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Half-Life (video game)

1998 video game

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 25, 2026
Entity authoritySource title only
Source-derived summary

Half-Life is a 1998 first-person shooter (FPS) game developed by Valve Corporation and published by Sierra Studios for Windows. It was Valve's debut product and the first game in the Half-Life series. The player controls Gordon Freeman, a theoretical physicist who must escape from the Black Mesa Research Facility after it is overrun by aliens following a disastrous scientific experiment. Its gameplay consists of combat, exploration and puzzles.

Editorial summary

“Half-Life (video game)” enters the record as 1998 video game. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Half-Life, video and game can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1998—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Half-Life, video and game.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Half-Life (video game)” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Half-Life, video and game provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 25, 2026. The first chronological checks are 1998.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Half-Life (video game)”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Half-Life (video game) primary sources, Half-Life (video game) archive and Half-Life research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Half-Life (video game)”?
  2. What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
  3. Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Half-Life (video game)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.