By Mark Frauenfelder
Science fiction writer Marc Laidlaw has finally gotten a life, or at least half of one. Now you too can get a Half-Life when his first computer game is released in April. As Laidlaw tells it, the title "is going to do the stuff I always wanted games to do."
Half-Life's finely rendered monsters may be brutish, but they're not dumb: AI developed by Valve, a Seattle game company, equips them with pack behavior, threat assessment, and - unlike most gorefest goons - a disinclination toward suicide attacks.
For Laidlaw, creating an adventure set in a demilitarized missile base invaded by extradimensional aliens sure beats toiling as a legal secretary, a job he had for 10 years before landing at Valve. For gamers, entering a world written by a master storyteller makes it that much more fun to blow away the bad guys.
ELECTRIC WORD
Sesame Street, The Next Generation
Getting a Half-Life
