This year has, for better or for worse, been quite an impactful year for most people and industries, with the video game industry being no exception. Valve especially has had an interesting year, with the launch of Half-Life: Alyx being the company’s first major release since Dota 2. Though, Gabe Newell, Valve’s current president, is now doing something that accurately reflects and embodies the craziness of 2020.
Gabe Newell has been making quite a few moves as of late. After becoming a tax resident of New Zealand, he’s discussed reaching out to New Zealand’s Prime Minister to discuss relocating Valve production teams to the country and urged other developers to do the same. This is because New Zealand was impacted less severely by COVID-19 and things are essentially back to normal. However, Newell is now doing something to help out a New Zealand charity.
In association with Rocket Lab, Gabe Newell will be launching a garden gnome into space. The event will be live-streamed from the official Rocket Lab website, and Newell states that for every person watching the live stream he will donate one dollar to a children’s hospital in New Zealand called Starship. Specifically, the Paediatric Intensive Care Unit of the hospital.
The garden gnome, in particular, is modeled to look exactly like Gnome Chompski from Half-Life 2: Episode 2, a clever form of adulation for the “Little Rocket Man” achievement that players could unlock if they managed to carry Gnome Chompski all the way to the end of the game and then launch him into space. According to Rocket Lab, this launch is intended to test out a new type of 3-D printing technique that could apply to future spacecraft components. In addition, the use of Gnome Chompski is intended to pay homage to the “innovation and creativity of gamers worldwide.”
Obviously, this is an amazing stunt for a good cause. Although, this seems more like something that Elon Musk would do rather than Gabe Newell. The gaming industry has not seen something quite as incredible as this and it truly does serve as a testament as to how much of an impact video games have had on the world.
It will be interesting to see how well the charity livestream will do. The rocket is set to launch at least two weeks before November 16th, but an official release date should be announced sometime before then. Having said all this, the fact that all this came about because of a silly Easter egg featured in Half-Life is quite impressive on its own.
Source: PCGamer
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