I think I understand how Gabe feels about it. Valve sees the Half-Life series as a force that drives something. Like an heavy demonstration of a new generation of technologies and the experience. You can't just write a story, put a few ideas to continue it and call it a day. This should have a big impact in a technological sense, a revolution. Something that has not been done before, for example, the Portal series.

I still may misunderstood what Gabe mean, so all what we actually can do is accept everything as is and do other stuff, while Valve do their usual crafting and maybe someday make "a fuck with the industry".