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Half-Life 2 - Aftermath
Eurogamer.com has word that the expected expansion pack for Half-Life 2 is already in the works. Reporting on information gleaned from PC Gamer UK, the site has learned that the expansion will be entitled 'Aftermath' and is currently slated for a summer release. Aftermath will deal with the fallout from the events at the close of the PC title as the residents of City 17 make for the hills in an attempt to get to safety. Alyx Vance, heroine and robot wrangler, will play a larger role in the expansion, but the article doesn't give specific details on what exactly her relationship to you as the player will be. From the article: "The reason we're able to do this, and why it's so exciting is because of Steam. If we were doing this without Steam we'd have to put it in a box, we'd have to start figuring out shelf space over a year beforehand. You'd see it six years from now..."
If they followed the lead of Epic Games, and gave out their expansions for free, then they wouldn't have to preach about the virtues of using steam to sell their content rather than putting a box on the shelf. It's not ever caused them any problems...
I really hate steam and the direction in which video game distribution is headed, it's the whole reason I refuse to buy games like Half Life 2. I would be willing to pay a little extra if I got a nicely packaged product with a large dead tree manual and the reassurance that I will be able to play it years down the road.
I wouldn't be surprised if the next generation of consoles use a steam like system as well, ala the Phantom Console. Count me out.
Even tho many of its early users hate steam, its an interesting way of pushing out software. Saves the gamemakers money, and the gamers legs.
The system had the verbosity of HTML combined with all the readability of compiled assembly viewed as bitmap images
The end of the game left the question and the real only possibility was she died -- So she lived? Does anyone have a storyline write up about all this? I did find a few sites that tried to piece together everything, but anyone know anything else?
Proceed with Format (Y/N)? Y
One of the few annoying bits of HL2 was keeping Alyx and Barney from getting killed when they charged blindly ahead into danger. The same goes for the other NPCs, but at least their deaths didn't end the game...
The Army reading list
The reason we're able to do this, and why it's so exciting is because of Steam. If we were doing this without Steam we'd have to put it in a box, we'd have to start figuring out shelf space over a year beforehand. You'd see it six years from now...
They managed to release about 900 jillion addons for the first Half Life, even without Steam, and they didn't take 6 years to hit the shelves. They hardly took 6 weeks.
See how much you love Steam when they decide people shouldn't play Half Life 2 or it's addons anymore, because it'll cut into the market for Half Life 3.
Just say no to crappy schemes like that. Sorry, I want to know the game will be playable 10, 20 years from now, provided I still have the right hardware to play it on.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
All Hail Glorious Steam! The answer to and cause of most of Valves problems it would seem...
crazy dynamite monkey
Because this technology is not balanced. It allows the creator much more control over it than the end user, which is the problem.
Here is a fact: Right now Valve is watching you every time you play, and gathering information on your user habits, play times, durations of play, PC settings, hardware configuration, and storing it for market research data.
It's so much not the distribution method as it is the software in question. There is no reason for me to have their software running on my desktop with an active connection while I play. There is no reason for me to have to activate a store-bought version of the game online. Oh yeah, I forgot I might be a potential thief!
Now let's look at it from their side. Here's a group of people who now have an administrative piece of software on your machine. What else can they send through its active connection? What can they take away?
The liberties awarded to Valve when their software is installed on your PC are too much to ignore.
I guess I should count myself as fortunate that I apparently don't seem to have problems with immersive 3D games, or reading in cars. Now if I had a computer that would run HL2 well... and space to put the giant case in which I'd have to put the hardware.
Honor Among Slackers. A veri
Lets take some quotes from this.
Steam is the only direct-to-consumer internet-based game delivery service.
So, http based delivery doesn't count? Look at UT2k4 and the ECE expansion installer released to the public.
Any and all patches are applied quickly and easily with no input needed from me.
Is that a good thing?
I really like how it has been accepted, sometimes begrudgingly, by the game-buying public and geeks at large.
We didn't choose it. Steam was forced on whoever bought HL2. That's not called acceptance.
There are much less intrusive ways to release update packs and expansions than through Steam.
Really? Who is going to pay the designers, graphic artists and musicians who are needed for the content? Unlike programmers, they aren't stupid enough to work for free.
Oh wait, I forgot - they can sell tshirts or support. Or the engine could be free and the graphics/music etc could be pay! Thats great! We still don't have to pay those pesky programmers!
"The reason we're able to do this, and why it's so exciting is because of Steam. If we were doing this without Steam we'd have to put it in a box, we'd have to start figuring out shelf space over a year beforehand. You'd see it six years from now..."
Boy they must really think we are retarded.
Much less than a year after HL2 is released and its going to be ready, but we'd see it 6 years from now if it wasn't for steam.
I'm well aware he is exaggerating but it still doesn't remove the bullshit quotient.
So, the fact that at the launch I couldnt play the game I bought, the fact that months later at a LAN party only half the people could log in because steam puked, all that is supposed to be instantly negated by the wonderfull fact that Steam saves Valve some work.
That will mean a lot when they ditch steam and I can no longer go back and play my "vintage" copy of HL2.
"The saddest words of mice and men, are not those which were, but should have been."
While I agree with what you said, I have 1 distinct wish, that they would drop the sale price from buying off of steam 5 bucks. Seems like if they sold it for $5 less, they'd still make a killing, by not having to pay for packaging, cd's, trucks to deliver them, stores cut of profits, etc.. And I would love to see them publicly state somewhere that if, some day in the future, they decide not to keep a game working with steam, (abondonware?!) they will release a patch that lets it still work standalone.
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
Steam is the only direct-to-consumer internet-based game delivery service.
Umm... no. I bought a lot of games by going to a website, paying with a credit card, and downloading the game. That's "direct-to-consumer" and definitely "internet-based" game delivery to my hard drive.
Insomuch as a direct client-to-server experience with direct payment capacity in the client.
And why do I want a direct payment capability in the client? I don't. My web browser gives me all "direct payment capability" I need.
You trash it because it is the only one available and the only one that has performed.
LOL. It hasn't performed and that's why a lot of people are trashing it.
But anyway, my problems with Steam are not performance. They are that Steam doesn't want to be just a "delivery service". It wants to have ongoing control over what I do at my machine.
Why in the world don't I get a say in whether my game on my hard drive get patched or not? And why in hell would Steam throw a hissy fit if I decide to mess with game files -- again, my game files on my hard drive?
I want games that I will play on my own terms. I don't want a piece of software that will decide what's good for me and what's not.
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
I don't think anybody is knocking the direct-to-consumer part of steam, which is definately cool and the way to go.
What people don't like is that once they pay for the game and it's on their pc, then it should no longer be reliant on steam or steam servers to operate. I think consumers should also be in charge of updates if they want to be, just like windows update.
What's so hard about that?
If I had created the world I wouldn't have messed about with butterflies and daffodils. I would have started with lasers
Valve would really piss off the distributors and retail outlets if they offered HL2 direct for less. It wouldn't be much different then if iD offered Doom 3 for five dollars less if you bought it mail-order direct from them rather then getting it from Best Buy. You hack off the retail outlets, and they won't carry your game any more.
Once people stop being so phobic about technology like Steam, you'll probably see a much wider range of game prices from all sorts of different companies.
It's the land of the brave, and the home of the free
Where the less you know, the better off you'll be.
...but a lot of people feel safer with [technology that works and doesn't take away your freedom].
Needing to authenticate to play a game offline is the greatest crime against gamers I can think ok. Fact is if this wasn't Half Life for that reason alone the game would have tanked otherwise.
But I suppose next your going to tell me how DRM is just the next "logical progression" to "protect users" and that people who buy will only buy CD's are just being silly for hanging on to the past.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
I can understand why people hate Steam. But I have rarely had any problems at all with it, and furthermore, I am delighted to be able to give the entire price I paid for HL2 to Valve, and not a penny of it to a publisher.
One of the reasons Vivendi is allowing Valve (or not been able to stop them, or whatever) to distribute Half Life 2 over Steam, is because Valve has agreed to keep the price the same as the retail price.
Vivendi is a humongous company. They handle all the grunt work of packaging it, promoting it (in-store posters, etc), and getting it to the stores. Steam worries Vivendi, because it completely eliminates them (and any publisher) from the picture, because with Steam, publishers don't exist. If people had an incentive to buy Half Life 2 through Steam, as opposed to at retail, Vivendi would be pissed.
Valve would love to lower the Steam price, but there's a contract in place saying they can't. All the HL2 fan sites covered the lawsuit between Valve and Vivendi about HL2 publishing rights and Steam a few months before HL2 hit stores. There's a lot more to the pricing scheme than you realize.
I only use this PC for gaming, and I didn't install any new hardware or software - or even used the pc between my last successful gaming session and when this situation started. I know my account isn't hijacked or banned, because I was able to reset my password multiple times.
W T F?
We so need a paranoid moderation... ;)
Although I think it might get overused, especially in an YRO article...
No unauthorized use. Trespassers will be shot. Survivors will be shot again.
Will they give a discount of ~$5+ for people who d/l it off Steam? I didn't mind paying full price for HL2, but for the expansion
Favorite
Seeing the next movie costs at least 5 times less than the next game, in addition to the fact that the next game is likely to require new hardware.
-insert a witty something-