Interview with Gabe Newell over TF2, L4D2 and HL2: Episode 3

[Justin]

Since the announcement of Left 4 Dead 2's development, there has been a considerable amount of debate and controversy over Valve's move. Some fans have been eager to see a successor to L4D, others have criticized Valve for leaving fans in the dust, as it were. It was that topic and several others that brought Gabe Newell into the public light this week, in a lengthy interview with G4. Answering questions as to Valve's decision making and other future plans they have, Newell went over the current three biggest titles his company is responsible for.

Concerning Left 4 Dead 2, he was prompted on why Valve has chosen to create a sequel so soon after the original L4D release. Newell went over several reasons, ranging from scheduling to talent. The most interesting point he brought up was that directly after L4D's launch, there was still a lot “on the table” that developers and game designers wanted to accomplish. A lot of their goals, he said, came directly from playing L4D themselves. Further, he also commented that Valve doesn't plan on ceasing updates in terms of both bug fixes and content for Left 4 Dead once its successor is available – whether or not developing for both the original and sequel simultaneously will have an impact on quality remains to be seen.

He also talked about limitations of existing hardware platforms, such as the Xbox 360, which apparently make developing additional content for L4D more difficult. Switching topics to Team Fortress 2 and Half Life 2, he addressed concerns about recent updates to TF2. Primarily, he just said that changes are still underway, and that certain decisions – like making drops in TF2 random – will make more sense once trading systems are implemented. Overall, it's a long interview, and well worth the read if you're fan of Valve games.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/35067-interview-with-gabe-newell-over-tf2-l4d2-and-hl2-episode-3.html

 

[TomSEA]

Thanks for the heads-up article Justin. I'll definitely read the interview when I get home tonight.

This caught my eye though: "He also talked about limitations of existing hardware platforms, such as the Xbox 360, which apparently make developing additional content for L4D more difficult."

Does this mean that developers are nearing the end of what they can do in the way of new games for the XBox 360? I know that Xbox hardware is coming up on its 4 year old mark. Which for any PC enthusiast, a 4-year old component would be holding up your entire system. Just curious if we're starting to see the beginning of the end for the XBox 360.

 

[FoReWoRd]

well they develop games for the 360, on the 360 so the specifactions are always within the limits of the console's capabilities, unlike the pc versions which are made to the limit of current hardware and therefore look and play considerably better

 

[Adhmuz]

I would like this to mean that Valve will return to where they belong, the PC. If they focused on the PC market they would be fine and maybe they would release updates a little sooner and patches a little faster. I just feel developing games across both PC and consoles is starting to become a step backwars when you look at the hardware gap between the two.

 

[TomSEA]

Agreed Adhmuz. I read the interview last night and there was without-a-doubt very clear frustration from the Valve reps over developing same games for both 360 and PC and having to deal with the hardware limitations of the 360. You could tell that if there wasn't the huge 360 market to tap into, these guys wouldn't even bother and stay PC only.

 

[Guest]

The one group of people that seems to be missing in most of the comments on the boycott group site and the articles on the web are the server owners.

As a server owner, I support L4D by paying for 4 West Coast servers out of my own pocket that have had in total roughly 17000 players since they were started 4 months ago. As well, I work for a server company that provides numerous servers for TF2, L4D, CS:S and other Valve games.

One disturbing trend I have seen is the daily cancellation of L4D servers. Since the 'Survival Pack' the company I work for has seen a 70% increase in server cancellations of servers that service Central North America and the West Coast. That number increases daily.

The biggest drop was right after the 'Survival Pack' when people began to realize how minor the changes actually were. Most people played Survival mode until they got the achievements and then moved back to Co-op or Versus. We lost 45% of the servers within days of that release.

The second spike was right after the news about L4D2. That was about 20% of the servers. The other 5% has been just due to attrition since the DLC was released.

Now, obviously there have been new servers started, but the total loss of server coverage totals about 70% in the company I work for, and I work for a shitty little hole in the wall no one even knows about. In actual numbers that means about 110 servers are now shut down in the past couple months with my employer alone. I wonder how this has affected Gameservers or Darkstar.

I should mention that most of the people canceling servers have been very vocal about why they're canceling them, and I agree with the majority of their reasons, especially about the release of L4D2.

So, I pose this question to you, do you think splitting the games community base will increase or decrease the number of servers for both games?

Secondly, do you think server owners that are canceling their servers will be rushing out to start a L4D2 server after they feel that they've been burned by Valve?

The answers are pretty obvious.

All you flame-baiters screaming about the boycott group being a bunch of whining retards might want to think about that, because without the server owners, you'd have no where to play either game.

As for myself, I don't have any choice but to 'get' the game since it's purchased for me by my employer for troubleshooting and testing. However, I'll be shutting down my servers the day L4D2 is released unless both games can be serviced by a single server and other significant issues about the release of L4D2 are satisfactorily dealt with by Valve.