Gabe Newell says Half Life: Alyx created momentum for more single player games

Gabe Newell, co-founder of Valve, is currently riding out COVID-19 in New Zealand when the virus hit while he was there on vacation. While hanging out with our Kiwi brethren, he had an interview with local publication 1 News about some of the things Valve has been working on recently, with new projects looking to be released in the not-too-distant future.

Perhaps most interesting, Half-Life: Alyx may have inspired a new wave of single player ideas within the company. “Alyx was great — to be back doing single-player games, that created a lot of momentum inside of the company to do more of that” said Newell. “We definitely have games in development that we’re going to be announcing — it’s fun to ship games,”

This is certainly great news for fans of Valve’s single player experiences; Half-Life: Alyx was one of our favourite games of 2020, not only because it pushed the envelope in what VR could do, but also because it was an incredibly strong single player story regardless of the technology used. While no VR was discussed in the interview, we’d like to think there are some other strong experiences in the pipeline from Valve for the growing platform.

In the lengthy interview, Newell also discusses the possibilities of himself and a large chunk of the Valve team living in New Zealand permanently (so we can claim him and his games as Australian like we do with other popular NZ celebrities), supply issues with the Valve Index VR headset, along with his thoughts on the controversy surrounding the recent release of Cyberpunk 2077, saying it’s “unfair to throw stones”.

In the meantime, we’ll wait and see what Valve have in store – whether it’s brand new experiences or more sequels to their much loved IPs, or perhaps some more games that make VR a more valuable proposition than it already is.