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Development
Half-Life was the first product of Kirkland, Washington-based developer Valve
Software, which was founded in 1996 by former Microsoft employees Mike
Harrington and Gabe Newell. They settled on a concept for a horror-themed 3D
action game, and licensed the Quake engine from id Software. Valve eventually
modified the engine a great deal, notably adding skeletal animation and Direct3D
support;[citation needed] a developer stated in a PC Accelerator magazine
preview that seventy percent of the engine code was rewritten. The company had
difficulties finding a publisher at first, many believing their project "too
ambitious" for a studio headed by newcomers to the video game industry. However,
Sierra On-Line had been very interested in making a 3D action game, especially
one based on the Quake engine, and so signed them for a one-game deal.
The original code name for Half-Life was Quiver, after the Arrowhead military
base from Stephen King's novella The Mist, which served as early inspiration for
the game. Gabe Newell explained that the name Half-Life was chosen because it
was evocative of the theme, not clichéd, and had a corresponding visual symbol:
the Greek letter λ (lower-case lambda), which represents the decay constant in
the half-life equation.
The first public appearances of Half-Life came in early 1997; it was a hit at
Electronic Entertainment Expo that year, where they primarily demonstrated the
animation system and artificial intelligence. Valve Software hired science
fiction author Marc Laidlaw in August 1997 to work on the game's characters and
level design. Half-Life was originally planned to be shipped in late 1997, to
compete with Quake II, but was postponed when Valve decided the game needed
significant revision.
In a 2003 Making Of... feature in Edge, Newell discusses the team's early
difficulties with level design.[citation needed] In desperation, a single level
was assembled including every weapon, enemy, scripted event and level design
quirk that the designers had come up with so far.[citation needed] This single
level inspired the studio to press on with the game.[citation needed] As a
result, the studio completely reworked the game's artificial intelligence and
levels in the year leading up to its release.[citation needed] At E3 1998 it was
given Game Critics Awards for "Best PC Game" and "Best Action Game". The release
date was delayed several times in 1998 before the game was finally released in
November of that year.
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