Looking Back...

December 10, 1999 5:47 PM

With the end of the year closing in and all the neeto games coming out, Ken Birdwell at Valve Software, as well as John Romero at Ion Storm are looking back at past projects and getting all teary eyed. Check out Ken's editorial talking about Half-Life which is pretty interesting. (Thanks [Z]Mtee)

Our initial target release date was November 1997, a year before the game actually shipped. This date would have given Valve a year to develop what was in essence a fancy Quake TC (Total Conversion, all new artwork, all new levels). By late September 1997, nearing the end of our original schedule, a whole lot of work had been done, but there was one major problem, the game wasn't any fun.
<snip>

Also, John Romero has a .plan update commemorating another anniversary of Doom's release.

Steve Gibson

Steve Gibson is the cofounder of Shacknews.com. Originally known as sCary's Quakeholio back in 1996, Steve is now President of Gearbox Publishing after selling Shacknews to GameFly in 2009.

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Dobbs

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December 10, 1999 5:56 PM

The looking back thing by Ken Birdwell is pretty cool. It might give a little insight to people that have never been involved in developing games as to how things work. Also as to why things slow down and are released late.

I\'d like to note that I was told Romero at one point scrapped a shitload of levels much the same way Valve scrapped their game. People do these things because they want to reach for a higher quality game instead of releasing shit (blood 2 for example:).