Half-Life | Code Like It's 198x

Most shooters of 1998 told their stories between the levels, in film sequences that looked nothing like the game. Half-Life never took the camera away from the player. It opens with a ride on a tram down into an underground research base, with the credits rolling as you travel, and from then on everything that happens, from an experiment going wrong to soldiers arriving to cover it up, happens in front of you. “No cut-scenes, no level ‘briefing’ screens, no frag-count screens, no map,” wrote Jeff Green in Computer Gaming World, which called it “the best shooter since the original DOOM”. PC Gamer in Britain went further, printing in capitals: “HALF-LIFE IS THE BEST 3D GAME IN EXISTENCE.”

Fast facts

Developer: Valve, Kirkland, Washington; its first game.
Publisher: Sierra, November 1998, for Windows; $48.99 in the United States.
Engine: an enhanced version of id Software’s Quake engine, which Valve reworked into its own, later called GoldSrc (see id Tech).
Hero: Gordon Freeman, a 27-year-old research associate with a doctorate in theoretical physics.
Setting: the Black Mesa Research Facility, an underground federal research base, and the alien world of Xen.
Awards: Computer Gaming World’s Game of the Year for 1998.

A new studio on id’s engine

Valve was started by Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington, who had worked together at Microsoft, where Newell had set up its multimedia division. Sierra’s own magazine introduced the team in 1997: besides the founders it included Chuck Jones, who came from Apogee and 3D Realms, the makers of Duke Nukem 3D, and Harry Teasley, who had worked on Civilization and console versions of Doom.

The team licensed id Software’s Quake engine. At the E3 show in 1997 Computer Gaming World found Half-Life “a surprising gem”, “the debut game from Valve”, using “the enhanced Quake engine” with Valve’s own additions (see id Software). The magazine watched a scientist and a security guard arguing, which a player could overhear for useful information, and a four-man commando squad surrounding the player; when one was hit, “he cried for a medic and ducked behind some crates for cover”. The game was expected in November 1997. It arrived a year later, by which time, Computer Gaming World reported, Valve had rewritten about 70 per cent of the Quake code.

What it was like to play

Freeman works at Black Mesa’s Anomalous Materials Laboratory, and as he steps off the tram the scientists in the corridors hurry him along to help with a classified experiment. The experiment goes wrong: a series of explosions opens a portal to an alien world, half the base is wrecked, aliens come through, and government troops arrive to “contain” the problem. The player’s job is to reach the surface. There are no separate levels in the usual sense. The game runs as a series of named chapters, loaded a piece at a time as the player moves, so the base feels like one continuous place. In “On a Rail” you ride a runaway tram through the base’s railway; in “Surface Tension”, which Green thought the best chapter, you fight through the desert outside.

The monsters were designed to frighten. Green’s favourites included the whimpering Houndeyes, which let off a shock wave; the Barnacles, which hang from the ceiling “like rope” and haul up anyone who comes too close; and the Bullsquids, which spit acid. The worst were the smallest. Headcrabs do little damage and die easily, but “every time one lunges at you unexpectedly from some hidden corner it is guaranteed to scare” the player, he wrote. PC Gamer described the ways Valve sprang them: ceilings collapsing to rain headcrabs, zombies diving through windows, steel doors bulging outwards before they burst.

The humans were harder still. The marines sent to silence the base moved as squads and used cover, and Computer Gaming World said in its awards issue that if the game “had no other enemies it still would have rocked”. Friendly characters mattered too. The scientists and security guards around Freeman spoke to him directly, and could be persuaded to help him, heal him or come with him. PC Gamer ran a mock tribute to the guards, nicknamed Barneys, and how often they died.

The weapons began with a crowbar and went on through a .357 Magnum, a double-barrelled shotgun, satchel charges and a crossbow with a sniper scope, to two alien weapons: the Hivehand, which fires bugs that chase their target round corners, and the Snarks, small creatures that attack whatever is nearest, including the player.

Mods and the development kit

The Half-Life CD included WorldCraft 2, a map editor, and Valve gave mod makers a software development kit (SDK) with which to change the game’s code and build new games on its engine. At first it went only to teams who signed a non-disclosure agreement. By the summer of 2000, Computer Gaming World reported, Valve was making the whole kit available to anyone who would download it, with WorldCraft 3.3, under a licence that limited how people could sell what they made.

The kit made Half-Life a platform. Minh Le, a student, spent about two years on a team game of terrorists and counter-terrorists and released the first version of Counter-Strike in June 1999: one hostage-rescue mission, two character models, about six guns and, as he remembered, three maps. “All of the levels were developed by people from our community,” Le told Retro Gamer. Le and his partner Jess Cliffe sold the rights to Valve in 2000, and the game left its beta that November. Valve also bought the team behind Team Fortress, the class-based mod for Quake made in Australia by Robin Walker and John Cook, and brought it to the Half-Life engine (see modding).

Later history

Gearbox Software, founded by Randy Pitchford, made the expansion Opposing Force (1999), which retold the disaster from the side of one of the marines, Corporal Adrian Shephard, and the PlayStation 2 version (2001); a second expansion, Blue Shift, came out the same year. Half-Life 2 followed in 2004 on Valve’s new Source engine, and Half-Life: Alyx in 2020. A team of fans rebuilt the first game in the Source engine as Black Mesa. For the 25th anniversary in November 2023 Valve updated the original game.

Released source code

On 14 February 2013 Valve published the Half-Life SDK on GitHub, in a repository it describes as “Half-Life 1 engine based games”, which it also uses for bug reports. The code is under Valve’s own licence, not an open-source one: anyone may use it to build a modified game on the Half-Life engine and give that game away, but not sell it.

Sources

Jeff Green, Half-Life review, Computer Gaming World issue 175, February 1999, pp. 170–173: “the best shooter since the original DOOM”; no cut-scenes, briefings, frag-count screens or map; the tram; Gordon Freeman and the Anomalous Materials Laboratory; chapters loaded in portions; “On a Rail”, “Apprehension”, “Surface Tension”; the experiment and the troops sent to contain the problem; Houndeyes, Barnacles, Bullsquids, Headcrabs; commandos and assassins; the weapons; Valve rewriting “about 70 percent” of the Quake code; WorldCraft 2 on the CD; price and publisher.
PC Gamer (UK) issue 63, December 1998, pp. 82–83: review; “HALF-LIFE IS THE BEST 3D GAME IN EXISTENCE”; how the monsters are sprung on the player; the Barneys.
Computer Gaming World issue 158, September 1997, p. 102, E3 preview: “a surprising gem”, Valve’s debut, “the enhanced Quake engine”, the arguing scientist and guard, the commando squad, expected November 1997.
InterAction (Sierra), Fall 1997, pp. 50–51, Half-Life preview: Valve’s founders Mike Harrington and Gabe Newell and their time at Microsoft; Chuck Jones, Ken Birdwell, Karen Laur and Harry Teasley.
Computer Gaming World issue 177, April 1999, p. 97, Premier Awards: Half-Life as Game of the Year; the marines’ intelligence; characters who speak to the player and help, heal or join him.
Computer Gaming World issue 192, July 2000, p. 129: the Half-Life SDK, formerly under non-disclosure agreement, released to all; WorldCraft 3.3.
Retro Gamer issue 119, October 2013, pp. 84–87, “The making of: Counter-Strike”: Minh Le, the first version in June 1999 and its contents, Jess Cliffe, “All of the levels were developed by people from our community”, the sale of the rights to Valve in 2000, the end of the beta in November 2000; Valve buying the Team Fortress team and moving it to GoldSrc; Black Mesa.
PC Zone issue 83, December 1999, pp. 46–47: Opposing Force, developed by Gearbox and published by Sierra; Randy Pitchford; Corporal Adrian Shephard.
InterAction (Sierra), Spring 1999, Tom Chick, Team Fortress 2 preview: Robin Walker and John Cook.
Valve, “halflife” repository, GitHub (web, secondary): created 14 February 2013, “Half-Life 1 engine based games”, the Half-Life 1 SDK licence (free distribution of modified games only). https://github.com/ValveSoftware/halflife
Wikipedia, “Half-Life (video game)” (accessed September 2026) (web, secondary): release on 19 November 1998; Valve founded in 1996 in Kirkland, Washington; Blue Shift in 2001 and the PlayStation 2 version by Gearbox in 2001; Half-Life: Alyx in 2020; the 25th-anniversary update in November 2023. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half-Life_(video_game)