Erik Wolpaw, the co-writer of both the beloved “Portal” games from 2007 and 2011, says he wants Valve to start work on a third game in the series.
The original “Portal” was released as part of Valve’s The Orange Box compilation title which included “Half-Life 2” and its companion episodes along with two new games – “Portal” and “Team Fortress 2” – both of which were celebrated and are still played to this day.
The “Portal” games in particular are still often cited as some of the greatest video games ever made. Wolpaw has worked with Valve and Double Fine Productions on not just the “Portal” games but such titles as “Psychonauts,” “Left 4 Dead,” the two “Half-Life 2” episodes and 2020’s VR entry “Half-Life Alyx”.
Appearing on the Kiwi Talkz podcast recently, Wolpaw says he ain’t getting any younger and he hopes to do another “Portal” entry soon:
“We’ve gotta start Portal 3. That’s my message to… to whoever. I am not getting any younger. We are reaching the point where it’s crazy to think [that we’re] literally going to be too old to work on Portal 3, so we should just do it.”
He also understands the difficulty in getting a new Portal game off the ground and how, despite appearances, the Valve staff is working hard maintaining Steam and other projects so getting that staff to put aside time and man-hours for game development is difficult:
“The problem is [Valve has] 300 employees and I don’t know exactly the breakdown – how many of them are on the production side versus Steam business side versus legal versus whatever.
So there’s a lot of opportunity cost to taking 75 people and trying to get a game made. As much as it seem like Valve often [is] just a bunch of people sitting around sipping gin and tonics by a pool, everybody’s working. They’re working all the time, it’s just you don’t always see the [result], it doesn’t always end up coming out, or it comes out years later, it gets turned into something else. So everybody is accounted for, I guess is what I’m saying. People are all doing something.
You’d make some money. The problem is, you would make money, but what kind of money will you make? Are you gonna make Counter-Strike: GO money? Probably not. But having said that, maybe every game doesn’t need to make Counter-Strike: GO money, you know, Gabe, if you’re listening.”
Nintendo recently announced the “Portal: Companion Collection” for the Switch, bringing the first two games to a Nintendo system for the first time.
