Team Fortress Classic For Free
Last week Valve Software made an interesting maneuver by choosing to offer Team Fortress Classic as a stand-alone game, available through the new games channel at real.com (http://www.real.com).  Previously only available as a free add-on to Half-Life, Valve has smartly decided to release limited version of the game as a stand-alone download.   Players can upgrade to the full version of Team Fortress Classic (to obtain new maps), but this upgrade requires buying something at real.com.

Could this be a sign of where Valve wants to take Half-Life next?  I think so.  Rumor has it the company is toying with using a new model of distribution for Team Fortress 2, and with the online Half-Life mod community still thriving off the original, I wouldn't be surprised to see Half-Life-powered games such as CounterStrike appear online sooner or later.    From a business perspective, it's a smart move: by releasing TFC online, Valve is opening itself up to a whole new audience that might not have bought Half-Life.  Releases like this keep the Half-Life name very much in the mind's eye of gamers.

The real trick now will be to transition mods such as Team Fortress Classic and CounterStrike into the mainstream.  While the online gaming community is fully aware of these new play modes, I'd wager only a small fraction of the 2+ million Half-Life buyers have ever tried any of the online add-ons.  If Valve can pioneer a new way of getting this new content to Half-Life fans, we might just see the first game that can actually give online modification authors financial incentives to keep working on new add-ons.