How Valve made Half-Life 2 and set a brand new normal for future video games

It is Half-Life 2 week at Ars Technica! This Saturday, November 16, is the twentieth anniversary of the discharge of Half-Life 2—a sport of historic significance for the creative medium and know-how of pc video games. Every day up by means of the sixteenth, we’ll be operating a brand new article wanting again on the sport and its affect.

There was some debate about which product was the primary trendy “triple-A” online game, however ask most individuals and one reply is certain to no less than be a contender: Valve’s Half-Life 2.

For Western PC video games, Half-Life 2 set a normal that held robust in builders’ ambitions and in gamers’ expectations for properly over a decade. Regardless of that, there’s solely a lot new floor it really broke when it comes to how video games are made and designed—it’s simply that the majority video games didn’t have the identical dedication to scope, scale, and polish all on the similar time.

To kick off every week of articles wanting again on the influential traditional, we’re going to go over the way in which it was made, and simply as importantly, the thought that went into its design—each of which had been extremely influential.

A narrative of cabals and Electronics Boutique

Growth, design, and manufacturing practices within the video games trade have all the time various extensively by studio. However due to the success of Half-Life 2, a few of the approaches that Valve took had been copied elsewhere within the trade after they had been shared in weblog posts and convention talks at occasions just like the Sport Developer’s Convention (GDC).

The cabals of Valve

Valve is legendary for influencing many issues in gaming, nevertheless it was most influential in its comparatively flat and democratic staff construction, and that performed out even throughout Half-Life 2’s growth within the early 2000s. Whereas many studios are damaged up into clear departments large and small for various disciplines (similar to artwork, stage design, fight design, narrative design, AI programming, and so forth), many elements of Valve’s Half-Life 2 staff consisted of a half-dozen multi-disciplinary small teams the corporate internally called “cabals.”

Every main chapter in Half-Life 2 had its personal distinctive four-to-five-person cabal made up of stage designers and programmers. These teams constructed their ranges largely independently whereas continuously exhibiting their work to different cabals for suggestions and cross-pollination of excellent concepts. All of them labored inside constraints set in a pre-production part that laid out components like the primary story beats, a few of the weapons, and so forth.

Moreover, equally sized design cabals labored on points of the sport’s design that crossed a number of ranges—typically made with representatives from the chapter cabals—for issues like weapons.

There was even a “Cabal Cabal” made up of representatives from every of the six chapter groups to critique the work coming from all of the groups.

Ruthless playtesting

Many sport designers—particularly again within the ’80s or ’90s—labored largely in isolation, figuring out privately what they thought can be enjoyable after which transport a completed product to an viewers to search out out if it actually was.

In contrast, Valve put an excessive amount of emphasis on playtesting. To be clear: Valve didn’t invent playtesting. However it did make {that a} key a part of the design course of in a means that’s even fairly frequent at the moment.

The Half-Life 2 staff would ship representatives to public locations the place potential followers would possibly hang around, like Electronics Boutique shops, and would strategy them and say one thing alongside the strains of, “Would you wish to play Half-Life 2?” (Most stated sure!)

The volunteer playtesters had been delivered to a room arrange like an actual participant’s lounge and informed to take a seat on the pc desk and easily play the sport. Behind them, the extent’s cabal would sit and watch a feed of the gameplay on a TV. The designers weren’t allowed to speak to the testers; they merely took notes.

By means of this course of, they realized which designs and concepts labored and which of them merely confused the gamers. They then made iterative adjustments, playtested the extent once more, and repeated that course of till they had been pleased with the end result.

Right now’s builders typically take a extra subtle strategy to sourcing gamers for his or her playtests, ensuring they’re placing their video games in entrance of a wider vary of individuals to make the video games extra accessible past a devoted fanatic core. However nonetheless, playtesting throughout the trade at the moment is on the stage it’s due to Valve’s refinement of the method.

The alpha wave

For a sport as bold as Half-Life 2 was, it’s stunning simply how polished it was when it hit the market. That iterative mindset was a giant a part of it, nevertheless it prolonged past these shopper playtests.

Valve made positive to allocate a big period of time for iteration and refinement on an alpha construct, which on this case meant a model of the sport that may very well be performed from starting to finish. When chatting with different builders in regards to the course of, representatives of Valve stated that if you happen to’re engaged on a sport for only a 12 months, it is best to attempt to get to the alpha level by the top of eight months so you have got 4 for refinement.

Apparently, this made a huge impact on Half-Life 2’s general high quality. It additionally helped tackle pure downsides of the cabal construction, like the truth that chapters developed by largely unbiased groups supplied an inconsistent expertise when it comes to the problem curve.

With processes like this, Valve modeled a number of issues that might be normal in triple-A sport growth for years to return—although not all of them had been performed by Valve first.

For instance, the strategy to in-game cutscenes reverberates at the moment. Completely different cabals centered on designing the degrees versus planning out cutscenes wherein characters would stroll across the room and work together with each other, all whereas the participant might freely discover the surroundings.

The staff that centered on story performances labored with stage designers to dam out the strolling paths for characters, and the extent designers had to make use of that as a constraint, constructing the degrees round them. That meant that adjustments to stage layouts couldn’t create conditions the place new character animations must be made. That strategy remains to be utilized by many studios at the moment.

As is what’s now referred to as greyboxing, the apply of designing ranges with out high-effort art work in order that artists can are available and fairly the degrees up after the format is settled, quite than having to always commute with designers as these designers “discover the enjoyable.” Valve didn’t invent this, nevertheless it was a giant a part of the method, and its in-development ranges had been stuffed with the colour orange, not simply grey.

Discovering the DNA of Half-Life 2 in 20 years of video games

When Half-Life 2 hit the market through the newly launched Steam digital distribution platform (extra on that later this week), it was extensively praised. Critics and gamers on the time liked it, calling it essential title and one which outlined the PC gaming expertise. A number of of the issues that got here out of its growth course of that gamers keep in mind most from Half-Life 2 turned staples over the previous 20 years.

For example, the sport set a brand new normal for character animations in totally interactive cutscenes, particularly with facial animations. Right now, way more superior movement seize is a typical apply in triple-A video games—to the purpose that video games that don’t do it (like Bethesda Sport Studios titles) are extensively criticized by gamers merely for not taking that route, even when movement seize doesn’t essentially make sensible sense for these video games’ scope and design.

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