There’s so much that’s surprising about the Half-Life: Alyx announcement. I mean, if you didn’t already know about it. I think a lot of people knew about it. In fact, I think a lot of people knew about it and were telling other people about it, which was why they had to announce it. Otherwise, it’s weird timing.

Valve’s fascinating idiosyncrasy is here again, fruiting madly. I think it’s vitally important that creators behave in maddening ways, it’s what we need them for. We need works like Death Stranding or… Antichrist, let’s say. They don’t have to be good and we don’t need to like them but we need work that seems as though it arrived from a parallel dimension just to make clear how settled and satisfied we’ve become. So a new Half-Life that isn’t Half-Life 3 and is a full-length or longer experience to be played entirely in VR, well… for anyone else, it would be psychopathy. It’d be the last game you ever had a chance to make, and it would never be completed. It’d be an idea you had in a bar. It’s terrible business. It’s the most noble purpose the Steam war chest could be put toward - that is to say, it’s a campaign against reality itself.

Instead of a stream from Mike and I today at 2pm PST, you’ll get a stream from Mike and I at 4pm PST - along with a stream from Dora Litterell, and our new friend Jasmine “ThatBronzeGirl” Bhullar, because today marks the debut of Vampire: The Masquerade Seattle By Night.