Before Half-Life, the Steam creators wanted to release another game. However, that would likely have led to the downfall of Valve.
The company Valve is mainly known for the Steam platform, which can be found on pretty much every gaming PC today. It is one of the largest gaming platforms overall, and a large part of all sold games is purchased through Steam. But Valve is also known for quite good games, such as Half-Life. That was the first mega-success. However, they actually wanted to release another game beforehand. But that would likely have threatened the entire existence of Valve.
Valve is now also known for DOTA 2:
What was said? At the Game Developer Conference (GDC), Monica Harrington talked about the early days of Valve. Harrington was the “Chief Marketing Officer” and revealed how she perceived the founding of the original team behind Valve back then. In her presentation “How Valve Became Valve”, she shared an interesting detail: There was actually supposed to be another game before Half-Life.
The idea was that Valve would work on a rather “mediocre” game before the release of Half-Life to expand the team during this time and complete the original development team. Harrington said about that (via gamesradar):
The original idea was what they called ‘Title B’ back then. It was supposed to be just an average game, and the idea was to build the team while creating the game.
However, Harrington rejected the idea, and she was the one who initiated that it did not happen. Because she explained further:
I told them that I had conducted the business analysis and that it would not work. If you do that, the company will fail. (…)
From the beginning, we said we had to go full throttle. It has to be in the top 10. I told Gabe that I think the only chance for Half-Life is if it is named Game of the Year.
As we all know by now, Half-Life became a worldwide success and shaped the shooter genre for years. Especially the narrative depth laid the foundation for many more story-driven shooters that were created by other developers afterwards.
At the same time, Half-Life was also the game from which the original “Counter-Strike” was created shortly after – also a global success that continues to this day.
What kind of game was “Title B”? Unfortunately, there is no information about that. It is clear, however, that “Title B” likely would not have become the worldwide success that Half-Life later was – because if the intention is already to create just a mediocre game, then the chances of success for that are likely quite low. Absolutely not mediocre, but simply good, are the 10 best MMORPGs you can currently play.
