There is a growing myth, a misconception that Half-Life, a classical title with a loud name in Steam community, despite it’s popularity and an interest among its members and followers, had a significant impact on videogames in general. A franchise that sold millions of copies, won many awards and essentially shaped Valve’s future as a corporation, had not actually been as popular in the recent years. It is no secret that the following Half-Life series possesses, fades on the background of more popular titles pushed by modern generations such as Minecraft, Roblox, as well as numerous Battle Royale titles such as Fortnite, Apex Legends and PUBG. The only echo of Half-Life that still remains to this day is ultimately only prevalent in Garry’s Mod and is mixed up with silly animation videos such as Skibidi Toilet saga, distorting Half-Life’s aestheticism beyond recognition. There is little meaning left in the specific and direct concepts Half-Life was known for. Half-Life series is a shell of it’s former legacy and nowadays does not compete with the industry giants and falls flat on many aspects compared to modern titles.

As far as "influence" of Half-Life itself goes and how it affected the gaming industry, the reality behind statements of the franchise’s obsessed fanbase, contrary to the volatile market convoluted by tens of thousands of other products, differs substantially despite uneducated claims that the Half-Life still remains prevalent or has any sort of severe impact on games themselves. It is easily proven by the statistics, player numbers, ever changing culture and trends that suppress the minority that is the Half-Life community. By looking at the actual situation behind the popularity of the game, it is easy to develop a conclusion that the only reason why Half-Life seems popular is because people who have never played that game never even talk about it. That is more than 99% of humanity. That leaves the Half-Life community in an echochamber where they lie to themselves about the game’s popularity attached by Valve’s desperate attempts to dwell on the past, figuring that they, as workers of said company, have nothing better to do or develop than documentaries about Half-Life, as well as maps no one asked for. Unsurprising, considering Valve’s games’ titles being micro-level in scope and quality compared to bigger games such as modern takes on Grand Theft Auto. The size of Valve’s development teams is fairly small compared to that of makers of GTA.

That leads us to the next point. Where exactly is the influence everyone in that community talks about and where does it fall in the gaming industry? It is known that tens of thousands modern titles draw inspirations from entirely different games, have completely different genres and do not actually draw any inspiration from Half-Life game design. Most games that even remotely have stylistic similarities do not actually have much in common with Half-Life, as even the developers themselves who claim to be inspired by Half-Life don’t actually understand what Half-Life itself is about. All games are essentially just individual takes of different people on many different concepts and despite what interests the developers of other games have, their results will always be significantly different to their initial believed inspirations. That means that the end-product itself will likely never resemble or follow it’s initial suggested inspirations. That leaves Half-Life at an uncertain spot, meaning that other titles that mostly only stylistically and remotely resemble certain Half-Life elements had never been real derivatives of Half-Life as an inspiration, despite the claims otherwise. It is nothing but a result of chaotic choices natural to a human being.

Games that share remote similarities with Half-Life do not iterate, improve or advance Half-Life’s concepts in any meaningful way and ironically don’t share as much popularity as other games. Speaking about other games, most of market’s industry products have nearly nothing in common with Half-Life, stylistically, design-wise, gameplay-wise, story structure wise, there isn’t anything that follows an exact or even remotely same concept in it’s full form. Games that in theory supposed to replicate Half-Life’s formula, never end up replicating it in any way, not to say, that many naive supposed Half-Life "inspirations" tend to fail. This is the result of not Half-Life’s outdated design, but the inability of such games to follow the same design foundations Half-Life was supposed to establish. Those games that supposed to take a new spin on a classical Half-Life-esque concept turn out to have no direct influence by Half-Life and even if they do, those games aren’t very popular and do not influence the industry’s trends.

Existence of games like Quake revolutionized the genre and it’s influence is still felt in many fast-paced shooters that draw direct inspiration from that game. Half-Life, however, did not revolutionize anything or especially the genre it’s in. Culture would have found it’s way to get to that of Fortnite and talking about culture specifically, Half-Life was not a seed for any serious modern trends. Even Dark Souls revolutionized and influenced more games that Half-Life ever could. Half-Life’s influence is not felt and if we are talking about the influence at environmental storytelling or the story itself, games like Grand Theft Auto affected cinematic storytelling, while games like Fallout and the like influenced environmental storytelling. Half-Life wasn’t the first, it only took existing gaming features and put it’s own spin on it. The only reason why people think Half-Life is revolutionary is because they are fans of the game, but they can’t back up that for a fact. Thinking that Half-Life revolutionized genre is like saying someone’s parent revolutionized something for having children. It is no revolution. Parent that would have a child who would lay the foundation to something, that "something" was influenced not by the parents specifically and parents specifically did not influence that "something", the foundation to that "something" was laid by their child.

But did Quake really revolutionize anything if games would have found their way to be fast-paced shooters anyway? Inevitable "revolution" is not a revolution, it is only a natural process. That only means Quake’s influence wasn’t as significant as people think either, but it was still more than that of Half-Life. Games, where they are at, were not influenced by Half-Life specifically, while the influence it had is not massive enough, therefore "influence" is written off.

Is Half-Life legendary? Not really. Though if we say that Half-Life is a legend like those old pamphlets no one cares about, then we can assume it’s legendary. Legendary as in outdated and forgotten. Is Half-Life revolutionary because Counter-Strike and Steam exists? Are Gabe Newell’s dad and mom revolutionary because they had a son? No, they are not.

Counter-Strike would exist still, even if Half-Life 1 wouldn’t have been in the state it is now. If the game would have followed it’s beta concept and wouldn’t do too well, it would still have Counter-Strike developed on GoldSrc for it. Half-Life is not revolutionary, it’s success has nothing to do with existence of Counter-Strike.

Half-Life simply hasn’t achieved a revolution in the industry, there was nothing revolutionary about Half-Life. It being a good game at the time does not make it revolutionary, just like with some of the modern titles. If we base "revolution" in modding terms, then modding existed before Half-Life. Again, no revolution there.

The so-called "influence" of Half-Life was so "influential" that the majority of the gaming community never even heard of Half-Life. The Half-Life’s "influence" as if almost had never even been there in the first place. It wasn’t, as Half-Life was only popular for a narrow public back in the day, it did not however have any serious influence. It is important to remind gaming community that the majority of humanity aren’t even gamers, so culture hasn’t yet been severely impacted. Just something to think about for those still living in a tank.

If we are talking about another scale of influence that makes connections too large, then it is easy to say that anything influenced anything, but the existence of something even if it is successful does not revolutionize much if anything at all. That way we can make a chain reaction out of anything and think that everything was influenced by everything, but we are talking about direct and substantial influence which Half-Life did not plant. A game like Half-Life could not revolutionize anything if games themselves don’t truly follow Half-Life’s advancing game-design techniques. If we say that Half-Life was influential in any substantial form which is what influence actually means in a modern sense, (a micro-level influence is not an influence) then it is easy to say that 1958's Tennis for Two revolutionized and influenced all genres and games just because it was a first video game or that System Shock 1 influenced Half-Life because of one of the statements from a developer. None of it is however true when we are talking about a direct influence and any sort of direct revolution. An influence and inspiration in words doesn’t represent realities of an end-product, which is why Half-Life was never that influential. Half-Life’s influence is as "large" as that of Call of Duty, but even less so.

Trends of a current industry differ to those the gaming community came to know decades ago. It is now about completely different genres, especially styles and approaches to any selected set of elements Half-Life series used to have. Half-Life series had not impacted the industry in any serious way and the success of Counter-Strike has no relation to a success of Half-Life. Half-Life itself having no serious alternatives to make a modification for, would have a Counter-Strike mod created and ultimately acquired even if Half-Life’s success wouldn’t have been as massive. Modern videogames focus on aspects that contradict Half-Life’s linearity, pacing, combat and nowadays have an online only focus. Times change and your "legendary" title will simply be forgotten and if mentioned, shrugged off.

In case someone still thinks Half-Life is anywhere near popular and is in denial, it is important to take a look at how modern titles perform compared to Half-Life games. Let’s take a look at how many sales have the most popular and influential titles made.


As we can see, Half-Life is nowhere to be seen. Other games had a much bigger impact on the gaming industry than Half-Life. Here’s how Half-Life series compares.


Half-Life is clearly not as influential as people claim it to be. Not many people care about this franchise nowadays and it’s "legendary" status is simply nothing more but a fairytale from the old days. Realities of the industry are fundamentally different.