As noted in a recent Gamedaily Biz article, the games industry, for a variety of reasons, is not particularly driven by individual celebrity. In it's place gamers have come to celebrate a peculiar kind of collectivist celebrity; we idolize developers instead of designers, teams instead of individuals.

It's clear that to some extent this is stifling the industry's creative growth; but at the same time, perhaps it's the most appropriate form of hero worship this medium could have. While I have lamented their lack of authorial vision, games are to some degree a necessarily collaborative art form, and this odd interpretation of celebrity seems quite apt. That being said, I have to confess: if this industry had the equivalent of a "Seventeen Magazine", full of misty, dream-like photographs of the hottest design teams to cut out and paste on your walls, my room would be a shrine to Valve.

The release of Half-Life 2: Episode One moves me to hyperbole. I feel a compulsion, as I'm sure many others do, to make certain bold, declarative statements; statements like "episodic content has officially landed" or something suitably cliché. Of course, such a proclamation would be nothing short of a disservice to games like Sin: Episodes and Bone, which set out to tread the episodic path months ahead of Episode One's announcement. But although last week's release perhaps doesn't signify episodic content's "landing" as much as its sitting by the carousel waiting for the luggage, it is nonetheless somehow an event of great importance.

I find it difficult not to see Valve's offering as the real landmark of the coming sea change; the true crossing of the Rubicon. I feel as though, despite not being the first of its kind, it will someday hold a place of historical significance for the industry. Though it is not really the moment "where it all started", it's where we will inevitably look when we're talking about where it all started. There are important considerations to be made from this impression; considerations not only of the phenomenal weight Half-Life has in our discourse, but also of what Valve itself represents to the industry.

I see Valve as something akin to the first activist developer. Truthfully, just as with episodic content, it's quite likely they aren't the first in this arena--but they've done a good job of making it seem like they are. Valve recognizes the incredible strength of the Half-Life brand. What's interesting, and what makes my heart a-flutter, is that instead of following the industry norm of wringing every last bit of capital out of this brand until it's a blackened, soulless, husk, they instead are bringing it to bear on some real problems. Valve is attempting to use Half-Life to bring about progressive, industry-wide change. They're the Ralph Nader of game development.

An interesting comparison could be drawn between Half-Life and another FPS series of comparable fame and merit, used as a similar sort of keystone--Halo. But whereas Microsoft positioned Halo to sell systems, Valve has positioned Half-Life to sell ideas, broad concepts of how we buy and experience games. While this isn't exactly a strategy based entirely on altruism--Valve stands to gain as much from these ideas as the rest of the industry does--it is an arguably more progressive one. There are some who would argue the industry is in a state of steep decline; that the Golden Age is over and we are fast approaching stagnation or collapse. Valve seems to realize it's in everyone's best interests if we start making moves towards revitalization, if we take a step back from the brink. So they are using their brand to promote something that the industry normally loathes: trying out new things. They want their games to be more than just fun; they want them to be instruments for change.

Why are they allowed to do this? What gives them the right? Quite obviously it's because Half-Life is so inherently, undeniably, mind-alteringly good. Perhaps good is not an adequate descriptor--Half-Life is not just good. Half-Life is important. As my esteemed colleague pointed out last week, the first outing provided perhaps the first example of how games might be grounded in mythological narrative, a symbolic rhetoric every form of storytelling can benefit from. The sequel was perhaps the first time I experienced a game that was rich enough to be considered an actual text, something that had to be interpreted as well as played. Valve gets to try and change the way we buy and play games because their product is just so phenomenally good. Each iteration of Half-Life seems to advance the medium as a whole. This is something to which more developers should aspire.

Valve stands to gain more than just commercial success with this model; they stand to gain a legacy. Years from now, when digital distribution has hopefully emancipated us from the heavy yoke of profit-crazed publishers and Wal-Mart's puritanical leanings, ask anyone what the first fully-digital game they bought was and they're likely to say Half-Life 2. Likewise, when more games start to give up sprawling, disconnected formats that must be played for over 40 hours in favor of tight, 6 hour episodes released every other month, people will likely say it all began with Episode One. And perhaps in ten years when people ask, "Who saved the game industry?" we'll tell them that it was Gordon Freeman.