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Newell On Half-Life 2 Delay
Thanks to GameSpot for their brief interview with Valve's Gabe Newell, in which he discusses when the ravenously-awaited Half-Life 2 will finally come out. He laments: "I hate release dates because no matter how hard we try, we screw them up. We held back talking about our release date going into September 30th because I wanted to have a much clearer idea of what day we were going to ship on." As for an actual day, he offers: "Right now all we can say is holidays of this year, which to me feels really unfortunate." Elsewhere, Newell refuses to elaborate on the little-known multiplayer modes for the game, saying they're "...something we're not talking about because we want to keep it as a surprise for our customers as we roll into our launch cycle."
They missed asking the basic question - why was the game delayed? - and the supplemental: how did you not manage to realise that the game would require another 3 months development until only a week before the supposed release date?
Seriously though, my upgrade cycle is dictated far more by games than anything else. Despite the fact that I rarely have time to play them...
Q.
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Will centre around the long awaited Team Fortress 2. I seriously doubt that Valve would just shelve all of the effort that they put into that product. Besides, games along the lines of Natural Selection have helped to get players used to the RTS as FPS gameplay that TF2 will herald.
Yeah, there's this thing, it's called "Project Management." It's where you figure out how long things are going to take to do, and you make sure they happen in the right amount of time.
I know, sometimes it's tough. Usually it's the most difficult when you have someone telling you that you have to have something done by X time, and you know that time is clearly impossible, but they make you plan for it anyways. That's not the case here, though.
The case here is more likely that they don't know how to plan for QA. I would be willing to bet that they think that Quality Assurance means "Testing the game at the end and fixing the bugs."
Good project managers know that QA is planned for from the beginning, and that you know, from experience and extrapolation, how longs things will take to do. Most importantly, be able to know when you're done. Usually the answer is and ideal, "When we test a couple of times and there are no bugs," though that usually works out to be, "When we test a couple of times and there are no bugs we can't fix by the first or second patch." There are other, better ways to know when you're done testing, if it's part of your complete project plan.
=Brian
There is nothing so good that someone, somewhere, will not hate it.
I am in the exact same situation as you. The new generation of games comes out? Time to get that shiny new P4 3.2C, 800Mhz FSB Motherboard, a gig of RAM, etc...
And then you spend all your time optimizing, fixing, tweaking, and repairing your system. Sure, you have games, but they are mostly used as benchmarks.
It's time to admit what you are: A Computer Hypochondriac.
I usto think of valve as one of the only truly quality game companies next to relic, id and a few others i cant think of.. then word on Steam came out about how it would replace won in half life and i first hand knew that it would suck in the beta's... if only it would've stayed in there a little more, i can only tell myself that the original half life team and hl2 have never touched steam. hehe anyway... can anyone solve this?: Doom 3 is to Half Life 2 as John Carmack is to !blank!
Common, people, this isn't a film or a novel. If they are unwilling to discuss the concept with the gaming public at large, it sounds very much like their afraid it is going to be a shitty idea. If they believe in the multiplayer mode, they'd be screaming it from the rooftops to build up suspense.
This doesn't sound good at all.
That the source code to the freaken game was just leaked to the public!
Yeah that could lead to some delays.
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The "good news" is that even if I have to dump $50 bucks on the game, it won't be out until "holidays of this year," so there's a chance I can talk either a mobo or a Radeon out of my fiancee for Christmas. That'll coincide nicely.
okay.. so whats the fsking deal?
i have to pay for a single player version?
i have to pay again fro the multiplayer version?
or i can just pay alot for a special all inclusive version???
this is garbage... this confusing to me.. let alone people out there in retail land who dont know this and just buy the first box they see.. man what kinda crap is this.. dose daryl mcbride work for valve now?
The More Knowledge you have the Luckier you Get- J.R. Ewing
Gamespot failed to ask the most pressing question of all: What's the deal with the allegedly leaked Half-Life 2 source code? Is it real? Is it buildable? Is it all your fault, Gabe?
But the outcome is estimatable. (word?) Ideally, you should be estimating how many defects you'll find, and their severity. All that should to into your QA plan up front, before you ever see the code. But that applies more to stable projects with a measurable history. You could still do it for a new project, you'd just be less accurate.
Of course, all of this is theoretical - I have been doing QA/Testing for 10 years, and I haven't seen anyone actually do this. Or a lot of the other things you are "supposed" to do. Everyone picks and chooses what they do to fit their needs. A rock-solid QA process depends on input from a lot of other sources, and without 100% upper management support, it ain't going to happen the way it should.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.