Valve

Fly, Gabe, Fly!!

Martyn Zachary Leave a comment

Though we’re slightly behind the actual bandwagon, there is no way I can not touch upon a wildly imaginative exchange between a Left 4 Dead modder and Valve, something that has got to be the flat-out funniest occurrence within the Valve community this year.

The seeds were sown last week, when it came to our attention that Valve had flown the Left 4 Dead 2 boycott group leaders over to their headquarters for a tour of the forthcoming game – something only the Valve masterminds, wearing their best pair of silk gloves and armed with a jar of lube, would have been able to think up; To add insult to the injury, the boycotters came out of the experience feeling positive.

Meanwhile, a relatively unknown Left 4 Dead modder, Joe W-A, jokingly sends an e-mail to Gabe Newell, asking:

Why the hell haven’t I been flown to Valve?
I mean, you guys need to preview my campaign.

Gabe, jovial as always, retorts:

We are boycotting your campaign.

Not one to shy away from a verbal fracas, ripostes Joe, “Does that mean I have to fly you here?”, to which Gabe counter-ripostes, “Me and Erik [Wolpaw]”. Only moments later, a blog collecting donations for flying the Valve duo over to Australia, Brisbane appears, and a mere few days’ worth of gathering, the undertaking has already broken the rather amazing 3000 dollar barrier required for the plane tickets. Joe additionally promises the surplus will go to the Penny Arcade charity venture, Child’s Play.

The hilarity of this inconceivable succession of events aside, I’m not sure what it will mean for the overall complexion of interaction between Valve and its fans, but as far as the actual realities of this meeting go, it is either going to be an awkward trainwreck or a fantastic fête of funk: Plans are being made for capturing the occasion on video, too, so we’ll be privy to the plot! Either way, I do commend both parties for their geniality and their willingness to engage, something which Valve has built their reputation on from the very beginning.

Lastly, Rock, Paper, Shotgun make a great point in their latest coverage on the story:

If we were a multi-million dollar company who could afford a billion plane flights, we’d certainly make sure most of the money raised went in that direction and still go on the trip.

I second this notion! Don’t forget to take your sleeping bags, Gabe and Erik!

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Dissecting the Casts of Valve’s Left 4 Dead Series

Martyn Zachary 2 Comments

The last-minute visual overhaul of the original Left 4 Dead cast, revealed during EA’s 2008 E3 conference 1)http://www.destructoid.com/e3-08-left-4-dead-main-characters-get-redesigned-95661.phtml, came mere months before the November 18 launch date for the game. The changes, though minuscule as well as practically-minded, felt like a crushing blow to some, yet wholly inconsequential to others.

Revision Comparison
Revision Comparison

Some players might have missed the debacle altogether. Me? In response to the news, I envisioned a future scenario wherein Beyoncé models for a revised Alyx in Half-Life 2 EP3. I was desperate to commentate on the topic right there and then, but ultimately decided against it. Phew. Now, despite the fact that Left 4 Dead 2’s characters have barely been cast out to light, however, I am bold enough to suggest that an intriguing pattern has emerged, that a trajectory of design can be seen in the way Valve and Turtle Rock Studios have designed the various characters of the Left 4 Dead series.

In this text – which is just as much a history of the games’ development cycle as it is an analysis of the concept of “character” in the gaming medium – I will first navigate us through a series of dates, occurrences and currents that ultimately affected the make-up of the casts of both games. I will also attempt to explain and pinpoint decisions related to the series’ art direction. Since we’re broadly three months removed from Left 4 Dead 2 release date of November 17th, you’ll have just about enough time to read through my admittedly thorough assessment. Thanks for reading!

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Observing Left 4 Dead Relationships

Martyn Zachary Leave a comment

Notice: Don’t forget to check out our latest update to this post, “Dissecting the Casts of Valve’s Left 4 Dead Series“

This post is a quick sneak peek into our forthcoming article that focuses on the evolution of the casts of Valve’s Left 4 Dead series. An interesting feature of the original campaign posters is their equal-weight character distribution: The placement of the characters rotates evenly, with very little utilization of character-specific poses and personality-emphasising traits. In the five LD41 posters (the new Crash Course included), Zoey and Francis both cover all four placement slots, with Bill and Louis found in three out of four. Illustration below:

Left 4 Dead 2 Posters 2x2+1

This seems to be about to change in Left 4 Dead 2: In the two campaign posters revealed so far – Swamp Fever and The Parish – there are marked differences compared to the previous game.

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Left 4 Dead Crash Course DLC

Martyn Zachary Leave a comment

As most of you know by now, Valve announced the Left 4 Dead Crash Course DLC on the Steam news blog. I apologize for being this late, but we decided against posting the announcement due to the ghastly, nasty genericalness of the PR available:

[Crash Course] delivers new single-player, multiplayer and co-operative gameplay to both platforms. … While containing both Survival maps and a Co-operative Campaign, the primary goal of “Crash” is to deliver a complete Versus mode experience in just 30 minutes…

Left 4 Dead Crash Course Poster
Left 4 Dead Crash Course Poster

All this changed earlier today, though, when we had Destructoid jump to the aid in the form of an exclusive preview of the new levels. There are good news and bad news.

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TF2 SDK Update for Machinimaists

Martyn Zachary 1 Comment

The recent announcement of further SDK materials being prepared for Team Fortress 2 strongly reminded me of something when Valve’s Mike Booth explained, in the post, that Valve’s primary motivation for the SDK update was to “…make it much easier for … machinima makers to have more control over how characters animate in their movies.”

What was it, exactly, that the announcement reminded me so strongly of? Lit Fuse Films’ Ignis Solus, one of the earliest (if not the very first) Team Fortress 2 –based machinimas. Ignis Solus succesfully demonstrated back in 2007 the extent of what a capable group can convey and put cinematographically on display in the absence of actual tools. The short film sports an evocative original soundtrack, and primarily engages the viewer through the clever use of the Team Fortress 2 emotes. Some small credit for the overall success of the project must thus be awarded, primarily to Valve’s clever design for the pyro class, and secondarily to its imaginative voice acting.

All in all, Lit Fuse manage to establish a vivid canvas of emotion with no access to low-level source materials, perhaps at once revealing how and why machinima works, technical aspects aside, by taking a well-known context, and then engaging viewers with the unexpected and the unfamiliar.

While there is, one would surmise, relatively little incentive for Valve to keep on releasing more SDK materials to the public, especially now that a major portion of the TF2 source has already been available for quite some time, it’s still nothing short of spectacular that the team continues to serve general interests beyond those of players, no matter how trivial the contribution may be in the grander scale of things.

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