Left 4 Dead 2 or “How Valve dropped the ball”
Posted by James | Filed under Gaming, Opinion
Since the announcement of the sequel for L4D i’ve had a bitter taste in my mouth. On the one hand, Left 4 Dead was a good game – it still is, though the player base has fallen off of a cliff – on the other hand it was released in an unfinished state and only relatively recently patched up to include the two versus campaigns that were missing. Promises were also made as to the post-release support:
Eurogamer: In terms of updating post-release, do you have any firm plans for what you’re going to do?
Chet Faliszek: Yes. Stuff we haven’t announced but it’s really cool. It’s the coolest thing ever [grin]. There’ll be more scenarios, and those scenarios will introduce new elements.
…and these have pretty much failed to make it through, instead they’ve been moulded into a full-blown sequel. The problem is that my copy of Left 4 Dead is almost useless as it is – none of my ‘friends’ in the groups i’m with play it regularly anymore, they all play Team Fortress 2 – and the game can be broken if people play it in a certain way and so no one plays.
Unfortunately, what i think Valve should be doing seems to be what they’re doing for Left 4 Dead 2:
This could be the platform for zombie apocalypse games for a while.
No! No, no, no! You already HAVE the platform for zombie apocalypse games: Left 4 Dead – please use that. PC gamers don’t need a sequel, they need paid for DLC that slots into Left 4 Dead and which would allow any free maps or more paid-for maps, characters, AI improvements and fixes to be shunted into it.
By releasing the separate entity with a separate executable, front end and all that jazz you’re making the first game redundant. Who cares if user created maps will work on either game? No one’s going to be playing on “last years’ title” when they can play on the fixed and improved new game.
They could have made this into a really good user experience and an alternative to the free updates that people are used to on Team Fortress 2 (which they keep rolling out) but instead they’ve abandoned a game that was mal-nourished on and after release in favour of having another baby in the hopes that all will be made better. They’ve also made me wary of buying Valve games at full price upon release – games that are often more expensive from Steam than at retail here.
It’s a really inconsistant way of producing games…. you’ve got the Half Life series which is a self-contained experience that only requires bug-fixes and then the multiplayer games that require fixes, tweaks and new content to provide legs – otherwise they lose their value. Team Fortress 2 is being handled incredibly from the side of the consumer… they’re still getting more and more free content despite only paying for the game once (and often times at very cheap prices). Yet Left 4 Dead was barely supported; it had two campaigns missing in versus and only 4 on release… there was no SDK for community content and it was only recently when the survival pack was released that we got those two campaigns, the beta SDK and a new survival mode with one map. I feel cheated. Why is my money worth less to Valve for Left 4 Dead when someone else (who likes Team Fortress 2) is getting increased value for the money spent? Now, a further slap in the face is that my game is going to be obsolete whereas the equivalent minor updates to the engine and gameplay that are in Team Fortress 2 (compared to Left 4 Dead 2) are all ported into the existing game.
It boggles the mind.
2 Responses to “Left 4 Dead 2 or “How Valve dropped the ball””
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Destrin Says:
June 3rd, 2009 at 1:46 pmCouldn’t agree more dude, I’m desperately hoping Valve will at least offer those of us who beta-tested L4D to get a discount of their second game, otherwise I’m waiting for the first ‘cheap play’ weekend where they knock the price down to 50% before I think of buying
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