Half Life: ExtraMana Retrospective
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Gabe Newell started his career at Microsoft. He worked as a producer on the Windows 1, 2, and 2.1 Operating Systems. In December of 1993 ID Software releases Doom. Doom is a mega-hit and in late 1995, it is thought that more people have played Doom than own the Windows 95’ Operating System. Bill Gates recognizing the potential of Videogames decides to endorse Windows 95 as a gaming platform. Gabe Newell heads a team to port Doom to Windows 95. Micheal Abrash a colleague of Newell’s decides to leave Microsoft and work for ID Software on their next big game ‘Quake’. Abrash inspire Gabe Newell and another Microsoft employee, Mike Harrington to form their own games company ‘Valve’. In the summer of 1996, Mike Harrington and Gabe Newell visit John Carmack at the ID Software offices and discuss ideas for a game they want to work on. After some discussion Carmack gives them the source code to Quake so they can realise their game. Inspired by Quake, Gabe Newell wanted to create a fast-paced first person shooter called ‘Quiver’. There was also another project that was to be finished after ‘Quiver’ called ‘Prospero’. Quiver would feature aliens and a military base, and later on its development, the game would be rename to ‘Half Life’. Many of the employees that where taken on at Valve had worked as modders for Doom, Duke Nukem 3D and Quake. Valve’s release date for Half Life was set for November of 1997, but as the team got closer to that date they realized there were serious problems with the game. It had an array of technical issues, the levels where only loosely connected and the biggest problem of all the game just wasn’t fun to play. So rather than releasing the game in an imperfect state Valve decided to rework it. During the development of Half Life, Valve would completely re-write the majority of the Quake source-code to make their own Gold Source engine. Valve’s music and sound designer, Kelly Bailey would also lend his likeness to Half Life’s silent protagonist ‘Gordon Freeman’. Valve wanted Gordon Freeman to be able to interact with NPC’s throughout the game. Scientists and the security guard ‘Barney’ would reveal aspects of the story as the player went through the levels. This added a lot of depth to the game and was truly groundbreaking at the time. A near complete version of the first fifth of the game titled ‘Half Life Day One’ leaked onto the internet before the full game was released. Gamer’s and critics alike where awestruck with Half Life Day One. And amongst those who played it where John Romero who at the time was working on Daikatana and Time Sweeney who had worked on the Unreal Engine. When Half Life finally released in November of 1998, it was a mega-hit. Gaining over 50 Game of the year awards and eventually selling over nine million copies. Half Life was even cited as the best game of all time. But that isn’t the end of Half Life’s history. There are still hundreds of mods that have been made for the game. Since it would be impossible to talk about them all I’ll just talk about the most successful ‘Counter Strike’. Whilst Minh Le and Jess Cliffe where still in school they were modding games. Mihn Le’s first mod was made for Quake, the mod was called ‘Navy Seals’. Later both Jess Cliffe and Minh Le would work on a mod for Quake 2 called ‘Action Quake 2’. When Valve released the Source Development Kit both Cliffe and Le began working on a new mod called ‘Counter Strike’. It took them about 4 months to create the first Beta of the game. They took on the help of several map designers and continued to work on Counter Strike, releasing new Beta’s. Each having numerous improvements over the last. Valve recognizing the success of Counter Strike decided to buy the rights to the mod and release it commercially. It would go on to become the most popular multiplayer game in North America and to this day, there are still thousands of people online. The game itself was simple their where two teams, one terrorist, one counter-terrorist and the goal was to either eliminate the other team or to complete an objective whilst denying the other team a chance to do the same.The many mods made for Half Life boosted sales of the game and gave people even more reason to buy it. Even today people are still making great mods for the game, with details about the development of new mods being made on websites like Moddb. Half Life itself was a revolutionary first person shooter. It added more immersion and depth to the genre than any game before it and it is unquestionably one of the most influential videogames in history.
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