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New Crowdfunding Campaign ‘We Want Half-Life 3’ Launched

Community & Projects Half-Life

A new crowdfunding campaign called “We Want Half-Life 3” is attempting to raise money to create an advertising campaign which will be targeted at Valve employees.

The ambitious campaign, created by two advertising interns of McKee Wallwork & Company, is seeking a hefty $150,000 goal on Indiegogo, which will allegedly be spent on the following resources:

  • A $3000 Google Adwords Campaign entitled “WE WANT HALF-LIFE 3”
  • Hiring a mobile billboard truck which will circle Valve’s HQ for an entire day
  • Gathering a team of “Gabe Newell Lookalikes” who will be sent to wonder around Valve’s HQ
  • Hosting a “Half-Life Concert” in Seattle, which Valve employes will be invited to

20140903083133-WWHL3Billboard

In addition, the campaign also aims to “unite” the Half-Life community:

“We’re here to show Valve that the Half-Life community is strong, united and when bound together, will prove how badly we want need Half-Life 3. Our goal with all of this? To get Valve to finish the game we’ve dreamed about for all these years.”

In return for donations, the team is offering a range of Indiegogo “perks”, such as “We want Half-Life 3” badges and T-Shirts and even the opportunity to have your name advertised alongside the Adwords campaign.

20140902080256-HalfLifePin

In an email to us, the co-creator of the “We Want Half-Life 3” campaign, Kyle Mazzei, said:

“The Half-Life series has been on hiatus for close to a decade and we believe it is time for us, the fans, to speak up, Valve is extremely dedicated to their fans and we believe if we can create a strong enough message, they will listen.”

While interning at McKee Wallwork + Company, Chris Salem and Kyle Mazzei discovered they were both fans of video games and wanted to create a project with that as the focus. After realizing their bosses were fans of Half-Life, the framework of the campaign began to take place.

“The idea for the campaign was really created super organically. Kyle and I were simply discussing our love for Valve, and the Half-Life series with our bosses, and five minutes later it turned into what we have now.”

Although there seems to be a high level of community focused ambition driving the project, the outcome could still be viewed as quite questionable, especially considering the amount of money that could be potentially involved in funding this.

In previous years, similar fan driven campaigns, such as “A Call for Communication” from 2012, which gained 54,946 members on Steam, saw little response from Valve in relation to Half-Life 3’s release.

See Also: A Call For Communication’s “A Red Letter Day” Is Successful

There could also be questions raised about the appropriateness of campaigning in such a way on Valve’s own door step. That said, the reality of a Half-Life themed concert alone would be pretty epic.

If you are interested in supporting the “We Want Half-Life 3” project, you can donate to the Indiegogo Campaign, which is set to close on November 17th (just after the 10th anniversary of Half-Life 2’s release).

There is also a Twitter and Facebook page for the campaign.

 

What are your thoughts and opinions on the project? Let us know in the comments below!

Around the International Community

de flag Steamgamer – “Crowdfunding-Kampagne für Half-Life 3 gestartet”

fr flag Vossey.com – “Une campagne IndieGogo pour Half Life 3”

gb flag Half-Life SubReddit – “Two advertising interns create a crowdfunding campaign to get Valve to…”

gb flag Half-Life Fallout – “Half-Life 3 Crowdfunding Campaign”

11 Comments

  1. Circling Valve’s HQ with a Half-Life 3 logo truck doesn’t seem like it’ll accomplish much, beyond simply annoying Valve. Same with sending ‘Gabe Newell lookalikes’. I feel like $150,000 could be much better spent.

  2. I don’t want Half-Life 3 faster. I wan’t it when it’s done.
    In the words of the man himself —> http://i.imgur.com/v4zu3SS.gif

  3. This doesn’t sound that good to me, either. Any more Valve poking would just make them (more) angry and quit working on it altogether. It was already confirmed they’re working on it, but slowly, so let’s just let them do their job. I don’t agree with “Let’s raise money so that hopefully we can get what we want, but faster”. I’d rather have quality instead.
    The only way I see to help them is just get good at programming, get balls to set up an interview, get hired there and start helping with the development, since that’s what they’re mainly missing, more people interested in working on this specific title.

  4. It seems there are quite a lot of mixed reactions to the project around the community already.

    Personally I feel if they were to focus on creating a Half-Life themed concert or something charitable, and having a much lower funding target then this would be much more appropriate and respectable than knocking and shouting at Valve’s own doorstep.

    There are other campaigns at the moment which are focused on a creative outcome, such as the fan film Half-Life The Downfall of Evolution: http://lambdageneration.com/multimedia/half-life/half-life-the-downfall-of-evolution-indiegogo/ Surely something like this would not go unnoticed at Valve either, yet it’s not going to intrude on them either.

    Like I mentioned in the article and as many have stated, these sorts of things where people petition to Valve directly have had little effect and result. It could have absolutely no influence at all.

    I personally feel Valve already know how many Half-Life fans they have, especially from all the hype in recent years.

    Also if it turned out Valve are actually working on the sequel right now, then this might not look too good to look back on in the future.

    • Agreed wholeheartedly. Working together on something constructive always pays off better in the end than doing something obnoxious. Even if it doesn’t seem like it at first.

  5. As a major fan of the Half-Life series, this is…embarrassing. And that’s putting it lightly. Not only is the video crude and pandering to the absolute lowest common denominator of an audience, it had hardly anything to do with Half-Life! In what way can I really believe these guys are fans based on that? For all I know, it’s a complete scam. As many have suggested on the Steam forums, it would be better if they were simply running a campaign to get Half-Life fans to donate to charity. It’s a bit contrived, but at least it’s beneficial to someone other than ourselves. Neither is it intrusive on Valve. Anyone remember Operation Crowbar? They wanted to spam Valve with a swarm of crowbars. Valve simply requested them to donate the money they would spend on them to charity anyways. No good came of it. Putting up banners or invading the studio with a bunch of Gabe look-a-likes is actually worse.

    Believe it or not, Gabe Newell actually DID respond to Call for Communication in an interview after the mass HL2 community play-through…albeit indirectly. That’s where they “we want to wait until things are a little more baked” comment came from. Fans getting together to play the game they love so much = Gabe actually saying why they’re not talking about Half Life (and Left 4 Dead). Attempting to flood Valve with crowbars = a polite and shaming condemnation of the group’s actions. Even if CfC didn’t push Gabe to want to answer the question, Valve employees still got involved with it.

    I absolutely hate being harsh towards people who are just trying to get the community together (allegedly), but I truly hope that this campaign gets put to a stop. It’s only embarrassing for us to have these airheads “represent” the fanbase in such a gratuitous way. And it very likely could just be a bunch of jerks attempting to steal a bunch of poor suckers’ money. Shameful…

  6. A Call for Communication was big, huge, colossal, it gathered a lot of fans and made a lot of noise. They weren’t even acknowledged.
    The only kind of response the community ever got was when they harassed Valve by sending crowbars to them. It was a stupid initiative, but at the same time it is REALLY sad that that’s the only way you can elicit some kind of reaction from them.
    This people have clearly a lot of passion and love for the franchise and it will suck when they will get no response as well.

  7. I know this is all just a bit of a joke, but that amount of money could be far better spent on something other than a questionable advertising campaign aiming to harass Valve employees – especially when we already know what the outcome will be (ie. nothing).

    There are a lot of other projects that would actually benefit the community (fan films etc.) instead of hiring some company from the internet to bully your favourite game developer.

  8. The epic concert alone is worth pitching in 5 bucks.

  9. This must be the most ridiculous thing I have heard from Half-Life fans. But at the same time, this just might be crazy enough to actually work.

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