Half-Life Episode 1 Gold, Details on 2 and 3

Gamespot has the word that the first of the Half-Life 2 episodes has gone gold. They also have details on the upcoming Episodes 2 and 3. Episode 1 is to be released on the 1st of June. From the article: "In addition to two new multiplayer modes and the Lost Coast tech demo, Episode One will sport a preview of its sequel, Half-Life 2: Episode Two. The expansion, the existence of which was revealed in February, will add another four- to six-hour mini-campaign to the Half-Life 2 saga when it is released later this year. Previously, the game had no official release window or date. Today's gold announcement also was the first official confirmation that a third Half-Life 2 episodic update is in development. Like Episode Two, Valve divulged little in the way of information about Episode Three, saying only that it was the last 'in a trilogy ... that will conclude by Christmas of 2007.'"

Unfortunately, I won't be playing this...

... because Steam forces an update that causes HL2 to freak out and crashs on my machine. Older versions were fine, more recent ones are absolutely unplayable. Since you basically can't only run *some* updates, its impossible to get the old version of the game back, so I'm screwed out of my $80 or whatever I paid on zero day. I will never suggest to anyone that they buy anything under this business model, its rape city.

Re:Unfortunately, I won't be playing this...

I decide that HL2 would be the last Steam game I purchased the first time HL2 refused to run because too much time had passed since the last time Steam had updated. I wasn't permitted to play a single player game on my local machine until I allowed the software to phone home and "update".

The sad part is, the online content delivery system has the potential to be a great business model. But it seems like the entertainment industry looks at every technological advance as an opportunity to screw the customer.

On a side note, Valve offers a pretty compelling refutation to the idea that piracy drives up the cost of games. Steam practically eliminates the cost of piracy as well as physical production and distribution. So why does it seem like the games are even more expensive?

Stopping Piracy?

Steam does no such thing. I downloaded HL2 from a torrent, installed it under Cedega in Linux, played the single player story, installed a couple of mods, decided I would rather just wait for UT2007 or Savage 2, deleted it.

Linux Gaming ++
Warez as Demo ++
Steam --

Re:Unfortunately, I won't be playing this...

Have you talked with Valve customer support about this? We have a pretty aggressive track record when it comes to addressing customer complaints... at least the verifiable kind. Believe me, we don't want our updates to cause problems with existing legitimate installations. That wouldn't serve our purposes any more than yours.

A.C. (anonymous Valve employee; opinions above are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect those of the company, etc.)

Re:Unfortunately, I won't be playing this...

It takes quite a bit of time and effort to properly document and prepare a *useful* bug report

Probably a lot less time than it takes to write several lengthy bitches to Slashdot about the problem.

P.

Re:Unfortunately, I won't be playing this...

Customer support always assumes that the customer doesn't know what you're doing. I'd rather not spend an hour or more having somebody walk me through a re-install just to see the problem recur. (I had already done this). Further, I had already verified that it was a HL2 update issue (rather than a change of a machine) because it literally changed from working -> broken within a single Steam update. I had played some time before, shut it off, turned it back on, watched Steam update itself, then watched it not work anymore. All my other intensive games, (Doom3, FarCry)... working perfectly.

The game was simply fucked, which turned me off as a customer permanently. I'm sure you guys offer great customer service or whatever, but I'm one of those people that doesn't want to waste hours of my life talking to you over a problem that *may* or may not be resolved to retain me as a customer for a delivery system that I have grown to absolutely despise.

As someone who works in QA for a living, and whose customers are end-users just like you, I wanted to give my two cents regarding customer service. (This applies to pretty much ALL software, not just Steam)

You are correct that customer service does NOT make up for a crappy experience. If software had no bugs, there'd be no need for customer service. As a QA engineer, it is my job to ensure that our product is bug free as much as possible.

The problem is that it is nigh impossible to create bug free code in this day and age, with the complexity of programs nowadays, and also how open the PC platform is. Then you also have to consider things like ship dates and costs. From the QA perspective, we're supposed to find the bugs and only allow release when the product meets our quality bar. Unfortunately, that bar can never be at the "perfect" rate, because that would mean nothing ever ships. (For example, we'd spend years alone testing every combination of hardware, drivers, network configuration, etc.)

So at some point, we have to ship. After that point, then we have to rely on things like customer service to get a gauge of what we did right, and what we did wrong (bugs that slipped, etc.). There are always new things that popped up that no one had any idea it would be an issue, most often due to external dependencies.

One example I'll give ... we got a user report complaining that our website was not working at all for him. There was lots of cursing, how we must have been incompetent, etc. Although we could have just ignored him for rudeness, we took the time to investigate. It turns out the issue was due to a piece of malware that had infected his machine. His issue actually had nothing to do with our site code, and there's nothing we could do about it, other than coding some bizarre one-off that detected this peculiar piece of malware and handled it with an appropriate error message. But that's obviously easier to do after the fact, and arguably not something that's a priority. (If you compare a feature that would affect a handful of users, versus working on a new feature that would affect a much larger number ... what would you choose?)

I guess what I'm trying to say is to cut customer support some slack. Any decent QA department WANTS to fix your problems, and we're not out to just "screw you over" with a bad product. Chances are that your issue is very specific to your configuration, for whatever reason. Yes, your experience does suck, and I completely understand that for a game, you DON'T want to spend hours on the phone walking through your support issue. But doing so may fix your problem, and make the product better overall.

Hooray!

While I'm not certain that the "episodic content" model will work in the long run, I'm very excited about these new chapters in the Half-Life universe. Half-Life 2 was an excellent game and I'm looking forward to playing through Episode One (an odd name if ever there were one). Hopefully the content in this expansion will match HL2's quality.

uh... wait..

Didn't I already play episode 1? Does that mean that HL2 was "Episode 0"?

two new multiplayer modes?

What the hell are they?! I searched everywhere for the answer and can't find it - everywhere has nothing but hype about the HL2 singleplayer plot being advanced, how exciting!
HL2DM is suprisingly fun and well balanced so I might be willing to blow the $20, be nice to know what the hell multiplayer content is being added first though... The marketing on this is really crappy, it's all based on "find out what happens next in HL2" - I just want a simple feature list!

Re:two new multiplayer modes?

Err, no, I don't remember HL: Source being a letdown. It was exactly what I expected; HL1 in the Source engine. The huge improvement in lighting quality was quite nice when replaying HL1.

I should point you towards Black Mesa: Source [blackmesasource.com], which seems to be what you want; a professional quality full remake of HL1 in the HL2 engine.

Only 5 hours?

For the price of two of these, I could've bought new and got much more than 10 hours of play from it.

Money Grab

And thus begins the great money grab. What started as "Expansion Packs" became "Blister Packs" and finally we're at "Episodes". Less and less content for more and more money. Then they start skimming content from the initial release of the game to sell to you later at a ridiculous price.

Yes, I realize I can vote with my dollars, and I fully intend to. However I want to point out to everybody here that if you purchase this, you are essentially telling Valve "Yes, I buy into this episodic spiel and I love being bent over and taking it repeatedly in the ass as many times as you can release a new episode."

Enjoy.

Re:Money Grab

You got +4 Insightful for saying "I didn't like or understand the story in HL2"?

Lots of people enjoyed the story + gameplay and will happily pay to see it continued. You didn't and so won't pay. That's certainly your perogative.

Did you think that the story in HL 1 was gimped because the man in black was never properly explained? Did you think it was a rip off when they released two expansion packs and then (gasp!) a sequel? Did you refuse to see Lord of the Rings because they couldn't fit the whole story into a single movie? I'm going to assum that you don't like Lost either. I mean, they gimped the story in that show so hard that it's been two seasons and we STILL don't know what the fuck is going on.

That's american business for you

There seems to be very little appreciation anymore for the notion of having a stable business. You must always be growing and raking in more and more money. There's little room for a company to just keep delivering what they've been delivering consistently.

So if you sell a million copies of a game this year you have to sell two next year. Then four, then eight, then you have to start having upgrades and expansions that have lower productions costs but cost nearly as much to improve your margins and increase your growth.

Re:Money Grab

How can you possibly say that a 6+ hour single player mode and more multiplayer options are a money grab? Hate to break it to ya, but this is an expansion, and just because they're calling it an episode doesn't change that.

Anyone care to name five recent expansion packs that feature more content than this?

Oooo

4-6 hours of gameplay? Great! It rivals HL2 for content! I hope this thing sells for $8.99. or perhaps $9.99 if they include a storyline that was omitted from HL2. HL2 was shockingly short and utterly devoid of a storyline, and attempting to milk me for "expansion packs" for what should have been included in the original release is offensive.

Steam

Since I can read /. on my internet connection, but I cannot play any steam games with it, I have no intention of investing in any more of their products.
This culture of distrusting end users is absurd, and it only hurts the legitimate users. The pirates always find their way around security.
Now the rumor is that Sony is maneuvering to license PS3 games and not actually sell you the game disc. (http://www.gamesradar.com/gb/ps3/game/news/articl e.jsp?articleId=20060524153157765035&sectionId=100 6 [gamesradar.com])
I've been a bit off topic, but I don't enjoy playing games how they want and where they want. I'll find a nice open source game... like chess or sudoku.

Nah

It's probably only worth 50-60 silver.

Nothing new..

Half-Life 2 was episodic as well. You would play through one 'short' episode, and then have to wait a month or so until the next one was released. Oh no, wait, that was the loading screen.

I have

I have exactly £1.37 in my pocket. That's how much I'm willing to pay per episode. Period.

HalfLife is an all time classic

What I like most about half life game is that it is not just blind shooting of monsters though that is also involved. But you are forced to think while playing the game. It is just like solving a series of puzzling problems inside the game to get to the finishing line. And combined with the superior graphics engine, this is one game which rivals even Quake in game play and enjoyment.

Pity

*sigh*

Would have loved to play this. I liked HL2 when it came out. A lot. Played it completely through. Enjoyed every moment.
Won't touch it again: STEAM.
Hell of a lot of trouble initially, and then I need to allow the system to Phone Home at every game start. Even when calling the editor - thus, no maps from me.
And I will never, ever, buy anything using STEAM again. Not even the add-ons to HL2. No support from me, no money from me, and I've convinced quite a few nearly-customers of the same.