Only a fool would think that Half-Life 3 will be a VR exclusive, but that doesn’t mean that some sort of tie-in with VR is impossible.
I’ll be honest and say that I haven’t followed much about Valve’s involvement with the HTC Vive but that’s mostly due to the fact I know I won’t be able to afford to buy it. If, like me, you don’t know much but want to learn more check out the Steam page.
The question is whether Valve will promote both Vive and HL3 at the same time.
Most potential HL3 players won’t be able to afford the $900 for one but some will but will need convincing and Half-Life 3 could just be the game that convinces them.
I obviously have NO idea what Valve will do but just for the sack of argument, imagine Valve said that you could purchase Half-Life 3 WITH a Vive 1 month before standard Steam release as a bundle.
Would that be enough to convince you to spend the money?
Remember, I am just talking out of my hat here and have NO knowledge of what Valve plan to do.
I don’t think so. For me, videogames should stay on the monitor. I might try it eventually but I won’t buy games that is strictly vr. I don’t like the fact that I can’t see what is around me in real life.
People surely said that games should come in boxes with cds back when half life 2 was released and now every gamer has a steam account. I didn´t think of this until now but i´m sure they are gonna tie something to the game if it ever comes.
While I’m a 100% steam gamer, even I will buy whatever physical product is available from Valve for HL3’s eventual release.
That will not, however, mean I’m going to buy a gimmick headgear. I want some physical thing to stick on my shelf – I have the OB and even a box (not the original owner) for the Sierra Half Life 1 release, so I would love to have a trio to complete that set. However, I won’t be forced into buying something that would feed me for literally a year, when the time comes. I want the game, not the gimmick.
Digital distribution is here to stay, but there will always be folks who want something more special. I ran a comic store for 13 years, and saw the advent of webcomics as a ‘thing’ – but still, even now, most successful webcomics *have physical product* in the long run, for people to physically flip through while they are not online. I can’t see it being much different from any game in the future. Even if the disks are blank, no one’s gonna care – I think by the time HL3 comes out, people will have forgotten that disks even used to have a full game on them… 🙂
‘No, because I won’t be GUYING one’
PHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIILLIP!
Fixed, thanks.
no why would I? Half-Life 3 won’t be a VR game.
the question is would you buy a Vive anyway
Well, no. I’ve heard HL3 won’t be a VR game, and I’m not interested in buying an HTC Vive (mainly because of the price).
Valve is actually going to make HL3? Where is that info coming from?
I really wanted to say the same thing but finally decided not to speak ironically of it here 🙂
Definitely would not purchase a VR headset, a widescreen monitor is more than enough for me. Purchasing Half-Life 3 is a maybe, a lot of its original developers and designers have left Valve and personally, I have rarely seen a series be done well by anyone other than its original makers. Not to mention, Valve has changed drastically over the years and in many ways has become a corporate parasite much to the likes of Ubisoft and Electronic Arts.
I’m very very sorry that I’m commenting here, but I really need some help and I have no idea where else to go. Philip, if this is an inappropiate comment, please tell me and remove my comment, I understand completely.
I’m working on my map, but I’ve accidentally inserted an unvalid text into an env_hudhint. Stupid me saved the .vmf, and now the .vmf is corrupted. I can’t open it to remove the env_hudhint, and I don’t know how to fix the map without starting all over – which I’d rather not, having spent quite a few hours already on it.
Does anybody know a way I can externally remove the env_hudhint from the .vmf file so I can open it again in Hammer? I’d be eternally grateful.
And to atleast answer the poll question – I’m already planning to buy the Vive as soon as I’m financially able, if not for HL3 then atleast for the Half Life 2 + Episodes support. The Oculus + Razer Hydra gameplay I’ve seen in Half Life 2 looks tremendously fun, and I’d love to experience that.
You can open the vmf file with any text editor and just delete the bad section…
Yes I realized after some frantic searching around that the .vmf is openable in notepad. I feel slightly stupid now.
Sorry for the bother, Philip you’re welcome to edit out my desperate plea for help – I’ve managed to fix the corruption by going manually through the .vmf and finding the hudhint causing the problem.
I voted no. Between the Oculus, PlayStation VR and the Vive, the Vive is by far the most expensive option.
I feel there are a lot of reasons to believe that, of these, the PlayStation VR is the one most poised to take off. It offers the lowest price point, “good enough” hardware, and the ability to “just work” on a simple PlayStation 4. Hardcore gamers are not terribly interested in VR, so when your market is basically driven by curiosity, you can’t charge an arm-and-a-leg for it.
Besides, we all know this will be an iterative product. There’s no sense in paying $700 for something you know will be replaced in a couple years with an improved version, especially when you’re not even sure how much you’ll use it in the first place.
yeah, it’s for enthusiasts, or people with money.
Everyone else will wait a year or two and get the “mass-market” version
Yeah. The part that baffles me is how Oculus and HTC did the same thing – targeting the very high-end while ignoring the “mass market” completely.
Really depends on when Half Life 3 would be released. Right now while I don’t have much disposable income, there’s no way I’d purchase the Vive, just too damn expensive. Of course if HL3 was instead released in the inevitable future scenario where I’m rich and famous, I’d certainly consider it- VR seems like it could have some really interesting applications in gaming.
No chance in hell for me buying any of the VR gimmick toys, honestly. First off: I have no money. I cannot invest in something like this and honestly for the price I would be better off paying rent or getting myself to the doctor instead.
Second: I get motion sickness during many games, source included, so I must turn off motion blur to start off. I played for about 5 minutes with a friend’s headset for some other product thing, and after about 2 minutes I got so dizzy i couldn’t even sense which way was up. My eyes decide that if I’m looking at a screen – at any distance – that screen needs to be *stationary* and when things move with your head… that just completely ruins my sense of balance.
If they make A VERSION of HL3 or any game at all for its release, I’m sure plenty of people will enjoy buying it, but like Crowbar and Maki hint, it’s earliest release will be for those people who have nothing but money to blow, leaving the rest of the market, such as it is, to wait for cheaper iterations of it.
That’s IF enough of the things sell, and enough games are made for it. As most systems with gimmicks have learned, the market is quite small particularly compared to their overall market, which has been – in this case – waiting for a GAME rather than a GAME SYSTEM for a very, very long time.
I won’t be buying a VR piece, ever, pretty much straight up. I know plenty of people who cannot afford them, but also those who like myself experience radical balance issues and sickness from them: that’s *alienating* an audience, even if they have money to buy the thing. So… no.
I wouldn’t pay 900$ for a VR headset…
However I would pay 900$ for the HL3 game (if it is ever released) 😛
Absolutely
Noooooo way.
I wasn’t willing to pay $500 for an Xbox One for Halo 5 so I sure as hell won’t be willing to pay over $1300 for Half-Life 3. As much as it’s hyped up, people forget that it’s still just a video game. You could buy some of the best graphics cards on the market with that money.
VR is neat and all, but it only really shines through in things made specifically for it. With things like FPS it’s cool for a bit but soon becomes more a hindrance than anything.
Wait, everyone in here is talking like HL3 has been confirmed or something. Did I miss some big news or something?
Nope. HL3 is still just as vague as ever. The question was would you buy the Vive if you got a copy of HL3 with it.
I’m speaking here as a longtime Half-life mapper and player who now happens to work for a VR startup company.
My honest opinion is that the Vive is still too expensive, and even if a HL3 copy was bundled with it for no additional cost, I would still consider it expensive.
Would I buy one?
If I had the money, for sure. Room scale VR with laser tracking is on another level compared to what the other experiences offer. We have access to all the popular headsets (except PSVR for now) and the HTC is the best by far. Half-life 2 on the DK2 makes me dizzy and nauseous. The Aperture Science demo on the Vive, however, feels perfect.
It’s important to note that if HL3 was to be designed for the Vive, it would not be a Half-life game as we know it. In fact, It would have to rely on some mode of traversal more similar to Portal (think Jeeboman, Budget Cuts or other VR games with a teleporter) instead of the traditional seamless experience. I think this would be highly unlikely as it would be too big of a departure from the traditional formula. If anything, I’m betting more on similar experiences to the Aperture labs demo in the HL universe (Think a scientist trapped in a Black Mesa room and crowbar-ing the **** out of incoming headcrabs).
VR is definitely not ready for very long stretches of gameplay, at least for now.
(On a related note, being able to look around my own maps in VR is actually a pretty amazing experience even with the dizziness. And a real eye-opener when it comes to scales and proportions!)
VR.. like 3D makes an appearance evey few years as a Fad.
Bottom line is – VR isn’t really suitable for the majority of games. Sure, it’s fun, interesting and cool to use VR but it just isn’t pratical. It’s like the Wii… you can play tennis with the controller standing up, looking like an idiot jump around the place – or you can play better with your ass on the couch.
Same applies for VR. It does have it’s uses with slower paced stuff… but gaming, particularly FPS gaming – nah – it’s a gimmik.
Mainly because it limits the speed/response you can play at.. you can’t be whizzing around wearing a headset like you can flick a mouse – your neck would be bolloxed after a few minutes – and that’s why it will never take off for gaming. Sure, fun to try and mess around with – and with slower paced material I’m sure it would rock – but with HL3.. not a chance.
The future of VR.. like most new technology.. is porn. 🙂
I thought the same thing, but games like Jeeboman proved me wrong. Room-scale VR lets you freely rotate your whole body and not just the headset. It doesn’t strain your neck more than playing paintball or laser tag would, even in frantic experiences with enemies coming from all directions.
You can still use a mouse and keyboard if you really need to, but of course substituting your natural head movement for the mouse movement is on the top of the list of nausea-inducing practices in VR…
I won’t be dabbling in VR in any way, shape or form. I have neither the space or the money for what is essentially a gimmick.
The only way I would ever get my hands on one would be if some business opened up with a large space where people could pay for an hour or more to play with it. A VR cafe of some sort.
I’m old – and have lived through the last 3 VR ‘fads’
When it comes to FPS games the responsiveness just isn’t there compared to a keyboard/mouse – and any game catered for VR is of a slower pace.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s lovely and immersive playing in VR, but at the end of the day it depends on the pace of the game. I don’t think I would be interested in a slow paced HL3 needed to be played with a headset – it limits every aspect of it apart from the visual – and, as we all know by this stage.. pretty graphics don’t make a game. Gameplay does.
Look at it this way.. when HL2 was released and focused on VR – it would have appealed to a large demographic initially – and would have been amazing to play if you were a slow paced player wanting to look at the pretty environment – but as a practical gaming device that;s open to all levels.. aswell as the super expansive world the HL2 community is regarding mods etc – it just would never take off. Then with the millions of players who play multiplayer games online, competitively, spawned from the source engine – it just wouldn’t have been practical.
On a side note.. I’ve seen gaming rigs set up with 3x 60inch screens surrounding the player, nearly like a holodeck from Star Trek.. and it’s f*cking amazing. That’s the future of gaming in the next 5 years I think. There are massive screens coming out on the market.. in 4k.. and they use a tiny amount of electricity compared to screens 5 years ago so running those 3 massive screens would drain 600watts. My security light at the front of the house alone draws 1000 watts.. so the cost of running these new massive screens is nothing. And that setup would set your back around $2000 – that’s the future of gaming in the next 5 years.
I probably wouldn’t buy it. I don’t know if I would even buy HL3. I really don’t like the way Valve treats their customers with updates that break existing mods (it’s happened twice now)
YES
I would buy anything if it was the only way to get Half-Life 3