Game Anniversaries

Half-Life 2 celebrates 20 years since release, and Warcraft with 30. Both truly loom large in my video game memories, and so I had a few thoughts about each.

Half-Life

Hot on the heels of the 25th anniversary of the original Half-Life last year, Valve gave its sequel similar treatment; an awesome micro-site, a two hour documentary¹, and patches that keep the game running well on modern systems.

I think this is such a fantastic way to treat a beloved series like Half-Life. Everything about it is in service of the fans, the original developers, and the history of the game. They even consolidated the original release with the two episodes into a single game on Steam and then gave the whole thing away for free (at least for the week). I’m glad Valve has resisted the recent “remaster” craze, or tried to milk more money out of these old games like other studios (this will come back later).

I’ve started replaying through Half-Life 2 and was thrilled to see the return of the Valve commentary mode. I recall it first adding it all the way back in 2007’s Team Fortress 2. Just as before I find it very enjoyable to hear from the developers the challenges and considerations that went into making the game. I appreciate these anecdotes even more as I’ve since embarked on a soon-to-be 15 year career in software myself.

Everything about how Valve chose to celebrate Half-Life 2 was great. Coincidentally, it happened around the same time as Warcraft, and I couldn’t help but notice the difference.

Warcraft

The Warcraft series turned 30 with the original Warcraft strategy game releasing all the way back in 1994. It was one of the first PC games I ever played, with its sequel, Warcraft 2: Tides of Darkness, gobbling tons of hours during my grade-school years.

Like many kids with access to a home computer back then, these early strategy games are what turned me into a huge Warcraft fan. I moved on to Warcraft 3, and then World of Warcraft, the latter dominating my free time as a teenager. I occasionally played their other games like Diablo and Starcraft, but Warcraft was the standout for me. Which made it all the more unfortunate when I was watching Blizzard’s “Warcraft 30th Anniversary Direct” on YouTube.

Everything about the presentation served to reiterate the heavily corporate nature of modern Activision Blizzard. Yes, there was plenty of talk about the impact of the series and testimonials by long time fans. However the stilted and hollow delivery by executives talking about why I should be excited about the new worlds (products) I could explore (buy) reminded why most long-time fans have moved on.

Maybe my glasses are overly rose-tinted, but it felt like the old Blizzard didn’t need to do so much telling; showing us the game was enough to capture our attention, and dollars by extension.

Granted, I really do think its cool they’ve made the old titles like Warcraft 1 and 2 playable again on new PCs. But of course it had to be a remaster, providing a means to charge $40 for bundle of ~25 year old games. But a new old stock Battle Chest lingering on store shelves at an outdated price is really its own form of Blizzard homage and nostalgia

Moving On

Blizzard is a different company than it used to be, and by contrast we’ve been lucky that Valve has somehow stayed the same for so long. Maybe it’s the difference of high growth² versus staying small. Maybe one day Gaben will step down and Microsoft will swoop in with acquisition money, but until then I’m glad Valve is still doing things their way.