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Project Mesa: Celebrating Half-Life's 20 Year Legacy

Added 2018-10-13 12:01:00 +0000 UTC

Hey folk! Danny here.

Next week we start filming on a brand new documentary - a doc like nothing we've ever filmed before because we are not talking to the developers of the game.

Sound strange? Let me explain.

On November 19th 2018 my favorite game of all time turns 20. Half-Life is the first FPS I ever completed so it holds a great deal of nostalgic power over me. And as somebody who now runs a video game documentary production company, I simply could not allow the date to pass without creating something to mark the occasion.

My worry was that the anniversary would come and go and all we'd have to celebrate it would be some sentimental tweets and a few retrospective articles. It's my feeling that fans of this game deserve a focal point for their nostalgia. Something to surround and celebrate.

I reached out to Valve via a number of channels earlier this year but sadly did not hear back from them. I suspect that this is a difficult anniversary to honor as the unreleased third chapter continues to burden the legacy of this franchise. I still hope we might able to convince them to talk to us some day. I think there is a great deal of interesting history and design to explore. But even if we couldn't do something with them, I wanted to to do something. Creative restrictions are a powerful force, and so the question then became how do we make a doc about Half-Life, without talking to anyone who worked on Half-Life?

So, over the past few months I've come up with a new concept for how we might tackle a doc on this game. Instead of tracking down the developers and interviewing the folks still at Valve - what if we focused on the 20 year period between November 19th 1998, and today. Instead of focusing on the game, why not take a look at its legacy?

Half-Life has cast a long shadow. Be it the many developers who were inspired by it all those years ago, the success and re-success of Counter Strike, or the various modding communities that sprung up in its wake. There are twenty years of human experiences that exist between then and now. Twenty years of stories for us to celebrate.

That's what Project Mesa is.

A gift to Half-Life fans around the world. A documentary celebrating the legacy of their favorite game featuring some of the biggest names in development, journalists who covered it's launch, academia who have studied the game since and veterans of the early days of eSports.

So yes, we are talking to big name developers.
We are talking to journalists who covered the launch of the game.
We are talking to folks involved in the Black Mesa mod.
We are talking to people in the Counter Strike community.
We are talking to the indies who have tried to make "Epistle 3".

For the next two weeks we are filming all around the country; Austin, Dallas, Los Angeles, Phoenix, New York, Baltimore and beyond. I had originally planned to film the bulk of it myself, but thanks to our funding boost this month I've been able to fly Jeremy in to provide filming support for most of the interviews. The doc will look and feel much better as a direct result. We're delighted to show the fruits of your funding right away. Thank you again for your amazing support.

So, when can you expect to watch it? We're aiming to get it out to everyone on the 20th anniversary; Monday, November 19, 2018. Our wish is for fans of this series to be able to sit back, relax and watch a full length documentary film about a game they still love 20 years after they first played it. All for free, made possible by our Patrons and the wonderfully generous people taking time away from their busy lives to talk to us.

It's a pretty big undertaking, but I couldn't do anything less for the game that allowed me to fall in love with first person shooters. I'm not ready to forget about Freeman.

Wish us luck.

Danny