Page 25: The Whack Heard Round the World

The scanner piñata awaits its fate in Valve’s lobby.

September 30, 2004, comes and goes, and Half-Life 2 isn't quite done. It's now October 13, and there are only a few dozen bugs left to fix. What's taking so long? The problem is that more bugs keep cropping up every day because of the unpredictable physics gameplay. "We started telling people, 'OK, if we just stop testing we won't find anymore bugs and we can finally ship this thing,'" Guthrie jokes as he sits at his desk and tests one of his maps for what must be the 10,000th time.

As the day wears on, the bug count keeps decreasing. Newell, sensing that today might be the final day of development, begins reflecting on how this compares with the final hours on Half-Life. "It's like the difference between being a wide receiver and a running back," he says. "The first project was this total Hail Mary, catch-in-the-end-zone-with-no-time-left adrenaline rush. This one was much more slamming away bit by bit, a few yards at a time." Finally, though, Valve is almost in the end zone.

A design cabal at Valve discuss one of the last remaining bugs.

On the night of October 13, the team prepares a version of the game that everyone thinks could be the final one. After a night of testing, both Valve and Vivendi are confident that the game is officially done--no more bugs are in the database, and every employee is enrolled in Club Zero. Newell sends an e-mail to the team to announce that more than five years of development has come to a close. Half-Life 2 is done. There's a tremendous sense of relief. And there's excitement about what comes next: the ceremonial whacking of the piñata.

Valve initially had planned to whack the piñata at a restaurant on the night of Thursday, October 14. But on Thursday morning, the employees start pestering Newell to whack the piñata right away. A mob even starts forming outside Newell's office. After five long years, the team can't bear to wait another six hours.

A photo from a cell phone captures the moment of impact.

At noon, Newell finally relents. He sends out an e-mail to the team and tells everyone to meet him in the lobby in 15 minutes. The employees dash out of their offices and head to the lobby. Once they arrive, they see Newell firmly grasping a steel baton in his left hand. He's rhythmically tapping it against the palm of his right hand. You get the sense that he's really looking forward to eviscerating the scanner piñata.

The team forms a circle around the piñata and Newell stands up. He grasps the baton with both hands, winds up, and lays a massive blow into the piñata. As the baton connects, a thud resonates through the lobby. The entire back of the piñata flies off. Cameras flash. Candies and other trinkets hit the cement floor. And what's left of the piñata hangs on a string, violently swaying back and forth. With one whack, Gabe Newell has signaled the end of Half-Life 2's development. And boy did it feel good.

Newell surveys the damage from his first whack at the piñata.

Next: Newell hands the baton to Laidlaw to strike his own blow. While Laidlaw winds up, Newell turns around and takes a good look at his assembled team. You can tell he's immensely proud of what they've accomplished. Newell says the game is exactly what he wanted it to be. "I'm less jittery than I was last time around," he admits. "We know Half-Life 2 is going to be a huge success. Personally, I think it's a much better game than the original."

While the destruction of the scanner piñata marks the official end of the game's development, Newell says his real reward will come after the game becomes a success. "Sending off the final discs won't be the most exciting moment for me," he later says in Valve's conference room. "For me that moment will come when I get to hand Yahn's wife a big check and say, 'All those promises we made about building an exciting company and the value that your husband represents to us are true,'" he says.

The aftermath of Gabe’s piñata smashing.

Once again, Newell begins expressing great concern about the well-being of the Valve team. "I just feel a tremendous responsibility to take care of everyone at Valve," he admits. "You have to make sacrifices to work here but we want to continue to bring together the best people in the world to create the best games in the world." Coming from anyone else, a line like that would come off like human-resources gobbledygook. But after Half-Life and Half-Life 2, it's hard not to credit Newell for delivering on that promise.

More than five years after it began, Half-Life 2's development is finally over. Suddenly, the missed release dates, the crimes, the lawsuits, and the unending stress evaporate into the ether. Those moments and their associated drama will become part of history, battle scars that the Valve team will bear as a celebration of the sacrifices they made. But what will remain for posterity's sake is something much more profound: A spectacular game on five CDs that, according to Newell, is a worthy sequel to one of the best PC games of all time. Yes, at times the game's development might have seemed cursed. But maybe all those challenges were just tests--tests to see how far Valve was willing to go to make Half-Life 2 all it could be.

Laidlaw takes his own whack at what’s left of the scanner.

Now the cycle starts again. There will be a next game, a new set of challenges, and yes, perhaps another release-date promise. Or maybe not. "I don't think that's ever going to happen again," Newell says with a laugh. "Gamers should trust us on quality issues, but we've pretty much emptied the account when it comes to trust on release dates." Fans, you have officially been warned.