Play the mod we are playing here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/812440/HalfLife_Absolute_Zero/

Watch the (nearly) unedited stream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Js4H-jq4DLw

We’re playing a Half-Life Cut content recreation mod, Half-Life: Absolute Zero, with one of the original level designers from Valve Software, Brett Johnson. Mr. Johnson worked at Valve from 1996 until 1999, and was responsible for most of the design of Anomalous Materials, Unforeseen Consequences, Surface Tension, the multiplayer map Stalkyard, among many other things. We play through his sections of this recreation mod, judging it’s accuracy, and telling stories of what Valve was like back in the 90s. This one is special, thank you Brett.

    • bermuda@beehaw.orgEnglish
      8·
      1 year ago

      There’s no real controversies he’s involved in. I just never liked the sensationalism. There was a solid decade or so where valve barely did anything substantial as a company and yet Tyler was making announcement after announcement about how their next new game was coming in like 6 months.

      He was right about a lot of things but in the end he was so, so wrong about everything else.

      I can see why he did that. Valve is a notoriously secretive company so only posting a video every 3 months when valve actually announced something substantial for any of their projects wouldn’t have been a good financial decision. But on the other hand it made it really hard for me to personally feel optimistic about anything valve did when Tyler’s predictions were always wrong.

      And as somebody involved in the Source engine community space, the amount of times he misunderstood an obsolete feature or a simple mapping concept as a groundbreaking sign of things to come made me want to slam my head against the wall.

      These are all my opinions though I mean if you like the guy then go for it. He’s nice but I’ve rarely considered anything he did “news” back when his channel was called “Valve News Network”

      • dreamer@lemm.ee
        1·
        1 year ago

        I almost forgot about that period of VNN. I actually liked the sensationalism, even already knowing most of it was probably wrong, but it was still interesting to listen to especially if I’m not really paying attention, though I can see how that can easily impact his credibility and reputation.