Half-life writer Marc Laidlaw never thought his 40-year-old cyberpunk story would turn into Netflix's love, death and robot plot

Marc Laidlaw wrote 400 boys at the age of 21 in 1981, long before he ended Valve’s lead writer and one of the leading creators of the half-life game. The short story was published in Omni Magazine in 1983 before being accepted into Mirrorshades: Cyberpunk Excerpts and enjoyed a wider audience. On Marc's websiteat the bottom of the short story itself, he notes that besides the Dota 2 2 seasonal ad copy, there are 400 boys who may have read more than others he has written. Yes, the video game world knows Marc Laidlaw is the lead author of the Half-Life series. But he does more than just video games. It's interesting how things work.

In an apocalyptic city, war gangs follow the jungle-island code of honor, a new gang, 400 boys, forcing them to unite. Canadian director Robert Valley’s blend of beauty and cruelty, his LDR episode “Ice” won an Emmy, winning an Emmy for outstanding short form animation.

“It's just walked around,” Mark recalls. “I live in Eugene, Oregon and always have the name of a band playing in town with the band on the phone pole, and it's just the name of a super cool band, and I just want to do that. I just want to make a lot of band names. A big part of the story, just want to make the band names.”

Now, more than 40 years after the first publication of 400 Boys, this is the episode of Netflix’s Season 4 Love, Death and Robots. This episode is directed by Robert Valley, director of Zima Blue in Season 1 and ICE in Season 2. TimMiller wrote this. Voice actors include John Boyega, who plays Finnish in Star Wars. Suddenly, it's important that moments of 400 boys are. Marc Laidlaw never thought of it.

“This story faded out, but Cyberpunk kept moving forward and I didn't really think about it so much,” Ledlaw told me on a video call that started on Netflix a few days before “Love, Death and Robots”.

40 years. That's a long time to turn anything into something, isn't it? But this could have happened about 15 years ago, when Tim Miller, who came from Blur (the company that did all these fancy video game cutscenes, and today, more time) could turn 400 boys into something. Nothing happened. Like many projects, it collapses as the studio changes.

Then, Love, Death and the robot exploded to the scene in March 2019. This avant-garde, adult-oriented animated anthology is different from anything we see on the ribbon. Some plots are challenging, some weird, some weird challenges. Whatever they are, you won't look at it. Mark noticed that Brewer's Tim Miller was involved. “I always say, I can't imagine anyone else turning this drowned giant, this JG Ballard story into an animated feature plot,” Mark said. “So I have a lot of respect for Tim.”

Marc moved to Los Angeles in 2020 and met Tim several times at various events in town as the pandemic eased. He doesn't want to push 400 boys, but maybe MaybeIf this love, death and robot things keep going, maybe it will come back. Then, a year ago, Mark got the email “Are you interested in our choice of 400 boys?” It finally happened.

Mark talks with Tim, who took over the script, about the story itself. He said the episode is faithful to the source, but there is something new to sell the story visually. He had several conversations with director Robert Valley. He pointed him to the 400 boy audiobooks narrated by Marc (“I read this in the pandemic when everyone tried to entertain people by posting their novels and stuff on YouTube”).

But in fact, Mark doesn't involve it. “It's so fun to sit down and not have to be involved in the tide at once,” he said. “And, I just want to enjoy it when I'm done and see what they've created about it.”

As you would expect, Mark has seen this episode. “John Boyega, the characters, the accent and the settings were so cool to me. I mean, they visually made this story more interesting, I think.”

As Mark described, there are 400 boys who start from “different from life.” Of course, he wrote this book when he was a young man 40 years ago. “I’m still very satisfied considering the age I was when I wrote it.”

“And then there was a long time going on,” he said. Then, as we all know, Marc entered the gaming industry in 1997 because it was making half-life. “The whole thing happened…”

Laidlaw “retired” from Valve in 2016, but it was a difficult retirement from everything. In fact, he is in a comfortable position to do what he wants, choose his own project and share it once he is finished. “I think I'm retired,” he admitted. He never wanted to stop being creative. He wanted to go back to writing, but the publishing industry disappeared while working in video games. Forgot new video games, too. “I can't make games without a bunch of people. I can't make games myself.”

So Mark makes music now. His audience was driven by a lost development video on his YouTube channel after Valve's 2nd anniversary documentary released last year. “I think, I'm in the wrong business!” Mark joked. “I should just leak information about my old employer.”

I wonder, after all these years, is it strange to look back at the Valve documentary?

“Yes, for me, it's just a process and bowing on these things, looking at a bunch of old friends and thinking about it, it's a good thing.”

“I haven't talked to or met a lot of people for a long time. I'm still in touch with a few people, but they don't really exist anymore. I don't know what's going on now, but it's fun to hang out with people and talk about it, and it's therapeutic.”

With the half-life and half-life 2nd anniversary documentary finished and dust, Marc might ask for the only Valve game to be Dota 2, which is 12 years old. Maybe within eight years, the valve will come to call. “I can talk to Dota. That's the only thing left.” Unless Valve fantasizes about doing something on an alien crowd (“I did a little bit on an alien crowd.”

I found it would be impossible to talk to Marc Laidlaw without talking about half-life. With those valve documentaries in the wild, there is not much to say about the past. But maybe (hopefully?!) half-life has a future, and that's the thread I want to solve.

Ask Mark meaninglessly if he knows that Half Life 3 is in the work. As he said, he didn't really know the people who were still staying at the Valve, but even if he did, he wouldn't announce the game in our interview. Can you imagine Gaben's emails would be sent if he did this?

I think it's better to use our time to ask if Mark will write for video games again. Mark said he is usually still willing to write for video games and suggested that Hideo Kojima should probably call him. “I was just grinding my teeth when death stranded. Like, he knew I was available? I would love to help you with the last conversation on your script without spoiling anything but just making the cast sound better.”

As he mentioned earlier, Mark “retired very hard” and he believes that, therefore, the industry did not expect to ask him to do anything. “When I see something from Hayao Miyazaki, from the stuff in the studio, you certainly go to George RR Martin first if you can.

Mark said the lack of interesting quotes was surprising. “I do expect to do more fun things afterwards, and it’s kind of like, ‘It’s weird: Someone asked me to write their summary for their phone laser tag game.” Like, they don’t know what I’m doing. ”

Really, really? Actually someone asked Marc Laidlaw to write a mobile phone laser tag game after leaving the valve? “That’s what I’ll get,” Mark admits. “I thought, ‘I don’t know I have too many people to give to you, but I mean, I really don’t want to say no.”

Mark continued: “I haven't really heard any interesting game quotes yet, and that's right for me. People think I can come in and write a bunch of games. I hate the point of reading in games.”

Then the inevitable interview with the obstacle: If Valve called Marc Laidlaw and said, “We want the band to regroup Half-Life 3,” would he answer the call?

“I won’t do that,” he actually replied. “I can say for sure that I won’t do that. Even if I was there, I started to feel like, ‘Oh, now I’m the old guy shooting.’ I think at some point you need to get fans and creators out because they’ve learned something from you and have something new to them. I found that I have to restrain myself.

“I haven't played VR Half Life: Alyx, so I really don't feel like I can. I don't know what's going on. It's not where I am. God knows how to get a great experience, and that surprises people. What you have to do with that thing, and I'm no longer that good.

“Also, I'm one of the older people, maybe not the oldest, but that's so much. I mean, I don't think I can do that anymore. I'm getting involved in my own things, but it's not on someone else's schedule.

That's it. The half-life is done by Marc Laidlaw, who is done by Marc Laidlaw in half-life. However, there are still many related things he did in the past. 40 years later, I only watched Netflix produce 400 boys. Perhaps, at some point in the future, Netflix will knock on Valve's door and ask to turn half-life into something. Then, Marc Laidlaw can go through all this again.

“Before being called cyberpunk, I got into the fact that cyberpunk, and then I came across this kind of game company that started, which ended up creating a half-life…I was lucky to be part of these things that became a phenomenon.”

Wesley is the UK news editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter via @wyp100. You can reach Wesley via [email protected] or secretly visit [email protected].