My opinion on Left4Dead2

Ok, I'm going to take a moment to weigh in on the drama surrounding Left4Dead 2. As some of you may know, following the announcement of a sequel to Valve's Zombie survival game, there has been quite an overstated but loud group has been organizing a boycott of L4D based on the belief that the developer broke its promise regarding delivering content and new updates. My understanding is that these zealous fans of the original game are protesting based on the following remarks by Gabe Newell:

"He 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."

So, let me go through some of the statements regarding this disagreement:

We were promised more content, this should be available for free.

Well, they have stated there is still more content coming. I'm sure the sequel will result in less than if it hadn't been made, but at the same time no one promised you everything would be free. My understanding is that they would like to figure out a way where new maps/missions/whatever you want to call them would be available for both, but I don't think they are there yet. I guess I can see a little merit here

The fact that L4D2 is nearly identical to L4D1 will decimate the community for both games

2.5 million people bought L4D, not including Steam purchases. Somehow I think finding enough people for a versus game wont be a problem. Especially since L4D 1 fans will have 16,000 boycotting friends hanging around to play with. *Cough Cough*

The announced date is not nearly enough time to polish content or make significant gameplay changes.

Says you, masters of game design that you are.

The new character designs seem bland and unappealing so far.

You mean the few screens you saw a week ago at E3? Were the old character designs really that exciting by comparison?

L4D2 is too bright to fit in with L4D1’s visual aesthetic

Oh bite me. There are plenty of ways to incorporate aesthetic appeal in the daytime. If nothing else, turn the gamma down on your monitors and shut up....morons

L4D2’s release will result in a drop in quality and frequency for L4D1 content, even compared to before.

I dunno about quality, but I'm guessing they are right on this one.

The community has lost faith in Valve’s former reputation for commitment to their games post-release

No, one tenth of one percent of you have lost faith in Valve's commitment to post release. But seeing as they keep adding to Team Fortress 2, I would say this does not represent a change in company policy.

To summarize, this is going to be a sequel, no matter what, it will not be DLC. Given the changes being made to the director along with many of the other adjustments made to address exploits and "cheap" tactics, I'll buy that it did require a complete overhaul to accomplish. There is a point where you can know longer implement changes and expect them to work on maps that were made a year ago. Yes, fans will not be getting as much free content as they were promised, but I think most of them got their moneys worth on an amount of entertainment per dollar spent scale. Ill put it this way, next November, would you rather have a better director, new specials, and several changes meant to address some pretty significant problems with how the game was being exploited online? Or would you rather have more maps for the original game? It's your $60, you decide.

With regards to this boycott thing, its time to be realistic. Remember those petitions that came around a year ago when gas was over $4 a gallon asking everyone nationwide to boycott purchasing fuel for a day to lower prices? Remember how it never worked? That's pretty much you, organizers of your L4D2 Boycott. You don't have a boycott, as the majority of the people on it will buy the game anyway. What you have is a petition, with 16000 people who signed it, against a 2.5+ million copy sold sales record. You will not change L4D2 to free content, the best you can hope for is to give Gabe a little reminder that when he says hes going to do something people get upset if he doesn't, which would have been admirable had it been your goal from the beginning.

If you don't believe me, tell you what, start your boycott early and have all of those people stop playing Left 4 Dead right now, and then see how many people follow through.

Then face reality. That's life.