Interviews// Valve's Doug Lombardi

SPOnG: It certainly can't hurt to have someone like Microsoft really supporting PC as a gaming platform...

DL: Somebody needs to champion the PC in a big way. I hope that they're really serious about that part of it. Excluding the Live stuff, I truly hope that they support it in a great way.

It's a bit disappointing to be here in Germany where the PC is Number 1, but if you go to the booth the Windows stuff is Number 2 behind Xbox, still. But they're still doing it at least, and that's a start. So, I hope that they ramp that up.

I mean, whenever you see stories about, 'Oh, the PC's dying, consoles are winning', all that kind of stuff, that's mostly the product of Sony having 140 PR people sitting on top of the guy's head who's writing that story, as does Microsoft talking about the Xbox, probably Nintendo as well. But nobody's really been doing that in the last 10, 15 years for the PC. Nobody's been sending the PR people out to all the reporters, saying, 'Tell them the C story, tell them how much money WoW's making, talk about what Steam's doing, tell them about the PopCap Games casual story.'

There was this huge story about Geometry Wars and Xbox Live Arcade. PopCap's probably crushing those guys and nobody's writing that story.

Supposedly PC's going to die: it's just not true.

I'm willing to guess that Bejewelled outsold Geometry Wars.


SPOnG: The flipside of that is no-one's watching you and signing off on what you do. Is that freedom a bonus?

DL: Oh, I think having it be an open platform is definitely the PC's advantage. We're able to put out – how many updates have we done for Counter Strike over the years? - probably over 50. That's because it's an open platform and whenever we have something we can fire it out there. We don't have to put it through certification and all the rest of the nonsense. I think that's a good thing for the PC that we hope never goes away.


SPOnG: Just quickly: how long is it going to take to play through Episode 2, will it be about six hours again?

DL: No, it's tracking closer to about eight to ten hours. It's considerably longer.


SPOnG: One of the things that's always said about Half Life is how well the narrative's integrated into the game. Is the narrative something that's there to support the game mechanic, or is the narrative a selling point in its own life?

DL: Oh, I think that the narrative is one of the key, staple ingredients of the Half Life games. Going back to Half Life 1 in '98 – the Quake games and everything else that was coming out at the time were really for the hardcore shooter guys. We kind of went the opposite way and said, 'OK, instead of making this for the super twitchy guy we're going to slow things down a bit and tell some story, and make you scared and make you laugh and all that kind of stuff.' We sort of cornered this little area that no-one else had staked out, and I would argue that most people still haven't really tried to come over to it, either.

But I think there's also the mix of action, and a bit of adventuring, or puzzling or whatever you want to call those aspects of it. Certainly, post-Half Life 2, the introduction of physics was a big deal, too.


SPOnG: Even something as simple as having a guy with glasses on your promotional materiel sends quite a strong message, compared to, say, Gears of War.

DL: That's quite intentional. It's all part of that same play of, 'Everybody's going here to be super macho man, and as big a gun as possible, and we're over here with glasses and a crowbar.' And I think people identify a little bit more with glasses and a crowbar than they do with super-macho man with the giant gun.


SPOnG: Thanks for your time, Doug.