T w e n t y S i d e d

I thought everyone would be sick of the whole Left 4 Dead 2 controversy by now, but yesterday Blackbird71* cast wall of text at me. Several people chimed in and asked for my response. So, okay then.

* Looking in the archives, I’m fairly sure that Blackbird1 through Blackbird70 aren’t in use, if you’d like to trade-in for a lower number. (When I see a name like that it makes me think there’s an army of people with the same name who simply numbered themselves, like Harry Mudd’s androids.)

Uh. No, actually you ask n+1 questions, where n is a ridiculous number. But I shall endeavor to answer them, because they are incisive and cut to the heart of this debate.

Yes. And while I haven’t talked about it before, I do think leaving the versus content out of half the game was a bad move on the part of Valve. I didn’t bring it up before because it’s just not on my radar. I don’t play versus. I tried it a few times and will save that rant for another time. Still, the point that the game was unfinished due to the lack of versus mode in half the game is a fair one, and Valve took a really long time to roll that out. A lot of people had played the game out and moved on months before Valve provided the ability to play versus on the final two campaigns. This complaint makes sense to me, although it doesn’t seem to be related to the ongoing L4D2 debate…

Yes. And if I paid $50 for L4D and played for ten hours, then I’d be making that point again. But I paid $50 and played for 150+ hours. I would say this is a wonderful turnaround for the industry, a return to the bygone days of yore when games lasted longer than an open pint of milk.

You’re going to have to refresh my memory? The Doom games used the same formula, and I managed to enjoy those. Same with Serious Sam, both Fallout games, Max Payne, and lots of other titles. The two sides of this debate seem to be talking past each other on what constitutes “game content”, but I’ll get to that in a minute…

Yes, and if Valve is planning to erase Left 4 Dead when the sequel comes out I’ll be one of the first to throw an online tantrum over it. I’m certainly not in favor of getting LESS games because a portion of the fan base is still busy with the old one. (Stipulated: I did mention how dividing the audience of an online game is risky. It’s a fair point, but I’ve covered it twice now.)

I do advocate DLC. I don’t demand it, though. But like I said before: They did give us DLC for L4D. And from now on I’m not going to debate with people who are going to stamp their feet and pretend that isn’t the case. You can say it wasn’t enough. You can say that you feel you were promised more. But if you claim there hasn’t been DLC for L4D then you’re not in the same conversation I am.

I suspect the problem here is that some people bought the game expecting more free stuff. They’ve alluded to Valve promises (a link to those promises in writing would be really helpful) unfulfilled. I bought the game expecting to get the stuff in the box and nothing more. The extra DLC was thus a nice bonus for me, not a down payment on an unspoken promise.

I agree with you here. Certainly if Valve said, “We are giving away a free campaign” then they have yet to make good on that. Was this a real promise made by Gabe Newel or an internet rumor? The critics could greatly bolster their manifesto by giving us a quote, or a link, or something. Of course, even if this is true, it just means Valve hasn’t made good on the promise yet.

This is a fair assessment, assuming Valve made that promise and assuming they never deliver on it.

And this is where the other side stops making sense to me. What is it you need in order for a game to qualify as “new enough” for a sequel? New maps, characters, story, melee combat, weapons, enemies, music. There is almost no reused content at all.

I posed this question before, and I only got one taker. That person suggested Valve add “puzzles”, “or something”. Well, puzzles don’t seem to fit within a game designed for “infinite” replay. The first time they’re a bit of a diversion, and on every subsequent playthrough they are simple busywork with no further entertainment value. What is it this game needs? Dialog trees? A romance sim? Blitzball mini-game? This is a tightly focused and well-polished experience, and I’m not seeing what needs to be added.

Again, look at the jump from Doom to Doom II. Serious Sam to Serious Sam 2. Thief to Thief 2. What makes these games “sequels” besides the new maps, monsters, weapons, characters, dialog, story, and gameplay elements.

And here’s the thing: The critics say that:

A) The games are released too close together and,
B) The second is too expensive.

So… don’t buy it on day one. Valve will have a sale and you can get the game $30 cheaper six months later. Me, I’m willing to pay full price on day one, and I don’t see how that transaction detracts from your game in any way. (Player base division notwithstanding.)

I never saw any such promise, and I never bought the game with such expectations in mind.

I think Valve should just ask the lot of them what content they expect in a sequel that they aren’t already offering, and let them balkanize and bicker amongst each other when they realize they don’t have a unified answer.

I would not call this game a “reskin”, a term usually reserved for superficial changes. Once you add three new monster types (to the original five) and twenty new weapons (to the original eight or so, depending on how picky you are with your definition of “weapon”) and five new campaigns (to the original four) then you have something that is much larger than its predecessor. This is certainly not a reskin, and I can’t think of a time when someone released an expansion pack that dwarfed the size of the game it was supposedly expanding.

At any rate, I’m not really mocking the angry customers. (Well, the Episode 3 boycott did satirize them a bit, but it was satirizing the “boycott” idea more than their grievances. Boycotting a game because is isn’t for sale is only slightly more silly than boycotting something because it sucks. (A “boycott” is supposed to be a refusal to buy an otherwise desirable product over principles. You don’t boycott crap, you just refuse to buy it.))

This is probably a big difference between the two factions. When I buy a movie, I care about how entertaining it is, not how big the budget was. If someone can keep me entertained for an hour and a half for less than a million bucks, I’m not going to demand they sell the DVD for $5 just because the movie was cheap to make.

Now, if you judge Left 4 Dead as a single-player game (maybe you’re on dial-up and can’t meaningfully play online, or perhaps (like many) you generally shy away from online play) then I’d guess the game is perhaps six hours worth of hard content, and a few more hours of replayability due to the dynamic nature of the game. That’s a fraction of (say) Half-Life 2, but about par for comparable mainstream titles. (Which isn’t very impressive.) If you’re looking for single-player fun, then I would say that neither game is worth full price, but L4D2 will be better than the original because it will have one more campaign. (So I’ve heard.)

I’m wondering the same thing about the protesters. I don’t think they’re stupid or spoiled or clueless, I just don’t get the whole “this should be an expansion pack” argument.

I’ve made the point before about the rising cost of game development. Games are shorter because geometric content (weapons, models, characters, and levels) is really time consuming to produce for current-gen engines. It’s also the part I’m most interested in. I want to see the levels, learn the story, meet the characters. Complaining that this is a re-skin of the original is (to me) like complaining that Mountain Dew is the same old Pepsi can, just with a different flavor liquid inside.

The sequel is going to offer me five campaigns worth of entertainment. That’s more than the original, and at the same price. Sounds like a good deal to me. The fact that they aren’t taking the polished gameplay I enjoy and grafting a bunch of cruft onto it is a nice bonus. Don’t fix what isn’t broken. I certainly didn’t complain that Fallout 2 was just “re-skinned Fallout”. (Although it was bug soup, alas. And I did berate it for that.)

For the protester’s position to make any sense to me, I would need to see a promise from an actual Valve employee promising an extra campaign for L4D, (or whatever) and a concrete explanation of what the sequel needs to have that it doesn’t already have. Then we’ll have some common ground to begin a conversation.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.