Black mesa is coming out and still no HL3?

Black Mesa's not made by Valve. They're completely unrelated. That being said, I gave up hoping for Half-life 3 shortly after I played the second, but I'm not really a hardcore HL fan anyway.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxu-R34xGKs

Hats in a singleplayer, entirely first person game would be the best thing ever.

They'll be novelty party hats and the like that you place on your weapons. Imagine using a handgun with a bright gold cone-shaped party hat on it, or throwing grenades with fluffy dice hanging off them. Classic fun for everyone!

There will be no HL3, just the next episode of HL2 split in two parts: first and second.
Why?
Because everybody knows that Valve can't count to three.

It seems that Steam is so profitable that from a business standpoint there is simply no incentive for Valve to make Half-Life 3.

Half-Life 3 will be released after Half-Life 2 Episode 3. Either that or when Steam's sales will drop low and they will be forced to release a new game, lest Gabe started suffering from malnutrition.

When the next console gen starts possibly. Or just before it. When Half Life 2 was released in 2004, it was a year before the 360 was out.

Or maybe they dont want to make any more half life games.

Half life 2 episode 3 is like Duke Nukem Forever (in terms of it's development cycle), at the moment it's "Vapourware" but it could still be in development. Who knows...

Perhaps you get to place them on every other character.

A recent interview with Viktor Antonov leads me to believe that Half-Life 3 isn't even in development.

Source: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-07-23-why-half-life-2-city-17-creator-viktor-antonov-left-valve

Yeah, they have painted themselves into a corner spectacularly with Half-Life, haven't they?

It's kind of sad, but after Portal 2 and all that (to me) uninteresting stuff they've been announcing since, I don't really expect much of HL3. Valve is a fascinating company in many ways, but they've been very unfocused lately, and if anything, it's getting worse.

Portals 2 was the finally blow to my hope of getting to play one of my favorite FPS ever. Even know I do love me some portals but I think its telling when they made a second one before they even released Eposiode 3 on arguably their most popular series. But they have the Blizzard problems of it will be done when we feel like it working on it.

I can't believe there are still people asking IF and WHEN we can expect it. That's like....asking America why we love Teen Mom but are so butt fucking confused about teen pregnancy rates.