"Where we got into this direction was after 'Half-Life 1' had shipped. There was a whole bunch of meetings with people from Hollywood," Newell explained. "Directors down there wanted to make a 'Half-Life' movie and stuff, so they'd bring in a writer or some talent agency would bring in writers, and they would pitch us on their story. And their stories were just so bad. I mean, brutally, the worst. Not understanding what made the game a good game, or what made the property an interesting thing for people to be a fan of."
He continued: "That's when we started saying 'Wow, the best thing we could ever do is to just not do this as a movie, or we'd have to make it ourselves.' And I was like, 'Make it ourselves? Well that's impossible.' But the 'Team Fortress 2' thing, the 'Meet The Team' shorts, is us trying to explore that