Gameplay Journal Entry #2 — Half Life: Alyx
Half Life Alyx released in March of 2020 and quickly came to be known as not only a worthy entrant into the Half Life series, but also as one of, if not the best narrative experience in VR. Almost more importantly though, only two months later in May Valve released the first dev tools for the games engine Source 2 specifically for creating custom content for Alyx. Source 2 has been in development in 2007, and has already proven itself to be reusable and extensible, having seen use in multiple Valve games over the years like Dota 2 Reborn, Artifact, and Dota Underlords. However Valve has continued to hold out on releasing the engine and its tools until it was really ready for public release. And though Alyx may be a niche game because of its VR requirement players have already started churning out custom content for the game now that we have been given the first chance to use the Source 2 engine. And with the promise of Source 2 being free to use as long as games made with it are published to steam I forsee many developers jumping on the chance to use such a powerful engine for their own projects as soon as it becomes fully available.
Valve making the decision to make the Source 2 engine free is important. A game like Alyx could very well have been made on a totally locked down engine, like many other AAA titles are these days, but by making the tools that were used to make it available they're catering to the same beliefs of the original Doom developers mentioned in the reading. The same mindset from back then, “ Romero recalls that Wolfenstein 3D demonstrated that players wanted “to modify our game really bad.”” (Lowood 207) still holds true today, many players want to be able to mod the games they play, and some have the ability to create entirely new games using the same tools. And proven by Alyx, Source 2 houses many top of the line components, from its realistic physics engine used extensively in Alyx to the lighting and shader systems, all the way to how the engine handles VR locomotion and interaction. All of these are, in my opinion, top of the line, and they keep improving the engine too, even recently talking about how they're finally adding actual support for water. Valve has historically made the original source engine free and accessible, leading to the creation of things like Gmod and Source Film maker which have been the catalyst for years of indie media creation, and luckily unlike many other big name studios they continue this legacy. Opening up all new avenues for smaller developers to get their hands on the same powerful resources used to create the games that inspire them.
Lowood, Henry, et al. Debugging Game History: a Critical Lexicon. The MIT Press, 2016.
