Valve Explains Quick Left 4 Dead Sequel

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."

Comments

Why I cry at night...

[SchizoStatic]

"Gabe Newell is "always talking about providing entertainment as a service â" it's not about making a game any more." " Which is why most games suck now.

Re:Why I cry at night...

[poetmatt]

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.

Re:Why I cry at night...

[theIsovist]

While normally I'd agree with you, Valve games tend to keep the quality high with their releases. And with Steam, they don't have to make games for income anymore, so anything they do create is created out of love of the craft. This is probably why they constantly miss their deadlines. They have enough money that missing a deadline is preferable to releasing a crappy product.

Re:Why I cry at night...

[alexhard]

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."

Re:Why I cry at night...

[alexhard]

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...

[Sqweegee]

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.

Re:Why I cry at night...

[wagnerrp]

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 the 50th playthrough (each of which takes 30-60 minutes depending on your team's skill level) of one map (out of four) of one playmode (out of two, or three if you include Survival), one could argue that you got your money's worth out of that game (especially if you got the $37.50 package deal or the $25 half-price deal).

What about Guitar Hero?

[bryansj]

Who's going to explain all the quick Guitar Hero sequels?

Re:The Left4Dead SDK isn't even out yet.

[DavidR1991]

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 much rather have them thinking about the game and its sequel, than making mod tools to some that could still be polished up even more.

It's pretty easy to explain

[Tridus]

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?

I'm disappointed

[GF678]

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:Never happy, are we?

[oneirophrenos]

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.

Wont do justice?

[Xest]

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 IMO.

I understood why Valve didn't bother with a storyline, but generally if you're not going to bother with that you make it up by making sure there's a ton of levels, game modes, weapons, enemies and so on to deal with. The problem with L4D is that it was devoid of any meaningful amount of any of these things. It had few maps, few enemy types, few weapons, few gameplay modes.

For £30 - £35 I expect a game, not a mod.

Re:Wont do justice?

[Novotny]

I'm not wishing to be rude, but I think you kind of missed the point about L4D: it's all about the execution and not the content. Hell, I played CS constantly for more than half a decade over maybe, 4/5 maps, at most. Getting the game to play and flow so well was their goal, including 27 variants of weapons was not. I'd far rather have 5 excellent monsters than 10 ok ones. It seems they spent their development schedule on testing and perfecting the gameplay, so people talk about the mad tactics they can pull in VS mode and create their own little stories, all as a result of the fluidity of the gameplay. I reckon there will be loads of content over the next year.

Re:Wont do justice?

[Novotny]

It's about two teams of four outwitting eachother - at least it is for me. If you're only playing offline or co-operative then you're really missing out on what L4D's all about - you're only playing bots, after all, and how dull is that? In CS, you only really use 4/5 weapons and the same number of maps. There may be more - but they don't get used. Sometimes for a laugh, sure, an odd map is played, and league play tends to bring out the odd strange one to throw a spanner in the works, however you'll find that most cs players will spend the evening on probably a max of four different maps - the same old four, too. Anyways, we'll probably just have to agree to disagree. I think we're coming at it from different angles, you seem to be after more of a single player experience, I'm more into online, competitive-type stuff.

Re:The Left4Dead SDK isn't even out yet.

[AftanGustur]

No it's not.

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.

And what if there was nothing to complain about?

[BaronHethorSamedi]

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?

Re:What's all the fuss about, anyway?

[VGPowerlord]

Am I the only one who thought Left 4 Dead was mediocre at best?

No, and I'm not afraid to say it either. Particularly since I paid considerably more for it than I paid for Team Fortress 2, which is, hands-down, a better game.