While in quarantine in New Zealand, Valve’s national news channel made Gabe Newell sit down and not answer some of his favorite questions clearly. They did their best to ask about all the games that end with three, but Newell, of course, declined to say anything about it. He was willing to say that the company has games in development and also mentioned that the release of Half-Life: Alyx created despair within the company to continue to create singleplayer games.
Newell talked to 1 News about things like esports and Cyberpunk 2077, but of course things always go back to Valve’s own games.
“We definitely have games in development that we will announce – it’s fun to deliver games,” he said. Of course, it’s no wonder he’s working on games. Valve has had all kinds of games in development over the years. I heard many of them in the documentary Half-Life: Alyx – Final Hours last summer. They started and canceled everything, from Half-Life 3 to a kind of RPG to other VR experiments.
The biggest question is whether they will finish and launch any of the games they are currently playing. Newell’s mention that Valve might actually announce something of what they have in development is interesting.
Somewhat on the subject, Newell says, “Alyx was great – going back to single-player games, which created a lot of momentum inside the company to make the most of it.” That’s not what I would call a concrete commitment, but it’s good to hear that taking Alyx out the door can be a source of inspiration for Valve to get other single-player games in the wild more often.
As for all those series without a third entry, well they tried at least. “I haven’t talked about these things successfully in a long time, and I hope I keep talking about them until there are questionable questions,” Newell said. “Then we’ll move on to a new set of questions.”