Marc Laidlaw | |
|---|---|
 Laidlaw in 2011 | |
| Occupation | Writer |
| Language | English |
| Alma mater | University of Oregon |
| Genres | Science fiction, horror, video games |
Marc Laidlaw is an American writer. He is a former lead writer for the video game company Valve, where he worked on the Half-Life series before his departure in 2016. Before joining Valve, Laidlaw was a novelist working in the fantasy and horror genres, and in 1996 won the International Horror Guild Award for his novel The 37th Mandala .
Laidlaw attended the University of Oregon, where he tried, and was discouraged by, punched card computer programming. He wrote short stories and his first novel, Dad's Nuke , was published in 1985. This was followed by several more novels over the next decade, while working as a legal secretary in San Francisco.[ citation needed ]
Laidlaw had played computer and arcade games, but was not intrigued until he played Myst (1993). He obsessed over Myst and bought a new computer so that he could play it. He wrote The Third Force (1996), a tie-in novel based on the world of the Gadget computer game.[ citation needed ]
Laidlaw joined the video game company Valve while they were developing their first game, the first-person shooter (FPS) Half-Life (1998). He was originally hired to work on another game, Prospero, but switched when Prospero was canceled and the Half-Life project expanded. [1]
Laidlaw said his contribution was to add "old storytelling tricks" to Valve's ambitious designs. [2] Rather than dictate narrative elements, he worked with the team to improvise ideas, and was inspired by their experiments. [2] He contributed to the "visual grammar" of the level design, and focused on "doing storytelling with the architecture ... The narrative had to be baked into the corridors." [1]
For Half-Life 2 (2004), the team developed the characterization. Laidlaw created family relationships between the characters, saying it was a "basic dramatic unit everyone understands" that was rarely used in games. [3] Laidlaw also worked on Half-Life 2: Episode One (2006) and Half-Life 2: Episode Two (2007), plus several canceled Half-Life projects, including Half-Life 2: Episode Three and a virtual reality game set on a time-travelling ship. [1] Laidlaw said he had intended Episode Three to end the Half-Life 2 story arc, at which point he would "step away from it and leave it to the next generation". [4]
Laidlaw announced his departure from Valve in January 2016. He said the primary reason for his departure was his age, and that he planned to return to writing stories. [5] Laidlaw later said he had tired of the FPS genre and of solving the problems of storytelling in a Half-Life-style narrative. He said he had "always hoped that we'd stumble into a more expansive vocabulary or grammar for storytelling within the FPS medium, one that would let you do more than shoot or push buttons, or push crates". [1]
On August 25, 2017, Laidlaw published a short story titled "Epistle 3", describing it as "a snapshot of a dream I had many years ago". Journalists interpreted it as a summary of what could have been the plot for Half-Life 2: Episode Three, though Laidlaw later denied this. [1] [6] In 2023, Laidlaw said he regretted publishing the story. He said he had been "deranged" and "completely out of touch" at the time, and that the story had created problems for his former colleagues at Valve. [1] Valve released a new game, Half-Life: Alyx , in 2020. As of 2023, Laidlaw had not played it and said: "I don't ever need to see another Combine soldier again, not even in VR." [1]
In 2018, Laidlaw completed a new novel, Underneath the Oversea, but could not find a publisher and self-published it on Kindle. He said the publishing world had "forgotten who he was" and that his age prevented publishers from building a new audience. [1]
In 2003, Laidlaw said his favorite games included TheLegend of Zelda , Animal Crossing, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, Ico, Fatal Frame and Thief: The Dark Project . [7] After leaving Valve, Laidlaw moved to Kauai, Hawaii. [1] He has an amateur radio license and his call sign is WH6FXC. [8]
 |
| Title | Year | First published | Reprinted/collected | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| "400 Boys" | 1983 | Laidlaw, Marc (November 1983). "400 Boys". Omni . | Bruce Sterling, Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology, 1986 | |
| "Dankden" | 1995 | Laidlaw, Marc (October–November 1995). "Dankden". F&SF . | The Bard Gorlen series | |
| "The Perfect Wave" | 2008 | Rucker, Rudy & Marc Laidlaw (January 2008). "The Perfect Wave". Asimov's Science Fiction. | ||
| "Songwood" | 2010 | Laidlaw, Marc (January–February 2010). "Songwood". F&SF . Vol. 118, no. 1&2. pp. 82–97. | The Bard Gorlen series | |
| "Watergirl" | 2015 | Rucker, Rudy & Marc Laidlaw (January 2015). "Watergirl". Asimov's Science Fiction. Vol. 39, no. 1. pp. 22–40. |
| Year | Title |
|---|---|
| 1998 | Half-Life |
| 2004 | Half-Life 2 |
| 2006 | Half-Life 2: Episode One |
| 2007 | Half-Life 2: Episode Two |
| 2013 | Dota 2 |
Fritz Reuter Leiber Jr. was an American writer of fantasy, horror, and science fiction. With writers such as Robert E. Howard and Michael Moorcock, Leiber is one of the fathers of sword and sorcery.
Raphael Aloysius "R. A." Lafferty was an American science fiction and fantasy writer known for his original use of language, metaphor, and narrative structure, Lafferty also wrote a set of four autobiographical novels, a history book, and several novels of historical fiction.
Half-Life is a 1998 first-person shooter (FPS) game developed by Valve Corporation and published by Sierra Studios for Windows. It was Valve's debut product and the first game in the Half-Life series. The player assumes the role of Gordon Freeman, a scientist who must escape from the Black Mesa Research Facility after it is invaded by aliens following a disastrous scientific experiment. The gameplay consists of combat, exploration and puzzles.
Half-Life 2 is a 2004 first-person shooter (FPS) game developed and published by Valve Corporation. It was published for Windows on Valve's digital distribution service, Steam. Like the original Half-Life (1998), Half-Life 2 combines shooting, puzzles, and storytelling, and adds new features such as vehicles and physics-based gameplay. The player controls Gordon Freeman, who joins a resistance to liberate Earth from the Combine, an interplanetary alien empire.
Gordon Freeman is the silent protagonist of the Half-Life video game series, created by Gabe Newell and designed by Newell and Marc Laidlaw of Valve. His first appearance is in Half-Life. Gordon Freeman is depicted as a bespectacled white man from Seattle, with brown hair and a signature goatee, who graduated from MIT with a PhD in theoretical physics. He was an employee at the fictional Black Mesa Research Facility. Controlled by the player, Gordon is often tasked with using a wide range of weapons and tools to fight alien creatures such as headcrabs, as well as Combine machines and soldiers. Gordon Freeman's character has been well received by critics and gamers, and various gaming websites often consider him to be one of the greatest video game characters of all time, including UGO and GameSpot.
The 37th Mandala is a horror novel written by Marc Laidlaw and published in 1996. The story centres on cynical New Age writer Derek Crowe, who uses an ancient mystical text containing a series of Mandalas as the basis for his latest work, The Mandala Rites. Crowe privately believes that the subjects he writes about are superstitious nonsense but soon realises his new book will unleash a lurking interdimensional horror endangering both his witless fans and the world.
Ravenholm is a fictional ghost town in the first-person shooter game Half-Life 2, developed by Valve Corporation and released in 2004. It serves as the primary setting for the game's sixth chapter, "We Don't Go to Ravenholm", which follows the game's protagonist Gordon Freeman as he journeys through the area as part of an escape from Black Mesa East after it is attacked by Combine forces in order to reach a nearby Resistance outpost. Ravenholm is a mining town in Eastern Europe destroyed by a Combine bombardment using headcrabs that turned its residents into hostile zombies, its sole survivor, Father Grigori, offers his assistance to Freeman throughout the level, culminating in a last stand at the town's cemetery.
Dad's Nuke is a science fiction dark comedy novel by American writer Marc Laidlaw. It is a parody of middle class suburban life and tells the tale of a nuclear family in the post-nuclear (holocaust) age. The story consists of a series of episodes demonstrating the ridiculousness of the family's sheltered, conformist lives and culminates in the collapse from within of the suburban community. The title refers to a trailer-mounted nuclear missile purchased by the family's father figure, as part of his hostile competition with his next door neighbor.
Matthew Hughes is a Canadian author who writes science fiction under the name Matthew Hughes, crime fiction as Matt Hughes and media tie-ins as Hugh Matthews. Prior to his work in fiction, he was a freelance speechwriter. Hughes has written over twenty novels and he is also a prolific author of short fiction whose work has appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Asimov's Science Fiction, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, Lightspeed, Postscripts, Interzone and original anthologies edited by George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois. In 2020 he was inducted into the Canadian SF and Fantasy Association Hall of Fame.
Half-Life 2: Episode One is a 2006 first-person shooter game developed and published by Valve for Windows. It continues the story of Half-Life 2 (2004); as scientist Gordon Freeman, players must escape City 17 with Gordon's companion Alyx Vance. Like previous Half-Life games, Episode One combines shooting, puzzles and storytelling.
John Joseph Adams is an American science fiction and fantasy editor, critic, and publisher.
A media franchise, also known as a multimedia franchise, is a collection of related media in which several derivative works have been produced from an original creative work of fiction, such as a film, a work of literature, a television program or a video game. Bob Iger, chief executive of the Walt Disney Company, defined the word franchise as "something that creates value across multiple businesses and across multiple territories over a long period of time".
Half-Life 2: Episode Three is a canceled first-person shooter game developed by Valve. It was planned as the last in a trilogy of episodic games continuing the story of Half-Life 2 (2004). Valve announced Episode Three in May 2006, with a release planned for 2007. Following the cliffhanger ending of Episode Two (2007), it was widely anticipated. Marc Laidlaw, the writer for the Half-Life series, said he intended Episode Three to end the Half-Life 2 story arc.
Half-Life is a series of first-person shooter (FPS) games created by Valve. The games combine shooting combat, puzzles and storytelling.
Gadget: Invention, Travel, & Adventure is an adventure game designed by Haruhiko Shono and first released by Synergy Interactive in 1993, following his earlier works Alice: An Interactive Museum (1991) and L-Zone (1992). Like Shono's earlier titles, Gadget uses pre-rendered 3D computer graphics and resembles a point-and-click adventure game similar to Myst (1993), but with a strictly linear storyline culminating in a fixed finale. It thus sometimes tends to be classified more as an interactive movie rather than a video game. The story centers around a future dominated by retro technology from the 1920s and 1930s, especially streamlined locomotives and flying machines.
The Myst Reader is a collection of three novels based on the Myst series of adventure games. The collection was published in September 2004 and combines three works previously published separately: The Book of Atrus (1995), The Book of Ti'ana (1996), and The Book of D'ni (1997). The novels were each written by British science-fiction writer David Wingrove with assistance from Myst's creators, Rand and Robyn Miller.
In video games, a silent protagonist is a player character who lacks any dialogue for the entire duration of a game, with the possible exception of occasional interjections or short phrases. In some games, especially visual novels, this may extend to protagonists who have dialogue, but no voice acting like all other non-player characters. A silent protagonist may be employed to lend a sense of mystery or uncertainty of identity to the gameplay, or to help the player identify better with them. Silent protagonists may also be anonymous. Not all silent protagonists are necessarily mute or do not speak to other characters; they may simply not produce any dialogue audible to the player.
Matthew Kressel is a multiple Nebula, World Fantasy Award, and Eugie Award nominated author and coder. His short stories have been published in Reactor, io9, Lightspeed, Clarkesworld Magazine, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Interzone, Apex Magazine, and many other magazines and anthologies. His first novel King of Shards was released in 2015.
Half-Life: Alyx is a 2020 virtual reality (VR) first-person shooter game developed and published by Valve. It was released for Windows and Linux, with support for most PC-compatible VR headsets. Set five years before Half-Life 2 (2004), players control Alyx Vance on a mission to seize a superweapon belonging to the alien Combine. Like previous Half-Life games, Alyx incorporates combat, puzzles and exploration. Players use VR to interact with the environment and fight enemies, using "gravity gloves" to snatch objects from a distance, similarly to the gravity gun from Half-Life 2.
Half-Life is a series of first-person shooter games created and published by Valve. Since the release of the original Half-Life for Windows in 1998, several ports, expansion packs and sequels have been canceled, including projects developed by other studios.
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