I don’t actually play GTA online, but they are very successful with their online offering, their daily low looks to be >60k concurrent players. I suspect it’d be VERY hard not to continue with the online bit.

Interviewer: why are you a good fit for valve?

Hoopo: we sold ror before we could make a third

interviewer: welcome aboard!

If the internal sponsor of an idea get bored or loses support from colleagues, the project just halts.

Yeah, i kind of agree with everything you’ve said, and history as i remember it kind of backs up what you’ve said about tf2.

But I don’t agree that they don’t care about story and only do it for marketing. I think halflife’s episodes are all about an attempt at continuing that story.

I think that the Cave and Glados bits of portal are a large part of what made those games (of course the gameplay loops are really tight there.

I think the only way to know would to be an insider. I also don’t think it really matters, the games they make are good.

I do think you are right, they start out on gameplay; getting that inner game loop to be fun is primary (I kind of though that’s how most (non narrative) game studios worked though).

they don’t make games to tell stories

This was mostly what i was suggesting was incorrect. I also don’t think it’s a major part of marketing. I’m suggesting they don’t bother putting the work of story into something until that inner game loop is fun.

TF2 was the result of experimentation with team based death match gameplay

Didn’t they already know about team fortress? This seems off based on team fortress having already existed, same with wolfenstine enemy territory.

I’m not sure your theory stands up, they did all those comics around TF2. They hired those old man Murray dudes I thought just to work on narrative. They’ve gotten famous actors to do roles!

I think saying halflife was never about story is just wrong.

If you stripped dialog from portal you’d have a significantly worse game. Did you forget all the glados shit that came out after portal? Humor is a major part of those games which is all about dialog.