As you may recall, we recently had a news piece up about the Left 4 Dead 2 Boycott group. While the group has grown to nearly 22,700 members (up from the 6,200 it was at just five days previous) it seems as though Valve is relatively un-phased by the complaints.
Valve's Chet Faliszek issued a statement to Ars Technica about the company's take on the sequel issue.
Faliszek also explained some of the bigger ideas in place for the sequel and how it wouldn't really fit in with a style of updating akin to what is being done with Team Fortress 2.
Read more over at Ars Technica, or hit up the L4D2 Boycott group, or shoot Mr. Faliszek off an e-mail to maturely voice your concerns or praise.
Valve's Chet Faliszek issued a statement to Ars Technica about the company's take on the sequel issue.
"We want to wait and weed through the comments, I'm already getting e-mails, and I'm responding to them," he said. He talked about the reaction to the Orange Box, how people were angry about "buying" Half-Life 2 again. "And looking back, was the Orange Box a ripoff? Give us a fair shake on this, read more about it, find out about it, we've already let people play it here... After that, if you want to vent, post to the forums.(...) You can e-mail me at ChetF@valvesoftware.com, or I'm Chet on Steam. Hit me up, we can play some games and talk about it."
Faliszek also explained some of the bigger ideas in place for the sequel and how it wouldn't really fit in with a style of updating akin to what is being done with Team Fortress 2.
"Team Fortress gets to do these nice little discrete units of content, they get to do a map, there's an internal consistency and an internal world that happens." He described the content updates as "clean little things." Bite-sized updates that add to the game, and over time change things. It's not nearly that easy with Left 4 Dead, where one change affects nearly everything else.
Besides, why inch along with an update or content pack every now and again? Everyone on the team was excited about working on more Left 4 Dead, and in fact, the team behind the game has increased slightly in size since launch. That's rare: in most cases development teams are scaled back after the product is released.
"We had some meetings about it, and we all talked about our ideas, and everyone was pretty focused and thoughtful, a lot of the same ideas were happening," Faliszek told me. The team wanted better storytelling, they wanted swamps, and they wanted to include New Orleans. "We wanted the Director to be smarter, but to be smarter it needed more special infected in its stable. For example, the Charger that we see today."
I had just gotten done playing the game, and the Charger is indeed a nasty critter. If you're being too defensive, if you're grouped together too tightly, the Director may send the bull-like Charger to bum rush your party, knocking the team apart. Imagine a tank that comes straight at you, but is slightly easier to kill.
"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. The Common Infected—now there is destruction in different parts of their body, to ship all the new Common Infected, even with an update, would be a huge thing."
So the team brought their concepts and ideas to create a sequel to Gabe Newell, and even he was skeptical about the idea. According to Faliszek, he expressed his doubts, and claimed this move was against the character of the company. "To Gabe's credit, and he's a great guy to work for, he said if this is what you want to do, if this is what you're excited about, go do it."
Besides, why inch along with an update or content pack every now and again? Everyone on the team was excited about working on more Left 4 Dead, and in fact, the team behind the game has increased slightly in size since launch. That's rare: in most cases development teams are scaled back after the product is released.
"We had some meetings about it, and we all talked about our ideas, and everyone was pretty focused and thoughtful, a lot of the same ideas were happening," Faliszek told me. The team wanted better storytelling, they wanted swamps, and they wanted to include New Orleans. "We wanted the Director to be smarter, but to be smarter it needed more special infected in its stable. For example, the Charger that we see today."
I had just gotten done playing the game, and the Charger is indeed a nasty critter. If you're being too defensive, if you're grouped together too tightly, the Director may send the bull-like Charger to bum rush your party, knocking the team apart. Imagine a tank that comes straight at you, but is slightly easier to kill.
"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. The Common Infected—now there is destruction in different parts of their body, to ship all the new Common Infected, even with an update, would be a huge thing."
So the team brought their concepts and ideas to create a sequel to Gabe Newell, and even he was skeptical about the idea. According to Faliszek, he expressed his doubts, and claimed this move was against the character of the company. "To Gabe's credit, and he's a great guy to work for, he said if this is what you want to do, if this is what you're excited about, go do it."
Read more over at Ars Technica, or hit up the L4D2 Boycott group, or shoot Mr. Faliszek off an e-mail to maturely voice your concerns or praise.
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