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Comments: 130 +- Games: Valve Explains Quick Left 4 Dead Sequel on Friday June 05 2009, @06:18AM
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Valve's announcement that Left 4 Dead 2 would be released only a year after the first game has generated a great deal of controversy among fans of the game. There are concerns that Left 4 Dead will not get any additional content, the community will be divided, and that the quick development cycle won't do justice to the sequel. Now, Valve devs and execs are going out of their way to address those concerns. Left 4 Dead project lead Chet Faliszek said, "It just became very clear that this was a cohesive, singular statement we wanted to make, not a more slow update thing... too much stuff was tied together with too many other things." Developer Tom Leonard was quick to point out that work wouldn't cease for the first game: "We are doing updates across the summer, adding new matchmaking features, and new features to facilitate user maps after the SDK is out. ... Additionally, those maps can be transported into Left 4 Dead 2." Doug Lombardi said simply, "Trust us a little bit," explaining that Gabe Newell is "always talking about providing entertainment as a service — it's not about making a game any more."
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Left 4 Dead 2 Announced For November 231 comments
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Why I cry at night... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
If people are still worried about l4d1 by the time l4d2 comes out in novemeber (a full year after the original), it means they've hit on something 99% of games don't hit on- longevity and level repetition not being overwhelmingly boring.
If, after one year of playing their $50 game, they want another $50 to play for another year, I'm ok with that- it works out to around $4 a month.
Re:Why I cry at night... (Score:5, Insightful)
Okay, if you say "this is your game and that is it" for $50, and you sell another later, even a few months later be my guest.
However if you say "we're going to add a whole lot of shit down the road, more maps, etc", and don't deliver, or start to deliver (as they did) but do a half assed job, do you expect people to rationalize it at the cost per month? Answer: no. Gamers aren't sheep like that.
If L4D1 doesn't add more stuff before November it will affect L4D2 sales for that reason especially even more now with them saying that L4d1 maps can be brought into L4d2. Never promise something you can't keep.
Parent
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When has Valve said they will be adding content constantly? That is just an assumption. If you read http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2009/06/04/valve-on-l4d2-trust-us-a-little-bit/ [rockpapershotgun.com] aswell, you'll see that Valve is fairly aware that they're taking a new route. Read the rest of the article however, and you'll see they note they will keep supporting l4d1 with new stuff aswell.
So before the thing actually gets released in 6 months, stop making stupid assumptions. Its half an year still and l4d1 will probably see
Re:Why I cry at night... (Score:4, Insightful)
They were constantly touting the constant updating as a major selling point.
[Gabe] said: "One of the things that we're doing is we seem to be in a transition between games as a package product and games more of a service. So if you look at Team Fortress 2, one of things that's really helped grow the community is the continuous updates, where we release new maps, new character classes, new unlockables, new weapons. And we tell the stories about the characters, like the meet the sniper, or meet the sandwich. And that ongoing delivery of content really seems to grow the community.
"So each time we've released one of those for Team Fortress 2 we've seen about a 20% increase in the number of people who are playing online. And that number is really important because it determines how many community created maps there are, how many servers are running, and so on. So we'll do the same thing with Left 4 Dead where we'll have the initial release and then we'll release more movies, more characters, more weapons, unlockables, achievements, because that's the way you continue to grow a community over time."
Parent
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Haven't they updated it constantly tho? TF2 and L4D are the only games developers (valve) keep tweaking as much as blizzard tweaks world of warcraft. There has been many updates, new gamemode, and new campaigns for versus mode.
I'd say its really justified to make a sequal with l4d2 new content than push it freely for the existing users.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
more movies, more characters, more weapons, unlockables, achievements
None of those has happened. The campaigns for versus should have been in the game from the beginning and the new mode is a ridiculiously tiny update which they probably hacked together over a couple afternoons. How is it justified to sell the updates which were promised to be free, as a new game?
Re:Why I cry at night... (Score:4, Insightful)
There's only really been one content update, everything else has been patches.
The added versus campaigns weren't new, they were just the ones they didn't have time to balance properly for vs play before the original release. People have been expecting actual NEW campaigns. The quote from Gabe also mentioned new weapons, new infected, improved AI in the original game, all that seems to have been moved to the sequel.
Survival mode, well that was a decent addition, but it only added one small map, all the other survival maps were just expanded panic events from the existing content.
SDK beta... at least we can make our own content now, but how many horrible hack job maps are we going to need to sort through before finding anything good.
Parent
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Even beyond what someone said when they replied to you, there are 2 other parts:
1: they have already released one addition. If they stop there people will go "WTF?"
2: people will get bored of the game if it isn't constantly updated. Although there is a huge retro-gaming crowd, any game that isn't constantly changing, with new things to achieve will start to lose people's interest and then lose popularity.
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Gamers aren't sheep like that.
You're right, that would be insulting the intelligence of sheep. I've never seen sheep "t-bag," nor heard them misuse racial slurs over xbox live in their high prepubescent voices, nor have I seen them get into angry ridiculous arguments about how gaming platform x is better than gaming platform y.
(In the interest of full disclosure: I am an avid gamer and enjoy lamb chops occasionally)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm okay with paying $50 for a sequel to a good game. What I'm not okay with is the feeling of being shafted by Valve, not because of this announcement, but because of the excruciatingly slow pace of development for DLC and bugfixes, and the fact that the game wasn't even completed (missing half the versus maps) until a relatively short while ago.
I thought at the time that they just pulled everybody off the L4D team after they sold, so they wouldn't have to invest any more resources in keeping people who al
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Re:Why I cry at night... (Score:5, Interesting)
Electricity is a service. Pizza delivery is a service. The difference is that I'm not obliged to make a large capital outlay on Electricity Meter v2.0 or Doorbell v3.0 every year in order to continue paying for their service.
Y'all listening, Gabe? You're speaking the language of the salesman. We're games players. We want to play games, not subscribe to services.
Parent
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It could be good, it could be bad. I would pay a monthly fee for access to all of the Steam games.
Re:Why I cry at night... (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:Why I cry at night... (Score:5, Informative)
It did! But, there's really only so many times you can run through Mercy Hospital before the experience becomes a little dull. Unpredictable certainly(to a point). But the difference between meeting a witch on the roof verse the reception area is kind of moot by the 50th playthrough.
After a while, even Left 4 Dead became routine. Despite the procedural content, after a few playthroughs you simply got to know the game and all its little tricks. The unpredictability became tactical, not strategic. I've played with people who can call smoker and hunter spawns before they even happen. People who know and scavenge every drop off point. People who know zombie dispersal patterns and bottling strategies. People with flawless plans for every panic event. Essentially, there are only 4 maps, so this wasn't very hard.
The game needed new expansions. Proper expansions. New maps, new campaigns, new game modes, new special infected, new survivors, new weapons, etc, etc. To keep things fresh. It was more than feasible. When you see how one man recreated the police station from Resident Evil 2 [kotaku.com] as a L4D map, Valve's tardiness in bringing out new maps becomes more incriminating.
Personally, I think the reason behind a new game verse new expansions has less to do with technical issues, and more to do with Microsoft. Specifically, the 360 port of L4D. Basically, Microsoft promote paid downloadable content, and weren't happy with the free updates for L4D that Valve were pushing out on the 360. In addition, all new achievements on the 360 must be tied to paid content, meaning Valve couldn't release new maps for free and give achievements for them at the same time.
In short, the 360 port of L4D has tied Valves hands with the entire game. For any major update they create, they'll invoke more of Microsoft's ire and that of their fans. A brand new game allows them to break the deadlock, but will probably end up creating a new one. You can fully expect that in future, L4D games will have minimal expansions and new games will be preferred to expansions in all cases.
Parent
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I would like more content but am content with user-generated content & lobby support for 'discovering' that content and pla
"...entertainment as a service." (Score:3, Funny)
What about Guitar Hero? (Score:5, Insightful)
Never happy, are we? (Score:2)
Fans are a crying whinny lot who will never be happy with any concession you make, and the sooner you shut them out, the happier you'll be.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
When bad games are announced, we cringe (rightfully I think). When good games are announced, we cringe again with arguments like "Too Soon!" as if the publishers had made a dead David Carradine joke.
I think the question is not about cringing because the game is good but rather because people fear it's going to be bad due to too short a developing span.
Fans are a crying whinny lot who will never be happy with any concession you make, and the sooner you shut them out, the happier you'll be.
It's just the fans' concern that their favourite franchises are being raped for a quick buck. It's stupid for developers to ignore their fans because the fans are the ones who make them money.
Re:Never happy, are we? (Score:5, Interesting)
Valve intends to support hotly anticipated zombie survival shooter Left 4 Dead post-release with new characters, new maps, new achievements and new weapons in order to grow the community, Gabe Newell has revealed.
Speaking to VideoGamer.com at Leipzig Games Convention, the Valve co-founder and managing director said the developer intended to follow a similar downloadable content policy as it has with Team Fortress 2.
Left 4 Dead, set for release on PC and Xbox 360 on November 21 in Europe, is primarily a four-player cooperative game that sees a group of Survivors battle through four 'Movies' and against 28 Days Later-style zombies called The Infected.
Newell said that Valve's support of the game post-launch will be essential for growing the community.
He said: "One of the things that we're doing is we seem to be in a transition between games as a package product and games more of a service. So if you look at Team Fortress 2, one of things that's really helped grow the community is the continuous updates, where we release new maps, new character classes, new unlockables, new weapons. And we tell the stories about the characters, like the meet the sniper, or meet the sandwich. And that ongoing delivery of content really seems to grow the community.
"So each time we've released one of those for Team Fortress 2 we've seen about a 20% increase in the number of people who are playing online. And that number is really important because it determines how many community created maps there are, how many servers are running, and so on. So we'll do the same thing with Left 4 Dead where we'll have the initial release and then we'll release more movies, more characters, more weapons, unlockables, achievements, because that's the way you continue to grow a community over time."
Remember, people were buying the game with this in mind. The game shipped incomplete at full price, with only two of the four campaigns available for use in Versus mode (pretty much the main mode). This was only recently corrected.
Besides bugfixes the only thing they added was survival mode and one very small map for it. There were no new weapons, characters, movies or unlockables.
I don't share the outrage that seems to be commonplace right now, but at the same time I'm not particularly enthusiastic about a sequel and I can see why people would be annoyed in light of what Valve promised.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
I personally have bought 6 copies of The Orange Box... 1 for me, and 5 more for friends. Not only that, but I've gotten at least 1 coworker and 3 more friends to buy the game.
I regularly post topics on my own forums and the forums of related communities about Team Fortress 2.
You'd be surprised how well word of mouth works.
It's pretty easy to explain (Score:3, Insightful)
This isn't that hard to explain. There is profit to be had. They make more money by selling a new game then by releasing free maps for an old one.
Look, companies only understand one thing: sales. Gamers are notoriously bad at speaking with their wallets. They're a hype driven group. Sure, right now people are all pissed off about this. When L4D 2 comes out, those same people will all be lined up on day 1 forking over money for it and caught up in the hype. That pattern gets repeated over and over again.
When gamers as a whole start acting like intelligent customers and less like drug addicts looking for a quick hit, you'll see companies not do this type of quick sequel. In the mean time, there's no consequences for them to do it, so why wouldn't they?
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This isn't that hard to explain. There is profit to be had. They make more money by selling a new game then by releasing free maps for an old one.
I believe that releasing major new updates for free would probably pay for itself, as more new people would then purchase the game. Regardless, if money is there worry, they should release an expansion pack, Not a sequel. This is, more than likely, a side effect of also having a console version. Those things aren't capable of doing anything be yearly sequels.
I'm disappointed (Score:3, Insightful)
Why are games supposedly provided as a service instead of a product? As in, a fully-featured product with the vast majority of the content already there upon release? Seems like each game these days is supplied incomplete and the rest comes through DLCs after release.
Take Tomb Raider: Underworld for example. There have been two DLC chapter addons available for it (and only for the Xbox 360), and these chapters aren't simply side chapters - they're actually a continuation of the story line which was part of the ORIGINAL GAME. In other words, if you didn't have an Xbox 360 and/or didn't purchase these DLCs, you wouldn't actually "finish" the game as it was suppose to be finished. The story would be incomplete. So screw anyone who thought that buying TRU would mean a full game, nah, you have to PAY for the full story line! Now given the DLCs were in part funded by Microsoft, I'm not surprised they're only available for the 360, and it wouldn't have mattered much if they were just side quests that didn't continue the story. But they do.
I don't mind bonus packs that cost a bit but provide extra features, but I do mind cash grabs that seem to emphasize the "release early, finish development later" mentality. Works somewhat for open-source content but shouldn't be tolerated for paid products.
Re: (Score:2)
Indeed. The more it becomes obvious the publishers care less about the quality of the product and more about the ways in which they can take money from customers, the less likely people will be to deal with them. The publisher-customer relationship isn't set in stone, and being greedy bastards simply means someone can move to another publisher who won't be so unfair.
Assuming the customer is savvy of course, but we aren't all brain-dead.
Wont do justice? (Score:2, Insightful)
The original game had like 6 guns, 4 levels and about 5 types of enemies.
You could do justice to that in about a month with a mod team, let alone in a year with a full blown dev team.
I was really looking forward to L4D when it was announced, but as games go, L4D was probably the one game I can point to with the most dissapointingly small amount of content I've seen in the last 5 years.
It really did feel like an HL2 mod and nothing more. The idea is fantastic, but the execution of it left a lot to be desired
Re:Wont do justice? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
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There wasn't even enough content to be creative in how you played it though.
Even your example of CS had countless different weapons including multiple weapons for each weapon type.
The game didn't flow well because of the stupid safe room idea, the levels were too small and relatively linear (yes there was a few areas where you could follow a different route, but barely so).
If you look at coop games where you can create your own story, it tends to be games like Crackdown and Saints Row 2 and it works because
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Okay, to put it another way.
Why should I pay £35 for that when I can pay the same for something like Halo 3 or Gears of War 2 and get better graphics, more weapons, a massive single player campaign, more maps, more multiplayer modes, better gameplay?
In other words, what does L4D actually bring to the table if you're going to play it only as a multiplayer 4 vs 4 game when there are other games out for the same price with far more content which is much better?
The main selling point with L4D was the uniq
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Mods don't have engine changes.
HL was built on a modified version of the Quake 1 source, one of the most major changes being that it was switched to C++ and the code base made object oriented.
L4D doesn't seem like it's really had any engine changes. It also has the lower amounts and quality of content you would expect from a mod than a full priced game.
LD4 1 was supposed to see free updates (Score:2)
The current L4D was very light in content as is and the devs have been promising more would be added to the game. More maps, more weapons, more infected boss types. So I guess now instead of doing that, they're just going to wrap all that new content up, call it a sequal and charge 50 bucks for it. Very sleazy.
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"Trust us" ? (Score:2)
I don't buy promises. I pay for what is delivered.
And what if there was nothing to complain about? (Score:3, Insightful)
There are concerns that Left 4 Dead will not get any additional content, the community will be divided, and that the quick development cycle won't do justice to the sequel.
If Valve were to add an additional year to the development cycle, would the fans be whining that it was too long to wait?
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If Valve were to add an additional year to the development cycle
Knowing Valve, it'll be delayed by at least that much.
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I can see both sides to this argument (Score:2)
I understand what Valve is saying but I think they may be making a douche move here.
Back when Half-Life came out I was saying to myself how it would be great if they released episodic content on the same engine. The story was so huge in Half-Life, it was fully half of the gameplay. I would have been interested to see more of what was happening with Gordon Freeman. Charge $50 for the first game which covers the cost of engine development, release two or three quality add-ons over the next few years, not the
Yes, the L4D2 content WAS promised for L4D1 (Score:4, Interesting)
http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/41219/Left-4-Dead-DLC-Promised [ign.com]
"Chet Faliszek said that Valve plans to get the DLC rolling much more quickly with Left 4 Dead than it has been able to for Team Fortress 2. Plans already in the works call for new campaigns, weapons, and boss infected (the game's zombie enemies). In addition, there were strong hints at a flamethrower coming not long after launch."
Yes, the valve team promised L4D 1 content, including new special infected AND weapons AND new campaigns. Turns out they saved all that for L4D2 instead. L4D2 will have a new special infected (charger), new weapons, and new campaigns. And no, they didn't add any new campaigns in L4D1, just tweaked versions of the old ones for versus, and a single new mini map for survival (the rest of the survival levels are just portions of the old maps in old campaigns)
That same guy at valve in an interview said they have been working on L4D2 since the launch of L4D1.
http://www.shacknews.com/featuredarticle.x?id=1138 [shacknews.com]
"Shack: When did development on Left 4 Dead 2 start?
Chet Faliszek: Pretty much after Left 4 Dead launched."
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Or (forgive the less cynical view point) they just wanted to focus on improving the game and getting it to a very high level of "it's done" before opening it up for modding (since they're still updating L4D as it is, let alone L4D2). I'd also be very surprised if the SDK was L4D2 only (considering they're effectively the same game at heart, I would expect any SDK to let you choose the version being targeted, like the way the SDKs let you target HL2, or Ep1/Ep2 etc. depending on features used)
As it is, I'd m
Re:The Left4Dead SDK isn't even out yet. (Score:5, Informative)
Hell, it was even posted on Slashdot [slashdot.org].
And even before that, it was possible to create maps with a little tweaking of the Hammer editor.
Parent
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That's a beta: I assume Aftan was referring to a final release of the SDK
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Even though the Slashdot poster did call it SDK, it is not a SDK.
An SDK will allow you do modify how the game behaves, create rules such as autokick/ban players who teamkill over a certain limit, create flying monsters etc ...
What Valve has released is just, as the name implies "authoring tools for Left 4 Dead" and it does only let you "author" new content, i.e. graphics and sounds/music/maps.
The gameplay is still the same.
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Hm... maybe they're afraid people will just clone the L4D2 features in L4D1 rather than buying the new game, if they make the editor too full-featured?
Supreme douchebaggery on their part, if that's the case.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I'm pretty sure you can mod L4D just like any other Source game. There's even Metamod: Source [sourcemm.net] (lower level) and Sourcemod [sourcemod.net] (higher level) to help you there. Both appear to work on Left 4 Dead.
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Its been out for weeks. Go to your Tools tab in Steam.
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No report yet on that beer he's owed.
Sorry to ruin it for you.