There has been, it seems, something of a fuss over the announcement from Valve that they’re releasing a sequel to Left 4 Dead this November. The main point of contention has been that many were expecting more new content to be added to the original game, rather than appearing in the form of a full price sequel. This was underlined when an article on VideoGamer was rediscovered in which Valve boss Gabe Newell stated, “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.”
We spoke to Valve’s VP of marketing, Doug Lombardi, to ask him about the player response. He talks to us about the reasons why L4D2 is a full sequel, why gamers should wait to find out more about the game before making up their minds, and how there are definitely still plans for the original Left 4 Dead.
RPS: The main point of contention has been that a while back there was a statement from Gabe Newell given to VideoGamer in which he said there were plans to add more characters, unlockables, weapons and achievements to the original Left 4 Dead.
Doug Lombardi: So, we’ve made a number of releases on the PC, and we made a pretty big release on the 360 in terms of the DLC, and we were able to get out for free which I thought would pretty cool, and it was not an easy thing to pull off. Beyond that, we plan to continue updating Left 4 Dead. We’re not done with that title, it’s not over. The SDK stuff just came out. I think we mentioned to RPS that if you’re using the SDK and making maps for it, those will work for L4D2 as well. We are trying to keep the community together – we’re going to be doing more stuff about keeping the community together as we get closer to launch.
I think the short answer is: trust us a little bit. We’ve been pretty good over the years, even with L4D going back just a few months, about supporting games post-launch. Gabe’s always talking about providing entertainment as a service – it’s not about making a game any more. That’s one point of it.
The other point is, we didn’t sit down and say, “We need to ship a sequel next for next Christmas, what features do we need?” That wasn’t the way it happened, that’s not the way Valve works. What did happen was, the team sat down and said, “We’ve got a bunch of ideas of stuff we want to do.” People were really fired up when the game was finished, and there was a lot of feedback and ideas that came from watching people play – on the scale of millions of people, as opposed to hundreds of people that we went through during the playtesting sessions. So we put a lot of those things on the board and said, “What can we do quickly? What’s going to take more time? What’s the best way to get stuff out to customers?” And part of that plan ended up with L4D2, with things like changing the way the finales worked, introducing some new Survivors, giving new dialogue, telling more about the story, introducing new Specials. We said, “Wow, that makes for a nice sequel.” And then there was the stuff in the Survival Pack which makes for a nice DLC. And what we’d like to do is release a great game, provide lots of entertainment-as-a-service type of features, whether they’re technical updates or whether it’s the Survival Pack, and then also deliver more.
RPS: So how did the sequel come about?
DL: One of the biggest pieces of feedback we got after the game came out, and even after the Survival Pack, was: this is all really great, I loved it, but I want a bunch more campaigns, I want more content. In a sense, L4D2 is a response to what players were asking for after the first one shipped. That’s really how it came about. I think if folks spot us a bit more time, they may see where we’re going with all this. The more they learn about how much there is in L4D2… I mean, twenty new weapons isn’t DLC! Three new Specials, and twenty weapons, and five new campaigns: that starts to feel like a sequel. I think as more gets unveiled as we go from E3 to Comic Con and PAX, and show the game in places where the public can play, and then when the demo comes out a couple of weeks before launch, I think people will get where we’re going, and hopefully don’t think that we’ve turned into some sort of opportunist cow milkers.
RPS: Do you wonder whether an aspect of it is that it’s been so quick? Do you think if you’d waited another six or eight months, people might have responded better?
DL: Maybe, maybe. But two years from now though, would you look back and say that was better? Like I say, give it some time: quick decisions aren’t usually the best ones. I would say that may have been part of it, people may have felt differently about it had it taken longer to produce it. The other thing is, it’s something new for Valve. Valve doesn’t have a reputation for shipping quick sequels! So it’s something different. We had similar reactions when we announced The Orange Box. There were a lot of people who thought, “It’s not going to be worth fifty dollars, all these games are really tiny,” and then by the time the game came out the review said, “The best value in gaming.” Again, I would say, let us tell more of the story before people make their final judgement. And then if they say we’re f’d, then that’s fair. [laughs]
RPS: Do you think part of the problem might have been that the Survival Pack felt like it was finishing the first game. When there were two versus campaigns that weren’t in there, it might have felt like the Survival Pack completed the game rather than added to it.
DL: Maybe. It’s hard to say, I haven’t sat down and had a calm, reasonable dialogue with a group of people that have had [this week's] reaction yet. I’ve been busy keeping it a secret, then we just announced it a couple of days ago. I also want to get more informations, I want to hear more of what their story is and what they’re reacting to, so I can understand it better, and I’m sure Gabe feels the same way. We’ll see what is the genesis of why folks are having this reaction to it. And that [the Survival Pack] might have been part of it as well, but it’s definitely not the case that we’re closing the book on L4D and saying, “Next time you get anything it’s when the sequel comes out.”
RPS: So is there any chance of new content like new maps and new campaigns in the original L4D?
DL: Yeah, there’s certainly a chance of that, and we’re not announcing any of the specifics of that today. Like I say, stay tuned, there’s more coming, there’s more information we’re going to talk about for the sequel, there’s more content coming for Left 4 Dead in the fairly near term, that I think will sort of add to this picture and hopefully change some people’s opinions of what’s happening right now.
Thanks to Doug Lombardi for taking time out of a crazed E3 schedule to talk to us. The RPS hivemind realises people are very passionate about this subject, but remains confident that the discussion below will not make us frown.
Related Stories:
@FunkyB
Yes, absolutely. This isn’t just The South, it’s New Orleans- The Bayou. It’s not hicks and confederate flags, it’s swamps and voodoo and above ground tombs. Similaraly, for L4D1’s setting it’s not cow farms and old people, it’s Pittsburgh and the settings of the old -of the Dead movies.
All I can say is that I’m gonna miss Francis. But that con artist character looked pretty cool too. Bring on the anti-heroes!
@jaif
Making an L4D campaign is a LOT more work than an TF2 map.
Making a well balanced one, with good flow is ever harder
Load up what we have of the SDK and you will find this to be true.
@Gorgeras
I don’t know what you’re getting at.
No really, what do you mean?
I think all you people who’ve lost posts should give at least a pints worth to the rps fundbox so they can buy a nice relaxing pint of beer. The amount of vitriol still in this and the other HUGE >500 psot threads makes me fear for the sanity of thehivemind and what rubbish they’ve had to delete.
Come on lads+lasses – given the poor guys a break!
The constant RPS-approved disparagement of one side of any given discussion in virtue of some associated feelings of anger is pretty poisonous I’d say. Especially if as Alec say there are trolls and fanatics and hyperbolartists (sorry) on both sides.
But then what do I know, it’s probably the HULK SMASH INTERNAT RAGE talking since I’m firmly in the ‘Valve caving to console business model’ camp.
@ Alec
I think it’s a bit too soon for a sequel too, but I’m not going to call anyone names about it. At least not unless, in the event of my finally playing L4D2, it’s rubbish and one of the new infected is called Alec-is-a-twat.
Harsh! You know that Valve read these things, right? Someone’s going to get a graffiti easter egg named after him.
The last few threads about L4D2 were horrible, soul-destroying misery, even with all the racism, slights upon Newell’s weight, comments that Valve are worse than Hitler and whatnot removed on sight. We’d like this thread to remain a sober, constructive discussion of the many legitimate issues around the game. Though you can also talk about how ace otters are, if you like.
Wow, glad i missed out on those. Honestly, though the southern setting doesn’t really interest me that much and characters seem relatively bland by comparison to the first four these things have never entered my mind as valid points of complaint.
@Psychopomp: And how is that relevant? Once again, I am merely reiterating what they promised and what they have delivered. They promised to deliver a L4D campaign, they have not delivered a L4D campaign. The difficulty of the task is not our problem. If it is too much work, they should have considered that before they made it one of the key selling points of the game, don’t you think?
Despite the difficulty, they were more than willing before launch to go out and say “We will keep adding new campaigns”. That is one of the chief reasons why many people bought the game. And you’re saying they should be left off the hook because “it’s a lot of work”?
In that case, I don’t suppose you want to pay me $500 for inventing cold fusion? I promise I’ll do it unless it turns out to be a lot of work.
By the way, I hate oxygen too. It corrodes everything. Nasty stuff. It’s almost as bad as otters :D
@PC Monster
I think that is a very cynical, clinical, and capitalistic assessment of the situation, which I reject wholeheartedly. Valve is a business, who needs to make money: Yes.
It is still, also, people. People who love to make games, who want fans to be excited about what they are making, and who have given every indication they make decisions on more than milking as much money as they can. Excusing unethical behavior with, “well, that’s business!” is the most disgusting aspect of capitalism, and I surely won’t support companies who feed me that line.
There are humans at the heart of each decision, and expecting or allowing them to hide behind a shield of business brings consumers no good at all.
Thankfully Valve has not done that, and this seems more a poorly thought-out development direction than a money-grabbing marketing decision.
(Now secretly wondering how much I would have to bribe Valve to get an infected called Alex-Is-A-Twat put in the game…)
=)
The post where I cite the Steam forums begins by drawing attention and ire to the frequent use of useless, uninformative and misleading personal anecdote. The point was to answer posts like that of TheFanciestofPants with talking-points of equally worthless merit.
If I fail to get the point about this low quality type of discussion across to posters like TheFanciestofPants, I will at least have made an argument engaging them on their level because so far those few who have attempted to dredge the sewage have been ignored.
So why cherry-pick? Why is my deliberate and self-concious nonsense to be criticised but not TheFanciestofPants’ accidental but frankly genuine garbage reasoning it’s in response to?
@Psychopomp
Fairly sure they’re not trying to be insulting (at least not the original reference wasn’t), they’re British that haven’t been to the South.
@Everyone Else
We don’t know what the two other new special infected are. We’ve all come to like the original 4 but maybe the new 4 will be just as good. They’re finally adding melee weapons and more ranged weapons. Survival mode in original would be a lot easier if you could just stand around with chainsaws and tear up a tank.
I figured more people were gonna complain about the art looking a little bit different. The colors have been softened a little bit, like on the zombies (though this may just be to reduce processor load). Mayhap this way they can have even more normal infected on screen.
Valve knows what they’re doing. You got your money’s worth, they’ll bridge the two games, and honestly, even if they only update L4D1 to run in the same game as L4D2 so you don’t have to switch, the SDK made-maps will soon be supported anyways. Not sure what you all honestly would’ve expected more. Funny hats?
“I don’t know what more I could have BUT DAMMIT I WANT IT!”
We as gamers are constantly demanding that developers have some inspiration, come together and actually be excited about a game they are creating. So much out there is just a contrived mess of genres, gimmicks and used up cliches, all in an effort to create the new killer IP. Problem is, most of these are completely uninspired; a calculated attempt to create a cash cow. Now, Valve has this moment of inspiration after the release of L4D, and the people involved were excited to create new content and expand the experience of the original game, and we are getting what we want. Still, our first inclination was to lynch Valve, in spite of their continued and proven support of the PC community. And for what? The fact that we have to actually pay for something that Valve has created? The uninformed conspiracy theory that L4D is dead? That we now feel entitled to massive free updates? The fact that we can even have this discussion at all proves what Valve has done for the PC, they’ve changed the game and they deserve (yes, deserve), at the very least, our patience.
Yeah – I paid $40 for Left 4 Dead and it came out pretty broken. Valve was constantly fixing exploitable areas, multiple-zombie exploits, stuck-in-walls areas, ‘pushing the forklift in front of the elevator’, infinite weapons spawn issues, ‘melee through doors to bypass areas’ issues etc etc. It was a mess for a long time. The matchmaking was never fixed in my opinion – I still get dumped in servers with 300-500ms pings.
So I played it about 15-20 hours and it just felt buggy and unfinished. We waited what, over a year to get versus mode in half the game? That should have been shipped with it, along with the ’survival mode’, which I played a half dozen times and realized it’s just the finales of the game with a fancy title.
And compare that to another game I picked up for $50 – Grand Theft Auto 4, which I played for easily 100 hours+, massive amount of content and very few bugs.
Dunno – I think people feel a little jerked around and ripped off because they were a little jerked around and ripped off. The previous game was buggy and light on content, and Valve is going to ask for another $40 for a sequel. Pretty greedy in my opinion.
I love the phrase “opportunistic cow milker.” I may just have to change my Steam nickname.
I think people who think L4D wasn’t worth $50 have been spoiled by the likes of TF2. There certainly have been shorter, less fun games at that price.
The could update the game with the simple addition of dolphins for the Zombies to ride, strangely attractive oversized walnuts to hide behind and a hundred foot high cyber zombie ridden by a doctor zombie, across a lawn. What could be easier?
What I don’t get is how people say “I spent 73.5 hours playing L4D, so it’s a full game and a full-priced sequel is due, you greedy anti-capitalist bastards!”.
I mean, I’ve probably spent 200 hours playing dustbowl in TFC, but I don’t feel that makes dustbowl a $300 sequel by that logic. The number of hours in your Steam stats isn’t what makes a game feel complete. Especially for a multiplayer game.
If they called L4D2 an expansion pack (remember “Opposing Force”?), while reassuring players that there would be other, free updates for L4D, nobody would complain.
PS: Look how ace these otters are: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epUk3T2Kfno
@Alec – so pointing out Valve’s openly confirmed style of treating Steam as a kind of beta playground is not relevant or appropriate to a topic arguably about a beta sold as a full game?
Considering I based the comment you deleted purely off on-the-record interviews with Valve, I’m quite surprised you erased it.
Apnea: Definitely. If blog authors are going to provocatively misrepresentat a viewpoint, they can hardly justify an ‘above it all’ (ie, “Oh, look at the angry internet men”) air toward the responses. Some people aren’t very good at expressing (or even understanding) their own position, and if that view is negative, they’re the ones who end up being called “angry internet men”; but cripes, if a handful of people being incoherent made an entire attitude toward a game/news report/whatever off-limits, then you could never say anything good about anything, because “Happy Internet Men” tend to make “Angry Internet Men” look like bleedin’ Plato — the crazy inflation of that other L4D thread was mostly down to halfwits scampering in, desperate to show off how above-it-all they were, and antagonising people who were often equally incoherent, but who happened to take a perfectly justifiable negative view of the situation, rather than the positive view.
@Dave “Opportunistic Cow milker” does sound like some sort of minor public order offense.
It’s like both sides of this discussion aren’t even aware of what the other side is actually saying. I continually read these defenses of Valve’s decision claiming those of us upset want everything for free.
No. No, no. No! We want what we were explicitly told we would get for free, for free. I paid $50 for what I felt was an incomplete game with the expectation that would be expanded upon directly as Valve claimed numerous times it would. I drove a dozen or more hesitant friends to purchase the game as well.
Valve seems to have no idea the impact this decision will make on sales. Without my personal active pressure and enthusiasm they could have easily lost 20-30 sales of TF2 and L4D each. I am not anyone special, and in any community there are people like me evangelizing and pushing their friends to focus on specific games. If you lose the hearts and minds of your most avid supporters, you also lose those that were never passionately interested in you to begin with.
I don’t think any amount of marketing can make up for that, over the long-term.
“Phwoar, look at that lovely li’l heifer over there on its own… Hey! No-one milking you at the moment, darlin’?!…”
edit: I’ll just edit a little context in!… *whistles away*
@Dave
it’s irrelevant how many bad games there are in the world, when plumbers don’t wear ties 2 gets released it wont all of a sudden make call of duty 5 a good game.
I am incapable of understanding the reasoning other people employ when spending their disposable income, and as such, will antagonise them!
@yutt: Heh, having been recently fired from a business composed of some exceedingly lovely people, I think I’m allowed a small touch of cynicism now and again. Still, calling my assessment ‘cynical, clinical and capitalist’ doesn’t mean it isn’t true, right? Neither does your rejection of it.
And to be clear: I agree with you that there is no excuse for unethical behaviour in business, full-stop/period.
But I’m happy to see we’re agreeing on the main point, that Valve may just have not thought this out properly, rather than an active attempt by them to fleece their customers EA-style.
@James T
Wow, thanks. I thought I was going crazy here.
I guess I will try again.
I see this as a case of: “I want something for nothing.”
Valve are continuing supporting L4D and such, albeit slower that promised but that’s what “Valve time” is all about.
I found the first L4D pretty boring and still don’t regret buying it, because I like supporting Valve. While they are also just another company trying to earn money they always did so in a very consumer-friendly way. And that’s their style – look at TF2, the “Meet the…” videos, The Orange Box in general, their blogs etc.
They know the value of “customer loyalty”. Why should that suddenly change, just a few weeks after releasing such a hilarious Spy-movie for free?
I think most of these comments will become obsolete when more details about the sequel’s pricing and additional L4D1 content are revealed. Absolutely no need to get angry, yet.
Hyperbole – It’s where the hysterical put their Super Cornflakes!
@PC Monster
Surely you have valid points, I am obligated to serve as your opposition in this act, however. I would like to clear up that I reject it as a defense of their actions. It may be the reason for them, but as a consumer, it isn’t a valid justification.
Certainly far more cynical and capitalistic minds than yours are making game development decisions all the time. My only point is, as consumers, we should be advocating on behalf of ourselves, the corporations and their PR consultants will do just find defending themselves.
Meh, at this point I just don’t care anymore. Barring some spectacular (and at that point very unlikely) support for L4D1 I’ll be buying my Valve games on sale from now on.
@yutt, ‘I paid $50 for what I felt was an incomplete game’:
That’s ridiculous. Content-sparse does not automatically equate to incompleteness. TF2 was not ‘incomplete’ when it had a grand total of six maps, nor was L4D with its four.
There was more than enough in the core L4D to qualify as a ‘full’ game, especially considering how most multiplayer games work (relatively small number of maps in rotation). Hell, the game kept itself more replayable (somewhat) than most through the director.
Of course, this is most likely hindsight speaking. After all, had the common assessment of the game on release been “it’ll probably be finished in a year or so”, I would imagine most would’ve been more cautious in even buying the game, much less recruiting friends.
“Certainly far more cynical and capitalistic minds than yours are making game development decisions all the time. My only point is, as consumers, we should be advocating on behalf of ourselves, the corporations and their PR consultants will do just find defending themselves.”
So true
Why people dont realize this , is really beyond me
@Schaulustiger:
Don’t be so sure about the price. From Shacknews:
Shack: What price-point should we expect?
Doug Lombardi: This is a full sequel.
Shack: So full price?
Doug Lombardi: Yeah. At the end of the day, this is going to be a bigger game than Left 4 Dead. It’s five campaigns versus four, all five are playable in Versus mode, Survival mode out of the box, the new multiplayer game mode. Plus over 20 new weapons and items. It’s a full sequel.
@yutt
That’s what’s really getting to me about RPS comment threads lately. People are actively discouraging other people from, as you say, ‘advocating on behalf’ of themselves, all because of some BS rationale of capitalistic greed taken as THE natural order of things, or because it makes you angry, or because it’s uncool or entitled or whatever. The funny thing is, in doing the whole ‘dog eats dog’ act, they are actually willing defenders of the companies they so casually identify as soulless profit-machines out to pilfer their own pockets. I don’t know what that says about people when they’re willing to cut the marketing middlemen and take it upon themselves to counteract the skeptical inquiries and principled expectations of consumers LIKE THEM. A very noxious dynamic indeed.
Anyway, stop doing the damage control thing if you’re not paid to do it. Leave it to professionals (and some here probably are for all I know).
I can agree with this, but keep in mind that people absolutely should express their reservations, and that, at Valve’s end, they shouldn’t (and probably don’t) care whether those reservations are put politely or impolitely — all they need to know is that, “we’ve pissed people off”.
“Whiners should shut up until they hear more” is not the answer. People should speak up positively OR NEGATIVELY according to the information at hand, and they need to be civilised about it — for all the posturing that’s done at RPS about “angry internet men”, positive people — blog authors included — need to remember to behave themselves as well. Trolling from the sunshiney side does not make anyone less of a troll.
(Oo, we’re all coming out at once. “Stop the inanity!”)
@I hate airports.
Small number of maps in rotation? That isn’t how L4D functions at all, so I am not sure why you even brought it up. And regardless to how TF2 and other games function on a server-by-server basis, you can easily switch to another server with alternative maps.
There is not a single, not one, set of popular community maps. That alone speaks volumes of how L4D stands compared to Valve’s other games. We haven’t seen anything near the support or content we expected.
Communities take time to develop impressive levels and modifications, and if developers keep pressing the reset button with sequel releases, that never has a chance to occur. Valve of all developers, should understand this.
You are free to disagree, but my opinion is far from ridiculous.
@Alec Meer
Dont worry the others will be back soon and you can go have a lie down in a dark L4D2 free room.
@jalf
“If L4D was updated at the same pace, it should, by now, have had two updates, and a third should be in the works. It has had one, which didn’t really add any of the content we were promised. Of course, we were promised *faster* updates than TF2, so saying it should have had a mere two updates is cutting Valve a lot of slack.”
I was referring to this paragraph
I wouldn’t doubt Valve fully intended to live up to hose promises, then the reality of the whole thing put a foot in their mouths.
@jalf
And why exactly do i need to think about a comment in another thread in regard to deletion of a comment in this thread? O_o’
@Alec
I think people are entitled to a tiny bit of nonconstructive sarcasm in their posts after they spent 71$ bucks on a game with so short lifespan and which sold mostly on empty promises…
I’m sorry if i was “overly aggressive” though, its probably because i was short on cash when i bought L4D back then. (and still sort of… ->poor tech student here).
“It’s more than DLC” may be true when taken as a single drop, but if all the proposed changes were made incrementally over a long period no-one would be arguing.
The thing that gets my goat is that it’s clear now that the molasses slow reaction to finishing the original campaigns and lack of new content is because efforts were focussed on the new child. They can produce 5 completely new inter-twinned campaigns for Coop & Vs & ‘other’, in a new setting, taking into account new AiD functions like weather, and new characters, but somehow it takes 6 months to knock up a lighthouse and make tweaks to Vs maps in 2 campaigns?!
It’s a natural reaction to finishing a project to want to go grander bigger and better, but in this case it seems that instead of coming from a place of “there’s so much more we wish we could have done to L4D, let’s keep working”, they’ve expressed dissatisfaction in interview more along the lines of “now the rest of Valve has looked at this we wish we’d done some things differently let’s make a v2.0″.
It just looks like L4D was the first stab, that was very successful, but they immediately moved on.
@yutt:
Then what, pray tell, made L4D incomplete in your mind? Outside of the maps issue (which I have heard), I nothing really pops out to me.
And no, comparing poorly in terms of custom maps (or lack of huge updates, for that matter) to other Valve games does not make it incomplete, either, just possibly not amazing.
Plus, your whole point about the community is completely unrelated to why you thought the game wasn’t quite done upon release (unless, of course, complete games ship with fully functioning communities, in which case, I’ve got to buy better games). Not to mention, if I remember correctly, custom material created for L4D will still work on the sequel, so its hardly a ‘reset’.
@Psychopomp
“I wouldn’t doubt Valve fully intended to live up to hose promises, then the reality of the whole thing put a foot in their mouths.”
I don’t think it was the reality, i think it was greed…
I would bet that L4D2 started as a part of promised DLC (which explains why they said that works on L4D2 began right after L4D was released) , until valve’s suits decided that there is enough new stuff to put into a separate box and sell it at full-price.
The reason there’s been no community maps is because there’s been no sdk.
The whole angry internet men meme in my eyes comes from the fashionable internet, it’s a serious buisness meme these days and is repulsive in that it’s trying to say it’s not ok to care about anything enough to express yourself, for the record the internet is a serious buisness and it’s ok to be angry, it’s ok to use the internet and it’s not ok to limit that meme to men you chovanistic pig you! :)
P.s. I’m on my phone jusy now so forgive the poor spelling/grammer.
@Dash
remember, there’s a 360 version as well, with significant limitations
Part of the TF2 update delay on the 360 has been that very thing
@Sombrero
An AIM isn’t someone who is angry, an AIM is someone who is angry to the point of turning into an unreasonable child
@JonFitt
Not to be too cynical, but it is clear we didn’t get the needed balance fixes and patches quickly because the team was cranking along on L4D2. It seems completely bizarre, eh?
Is this just Turtle Rock not being integrated with Valve well or what?
Because you might have gotten them mixed up. I’ve done that before, thinking they deleted one of my comments, only to find it where I left it in another thread on the same subject…. ;)
Just thought I’d mention it in case that’s what happened. If they deleted your post, tough luck, and I’m going to choose to believe they had a reason. :)
I haven’t read all the 240 comments, but I find it hilarious that people are complaining about l4d2 being released as a stand-alone game. I’m not white-knighting Valve, it’s just that we are talking about the developer that has never charged any money for content updates, a rarity in these days if you ask me. Most developers tend to charge you for a new weapon model and two maps, which I think is worthy an outrage, but not Valve making l4d2 a stand-alone game. If it’ll glue me to the screen for the 80 or so hours I’ve hunted zombies in the first installment, I’ll gladly buy it. Apart from that, there’ll definintely be a 25% off weekend before release.
What would be the relevance of this for, say, someone who has only purchased L4D from Valve?
An AIM is a strawman used by those who can’t or who don’t want to countenance reasonable criticism of [whatever]. It is useful only as an attack device, as childish as anything a supposed “angry internet man” would say, but is supposedly much better because it’s a whitewashing slur (with some handy attached sophistry) rather than, y’know, the opposite.
L4D was a reasonably-sized game. Not a huge game, but not tiny either.
However, in the current marketplace I see /far more value/ at the $20 price point than the $60 price point. Why am I paying for full games with little-to-no future DLC when I can grab a game for a third the cost that I’ll play just as much in the end?
I won’t pick up L4D2 until either (A) Everyone I know is playing it or (B) It’s a $10 weekend deal.
@I hate airports.
Of course games don’t come with communities. That’s why gamers like me focus on companies good at building these communities. Releasing sequels too quickly makes that impossible. This isn’t hard to understand, so don’t you dare quibble with me about it. Any reasonable person can see that splitting development of maps and modifications between two games that, according to Valve, are sufficiently different to warrant a sequel, segments the community.
Community projects will have to choose to either hook to L4D1 or L4D2’s capabilities. They will use one set of characters or the other. When you play with your friends you can’t just all launch TF2, you have to make sure everyone has the $50 update, TF2.5.
Further, Gabe Newell and others specifically said that they would follow the TF2 update model with L4D, including free updates of weapons and special infected. You can’t argue your way out of this, they said they would do one thing, and they are not.