Marc Laidlaw is a former writer for the video game company Valve, where he worked on the Half-Life series before his departure in 2016.
17 Facts About Marc Laidlaw
2.
Marc Laidlaw attended the University of Oregon, where he tried, and was discouraged by, punched card computer programming.
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Marc Laidlaw wrote short stories and his first novel, Dad's Nuke, was published in 1985.
4.
Marc Laidlaw obsessed over Myst and bought a new computer so that he could play it.
5.
Marc Laidlaw wrote The Third Force, a tie-in novel based on the world created by the Gadget computer game.
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Marc Laidlaw joined the video game company Valve while they were developing their first game, the first-person shooter Half-Life.
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Marc Laidlaw was originally hired to work on another game, Prospero, but switched when Prospero was canceled and the Half-Life project expanded.
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Marc Laidlaw said his contribution was to add "old storytelling tricks" to the team's ambitious designs.
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Marc Laidlaw created family relationships between the characters, saying it was a "basic dramatic unit everyone understands" that was rarely used in games.
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Marc Laidlaw worked on Half-Life 2: Episode One and Half-Life 2: Episode Two, plus several canceled Half-Life projects, including Half-Life 2: Episode Three.
11.
Marc Laidlaw said the primary reason for his departure was his age, and planned to return to writing stories.
12.
Journalists interpreted it as a summary of what could have been the plot for Half-Life 2: Episode Three, though Marc Laidlaw later denied this.
13.
Marc Laidlaw said he had been "deranged" and "completely out of touch", and that publishing the story had created problems for his former colleagues at Valve.
14.
In 2018, Marc Laidlaw completed a new novel, Underneath the Oversea, but could not find a publisher and self-published it on Kindle "to zero notice".
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Marc Laidlaw said he had realized the publishing world had "forgotten who he was" and that his age prevented publishers from building a new audience.
16.
In 2003, Marc Laidlaw said his favorite games included The Legend of Zelda, Animal Crossing, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, Ico, Fatal Frame and Thief: The Dark Project.
17.
Marc Laidlaw has an amateur radio license and his call sign is WH6FXC.