Half-Life 2 is often referred to as the magnum opus of Valve and sometimes of gaming in general. While Half-Life would seem like a natural choice for a movie studio, Valve s CEO and co-founder Gabe Newell says that’s probably never going to happen.
“As a WoW player, I would much rather that the WoW team made the movie, right? Than anybody else. I like Sam Raimi, I’ve been a fan ever since Evil Dead came out, but I would rather see Blizzard making the movie,” said Newell. “We think that customers are like, OK, we re kind of sick and tired of the way you guys are slicing and dicing the experience of being a fan of Harry Potter, or Half-Life, or The Incredibles, and you need to fix it. And the people that fix it will be rewarded, and the people that don t will be on the rubbish heap of history, or whatever the phrase is.”
“Where we got into this direction was after Half-Life 1 had shipped,” explained Newell. “There was a whole bunch of meetings with people from Hollywood. Directors down there wanted to make a Half-Life movie and stuff, so they d bring in a writer or some talent agency would bring in writers, and they would pitch us on their story. And their stories were just so bad. I mean, brutally, the worst. Not understanding what made the game a good game, or what made the property an interesting thing for people to be a fan of.’
‘That’s when we started saying ‘Wow, the best thing we could ever do is to just not do this as a movie, or we’d have to make it ourselves.’ And I was like, ‘Make it ourselves?’ Well that s impossible. But the Team Fortress 2 thing, the Meet The Team shorts, is us trying to explore that,” he added.
Source: PC Gamer
