In this exclusive extract from a new book exploring the art of making games, we follow Valve’s journey as it transplants its most famous work into virtual reality

By Duncan Harris and Alex Wiltshire

Part game design bushwacker, part action blockbuster, Half-Life is a legendary series. From its outset, it has defined many of the core principles of the story-led firstperson shooter. In its 1998 debut, it laid down the mechanics and forms of telling a story through the eyes of a player-protagonist. In its 2004 sequel, it explored the procedural opportunities of introducing realtime physics to firstperson play. From there, developer Valve began to experiment with format by releasing two episodic games – until a promised third part never materialised. Then silence, until, 13 years later, the series made the push into virtual reality with Half-Life: Alyx.

Alyx’s experiment in firstperson play was about taking the experience from flat screen to virtual reality. Cash-rich and talentsoaked, Valve was already immersed in VR, developing both hardware and games in order to research the creative and business potential of a technology which has seemed on the cusp of exploding for close to a decade. In retrospect, Half-Life was the perfect foundation for the studio to prove one of its core beliefs: that VR only builds on and heightens the sense of presence and richness of interaction which already infused all the other Half-Life games. But its journey to doing so in Alyx was beset by creative challenges that Valve’s developers had no idea they were letting themselves in for.