Wow, this is amazing. I am trying to wrap my head around what’s going on here. One thing is obvious: Valve has us spoiled.

Left 4 Dead 2

First things first, Valve announced Left 4 Dead 2 at the E3. The game will have plenty of new things over the first:

• A new and improved AI Director 2.0 for even more scary hordes of zombies.
• Many new zombie models (they look better and more dynamic than the ones in the first part, too).
• One new kind of super zombie, the charger.
• Dynamic weather (courtesy of said AI Director 2.0).
• Dynamic pathing through some areas (courtesy of said AI Director 2.0).
• 20 new weapons, among them, melee weapons like baseball bats, chainsaws and frying pans.
• A new setting, in the daytime instead of the night (meaning, few reusable assets).
• New survivors with different backstories and even more dynamic lines of small talk.
• One big campaign, in which the survivors get to know each other, and a feeling of progress throughout the different movie plot scenarios.
• Better Crescendo events that reduce survivor’s ability to exploit closets (I hate closets) by making them have to move.

That certainly does look like a list of changes that is a lot longer than the one you see in an EA sports title, or Call of Duty for that matter. The fact that it’s going to come out November 17th, a mere year after the first? Hooray! Gee, Valve is fast in producing quality content.

More on IGN, they have a preview.

Nerd Rage

Anyway, I promised you that I will also be talking about nerd rage. Well, here you go: There is a Steam group called L4D2 Boycott with now nearly 20k members -- and gee, how unexpected, they call for a boycott of that new shiny new game. I leave you to read the full list of their protest bullet points elsewhere, but want to point out that among the things those folks hate so much are the new music and “the game is too bright”.

Funny enough, the same folks also complain that L4D wasn’t worth its money for them. That is, after the game got multiple discounts and weekend sales, and many of them probably got it for the price of an indy game. Personally, I got more playtime out of L4D than out of many, many other full price titles, I have no clue what those guys are talking about.

We’re Spoiled

Yes, we’re spoiled. TF2 is awesome and got huge amounts of updates over the past years. New maps, new game modes, new weapons and “meet the …” videos. But what Valve seems to have done for L4D here goes way beyond these updates for TF2. Personally, I trust them enough to believe that when they think it’s worth buying a new game, then it’s worth buying a new game.

And when they say that there will be new content for the first L4D still, then the experience with TF2 made me confident enough in their abilities and their trustworthiness to believe them that as well.

Where the Protesters are Right

It is true, L4D2 could be an expansion. A standalone, tie-in expansion, a bit cheaper for those who already own L4D, with a bundle offer for those who want both.

It is also true that L4D didn’t get a huge lot of added content so far -- although we did get a new gametype, a new map, Valve enabled Versus mode on the remaining two campaigns (which meant reworking them altogether, since infected can reach many places survivors can’t). Still, there could be more. According to Valve, there also will be more -- so what exactly is the problem? Anyway, L4D got slightly less updates than TF2, point acknowledged.

But beyond that? No way. “We want to keep the old characters” and “we don’t want this new setting” and then at the same time “there’s not enough content here to justify a sequel”? That sounds an awful lot like “waah waah” to me.

Update 2009-06-09 19:53: There’s an interview at the Negative Gamer that is well worth the read. Seems that with size, they also changed to the better. Mr.Pancakes:

We changed our manifesto because we wanted to keep it in line with what most people in the community had concerns about. The first manifesto was there from the beginning. It contained our gut reactions to the new game and why we disliked it. But as the community grew, people began to focus their concerns on the content issues with Left 4 Dead 1 and the timing of Left 4 Dead 2, more than the fiddle-music or the visual aspects of Left 4 Dead 2. It became more about Left 4 Dead 1, and many of our members wanted us to drop the complaints about the fiddle-music and the Left 4 Dead 2 aesthetic.