How It was Founded
Gabe Newell had zero experience with gaming, he would always get lost when even trying to create a game. But when all hope was lost he remembered that he once ported Doom onto the Windows 96, He decided to create the company. With lots of dedication Half Life was created. He didnt have too much education on games but he hired people who did. He wanted to make a Doom like game and thought of the idea of a alien based shooter. When creating models he took lots of inpiration off of real life people. When he created gordan it was just some big old dude with a big beard, it didnt really fit in with the scientist aspect of Half Life. The face of gordan freeman took high inspiration from one of the people he hired. when in the car with the game writer he decided on the name for the protagonist. Gordan Freeman. They were scared at first but finally the game was out. and you know what? It was a huge sucess, bringing many players such as myself to play it. thus starting the more games valve would create.
Alegations
When Goodness comes, The Darkness comes with. Over the years at Valve it hasnt been too great. Less games are pumping out and Gabe Newell is getting older and older by the second. Users face problems with their site steam and a lot of pressure is put on Valve. January 26, 2012, The Steam Mobile app is created. people are excited and can't wait to communicate with others on their phones. but when all seemed great, it went downhill fast, Tons of bad reviews and terrible UI. It didnt seem Valve was gonna do much about this and let it wait. They updated it occasionaly but it seemed like a total flop, leaving the app with a 2.4 to this day. Before Half life alyx released, People believed that Valve is just a cash grabbing company and didnt care to really make any more games and just sit back as other game devs upload to steam. that is until Half life Alyx released, People went crazy about it since it was the first Vr game Valve has made. I've played it myself and it is a great game. But there is one flaw, the story. The story was great but at the ending it just left us on a cliffhanger. the cliffhanger didnt show much besides alyx being sacraficed and Eli coming back to life and ending in the same room that Half Life 2 ended in. The concept of alyx being taken was awesome but it really didnt give us any info after eli's death besides that he comes back. no gordan freeman, more into the future. just alyx's story. Even though valve has some flaws it still is a great company and in my opinion probably one of the best!
How The Games were created
Portal
When Valve was creating even more games. they came across the Narbacular Drop, a project from the DigiPen Institude of Technology. The Beginning idea for the game was just placing portals on flat surfaces to manever through levels, A valve employee saw this and hired the student who thought of the idea and started to create Portal.
Portal 2
after portal's big success, they decided to start Portal 2. They decided to create Portal 2 after many employees wanted to create more portal mechanics. they expanded the lore and added way more things to the game. about 8 people worked on Portal but Portal two had about 4 times as many! Sadly just as portal was halfway done, the designer Kim Swift left Valve for Airtight games. But soon after Valve kept going with portal and soon enough it was out!
Half Life 2
Just about six months after Half life, Gabe Newell wanted to redefine the FPS genre. "Why spend four years of your life building something that isn't innovative and is basically pointless? If Half-Life 2 isn't viewed as the best PC game of all time, it's going to completely bum out most of the guys on this team." Said Gabe Newell. Half life 2 was hyped up to the max with instead of just being in Black mesa now you are going across the world! But when all seemed fine, disaster struck. A hacker had downloaded the Source code of the game and showed it to the world. Half life 2 wasnt even close to finishing and it seemed like they were gonna give up. The hacker Gembe was soon arrested after Valve planned to arrest them anyways. many years later they decided to return to the development and now its in the state it is now, A masterpeice.
Valve Itself
Valve is a video game company with 336 Employees and games that inspired many. For such a small company it impacted the internet immensley, Many people created mods, art, even there own games! Valve has impacted the gaming community as a whole and has even helped people provide for their families and has gained a pretty positive community!
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