saw HL2 awhile back and that information will start trickling out shortly. I sat in on the first demonstration of HL2 at E3 2003 and was pretty damn impressed. When Gabe said that the game was coming out 9/30/03, I totally believed it. My interest in Half-Life had begun to wane, but that demo rekindled my interest in PHL in a huge way. Two months later, things started to get complicated. In mid-July I heard from multiple reliable sources that Half-Life 2 wasn't going to make 9/30/03. Then I got hold of pretty conclusive evidence that Valve's Doug Lombardi had flat out told print magazines (off the record, of course) to plan on pushing their reviews of Half-Life 2 back to the Holiday issues. Then in late July, Vivendi announced that Half-Life 2 would be delayed to the holidays. Since I knew the delay was coming, I jumped right on this and confidently reported it as fact. 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. At this point, I was stuck: I knew Half-Life 2 was going to be delayed, and instead of backing down and keeping my mouth shut, I kept (loudly) proclaiming that HL2 was going to miss 9/30 while other sites kept reporting the exact opposite, This was very frustrating, and if you were around during this period of time, you'll recall that I was acting like a real jerk. And to be fair to these other sites, they were being fed rather misleading information. Most of the above stuff I already talked about in this editorial from September, but there's one key piece of information I left out: In August, I made a mistake. I was recruited to work on Prima's Half-Life 2 Behind the Scenes book and signed an NDA. Now I was privy to all sorts of Half-Life 2 information and quickly became 100% sure the game was going to slip, but thanks to the NDA, I couldn't say a damn thing about any of it. This was INCREDIBLY frustrating. I haven't even mentioned I was (emphasis on was) working on the book until now, and even then I only mention it because word leaked out on some other forums recently and there's no point in denying it. In late August at ECTS, Valve's Doug Lombardi and Greg Coomer were both quoted as saying that the 9/30 release date was still happening. Lombardi told a co-worker of mine, to his face, that the game was still coming out September 30th worldwide. Some would call this marketing, but I'd call it lying. 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? Then the source code leak happened. I feel sorry for Valve that this happened because there's a possibility this could have a slightly negative on HL2 once it's finally released, but they really should have taken more precautions in the network security department. 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. Valve didn't announce that Half-Life 2 would be delayed until 9/23. This, to me, was inexcusable. It takes ten minutes to send out an email. OK, now you may be saying, "so what, why are you still crying about things that happened last year?" I think it's important to reiterate this story because it shows what kind of company Valve is. I don't feel they respect the community. If they did, they would have just confirmed Vivendi's delay announcement in July instead of stringing people along. Where is Half-Life 2 now? Beats me. I haven't kept up with the past 5-6 months of development and E3 is coming up anyway, so you'll see for yourself. I do know that content has been cut from the game in an attempt to get it to ship sooner. Will it ship this year? I guess there's a 50/50 chance, but keep in mind that this is the same company that took three years to add bots to a mod they didn't even make and slap it in a box. 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 could point out all the things Valve said they'd do but didn't, like releasing the HL2 benchmark or the SDK. I could whine on and on about how maddening it is to get flooded by mails from people complaining about how people can't play Half-Life anymore thanks to Steam or how Valve's customer support is non-existent. But the bottom line is this: I am not a fan of Valve anymore. I don't believe a damn thing they say and I'm sick of their bullshit. Valve needs to learn how to properly communicate with their online fan base and treat their fans with respect. That means not telling your fans 7 days before the ship date that HL2 is delayed. That means not giving out vague "oh HL2 will be released this summer and by the way we didn't say summer of what year and it's always summer somewhere in the world so who knows LOL we'll see!" answers to direct questions. That means not streaming a couple hundred megs of cache files to Steam user's hard drives without their permission or knowledge. 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. 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. Plus, Valve has gone over my head a couple of times and interfered (or attempted to interfere) with the content of this site, which I think is pretty sad. Forum posts of mine have been deleted on their orders and I've been forced to edit news posts because Valve didn't care for the information or opinions I was sharing. I'm sure they'll complain about this post and attempt to get it yanked, but I don't care. Don't get me wrong, Valve has some of the most talented developers in the industry. Some really great people who I respect immensely work there. It's a shame that most of these guys have been working hard for years on projects that have yet to see the light of day. There are just a few bad apples spoiling the soup. Or something. Oh man, this is possibly the most scary, convoluted thing I've ever written. ANYWAYS, it's obvious that I have no business running a site like PlanetHalfLife when it's obvious this crap has made me CRAZY INSANE, so it's time to give up my silly little crusade of constantly telling people that they're wrong and turn the site over to more professional management with a better attitude and perspective than myself. Jabberwocky will be taking over PHL and I'm sure you'll see plenty of other new faces on the site as well. A few more things: First, I'd like to publicly apologize to Pratt for a comment I made in the forums which seemed to imply that he wasn't reporting news properly. I was wrong, and he has the right idea. Secondly, I'd like to thank the HL2.net forums for their... enthusiasm... and some of the most hilarious things I've ever read. I'll never forget that thread where somebody compared me to Hitler for saying that Half-Life 2 would be delayed last year. Lastly, I'd like to thank all the PHL readers who have put up with the peculiar brand of garbage I've been dishing out the past couple years and for suffering through those "funny" flash movies of mine. Half-Life 2 will almost certainly be a great game once it's released and I can't wait to play it. Be patient, don't believe everything you read, think for yourself, and remember that history has a habit of repeating itself. Repeating itself. Repeating itself. THE END. Quote
zaphod Posted April 21, 2004 Report Posted April 21, 2004 I dunno, it seems like this guy is talking things a bit personally, maybe all the fans that thought valve personally violated thier asshole by lying about thier ship date should step back and try to stop playing games for a little while. Was valve's actions a little immoral? Sure. But valve is still a business, and they are selling people a product. Untill that product is out, they don't really owe anyone anything. All the bussiness to bussiness interactions with other developers, magazines, ati, etc, I think thats pretty bad practice in some cases, but I don't think anybody except the people at those respective businesses know exactly what happened in those cases, and I don't really think it's very fair for the layperson non-industry person to judge much in those instances. Also, CS:CZ not shipping for 6 months or whatever after it went gold wass entirely sierra's decision, which valve had no control over. I'm not defending valve here, they do some stupid stuff, sure. But so do a lot of other companies, and the only reason this kinda stuff makes big news is beacuse everyone has a magnifying glass over them. Quote
KidDynamite Posted April 21, 2004 Report Posted April 21, 2004 Hehehe he needed about 4 more "Repeating itself"s at the end then it woulda been good to go Quote
Guest John Kerry Posted April 21, 2004 Report Posted April 21, 2004 haha... i couldnt care less about valve or hl2... im sure it will be a good game "when its done" but untill then.. i am still finding this leak and date pushing back really really funny Quote
Tequila Posted April 22, 2004 Report Posted April 22, 2004 He does take it a bit personal, but still there's some interesting tidbits in there. Doesn't change that I think he's a bit of a prick, but hey he knows that himself and it's admirable how he stands up for his opinion with gusto. Oh, and it's too obvious he's talking about Doug Lombardi at that specific point. He seems like a prick too Quote
Mazy Posted April 23, 2004 Report Posted April 23, 2004 who gives a fuck, its hl2 /me goes to hell Quote
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.