Spinning The Valve
An Analysis Of The Most Loved/Hated Studio This Generation
by AXIS of Reality
©2009 Alex Baldwin
How times change, eh? Back in 2004 Valve was the beloved studio bringing us such gaming goodness as Half-Life 2 and Counter Strike: Source. Their innovation and passion was legendary, which continued into 2007 with The Orange Box.
So what’s happened in the last 2 years to make it so controversial?
At the moment, especially post-E3, there seems to be 2 issues sending the fingers of gamers scurrying along their keyboard in internet forums around the world. Let’s handle the most recent one first shall we? Of course, this would have to be Left 4 Dead 2.
• E3 Left 4 Dead 2 Official Trailer
Announced at E3 to little fanfare but more questions and surprise, it should make sense. Left 4 Dead was one of the best multiplayer games of 2008, dominating Xbox Live charts with the brilliant co-op gameplay amidst a zombie apocalypse.
Now, we’re informed the brain-munching hordes will be greeting us once again in November 2009 with Left 4 Dead 2, exactly 1 year after the original. Surprising, yes, and evidently not in a good way for many gamers. With the extended development times of many titles this generation that developers state are needed to ensure quality, why this rush to get Left 4 Dead 2 out so soon?
However while petitions are organised and boycotts of the game planned, many have forgotten one key point – exactly what sort of game Left 4 Dead 2 is.
Mega-games like Killzone 2 and Final Fantasy XIII have taken years to be released as new engines are created and the series move into the current generation. But wait, Left 4 Dead was already released this generation on Valve’s Source Engine, an engine that the Left 4 Dead team isn’t in charge of.
All Valve‘s current games use the Source Engine, including what were originally mod teams merged into the studio. This was the case with Portal and Left 4 Dead. This leaves the development teams to spend their time crafting the game without as much thought needed for the underlying technology. Already this chops years off development time.
The other point is that Left 4 Dead 2 is not planning to reinvent the franchise. It worked the first time around, and isn’t looking for the ‘next-gen reinvention’ that series from previous consoles have undergone in the crossover to the present.
• So what is wrong with this then?
The basic gameplay and mechanics are already in place, with improvement and new features the main focus of the sequel. Valve have already said that this time the levels themselves have the potential to rearrange themselves, as well as new major zombie types being introduced.
Would you really need to spend years on this? Uncharted 2 is releasing 2 years after the original with a substantially improved engine and new multiplayer mode, so why couldn’t a less ambitious overhaul take only 1 year?
Finally, there’s also the question of how soon before Christmas 2008 Left 4 Dead was actually finished. To time with the prime game sales period of each year, many games have actually been finished in advance and simply left for a few months by the publisher to get the maximum sales on release.
If this is the case (which it often is), Left 4 Dead 2 could have already been in pre-production or even full production before the first even graced our disc drives. While many people were still speculating on a PS3 version after the launch, Left 4 Dead development would have been in full swing with the original behind the team.
Which brings me neatly into the second issue gamers have with Valve. Or more specifically, a certain category of gamers – the PS3 owners. Since The Orange Box, Valve has been very vocal with their disinterest in the PS3. From the numerous interviews and statements made by different members of the studio, they have often been misquoted as saying the PS3 is ‘too complicated’ for them.
• Good old fashion zombie killing fun, what’s not to love
When examining the actual interviews, the consensus of the studio seems to be that their Source Engine is completely unsuited to the unique architecture of the PS3. If you cast your minds back to 2004 when the engine debuted with Half-Life 2, it was designed around current PCs and the common architecture of the time. Soon after it was announced for porting to Xbox due to the similarities in the way they work.
Bringing on late 2005, the Xbox 360 is launched using the similar architecture of the original Xbox and current PCs of the time (but seriously upsized). Of course, being so similar with with mega-boosted specs the Source Engine played nice with it and resulted in a high quality port of The Orange Box.
But where was the PS3 version? It had been announced, but delayed until the next year due to technical problems according to Valve employees. Once it finally emerged into the public it was verbally ripped to shreds with horrible framerate problems and was generally a mess.
Interviews with the studio revealed that they’d had major problems getting their Source Engine to play nice with the unusual architecture of the PS3. While Source was being updated as new PC graphics cards and multi-core processors were released, it was not designed to be used with the completely different way of rendering the PS3 uses. It is more CPU-centric while PCs place emphasis on the GPUs. Basically, the PS3 was the reverse of the way the Source Engine had been developed.
The 360 was happy enough with it through the way it mirrored PC evolution while the PS3 struggled with an engine that refused to co-operate with it, similar to the issues with the Unreal Engine 3. PS3-centric engines such as the Naughty Dog engine have had spectacular results, but most likely would also have issues if ported to PC or 360.
Of course, the quotes of it being too hard to get The Orange Box and Left 4 Dead working on PS3 were interpreted across the internet as Valve being too lazy or unskilled to make PS3 games when this wasn’t the case at all.
Instead, it’s simply the result of using their own engine that was never designed to take advantage of the PS3. Attempts to bend it around into a way that it was never supposed to work resulted in the broken Orange Box PS3.
So why make that mistake again of spending time and money to simply provide a technically broken game to PS3 owners with Left 4 Dead 1 or Left 4 Dead 2?
Valve aren’t going to dump an engine that they spent years developing because of incompatibility with one console when it has helped to provide the visual styling of their key franchises. Instead, as they develop their new engines around their original key audience of PC, if a console doesn’t work in a similar method you can bet they won’t try and hammer a square peg into a round hole.
This generation, the 360 peg was round and the PS3 was square. Next generation however, it will be interesting to see what happens as the successor to the Source Engine is developed and the next console announced.
And remember in the end, Valve are simply trying to make fantastic games which they do very well, and they’re not going to hold it up because of a technical incompatibility.
Ed’s note: And we aren’t done yet! Next week, OXCGN will publish an exclusive E3 interview with Valve, that asks the proverbial horses’ mouth just why a sequel is justified.
We will also have a hands on preview running late next week where one thing’s for certain… Left 4 Dead 2 is very much a fully fledged sequel with a lot of hidden cards up its sleeves. Stay tuned!
©2009 Alex Baldwin
Please share us around
Filed under: Console gaming, E3 2009, Editorial, Events, Game Impressions, Industry News, New Game Information, New Xbox 360 Games, OXCGN Affiliates, Xbox 360, Xbox 360 3rd Party Games, Xbox 360 News Tagged: | 360, Counter Strike: Source, E3 09 news, Half life 2, Half Life 3, L4D, l4d2, Left 4 Dead, Left 4 Dead 2, Left4Dead, left4dead 2, Next-Gen, Playstation 3, portal, PS3, source engine, The Orange Box, This-Gen, Uncharted 2, Valve, Valve SOurce Engine, Xbox 360, XboxLive, xboxLIVE charts, zombie apocalypse
you dont need a long time in development to produce a good polished game.
infamous proves that.
GTAIV was in development for ages and developed by one of the most talanted devs R* and infamous in 2 years has come up against that and has less pop in.
thats a big thing for a open world game like infamous or GTA, shure the graphics arent as good but if sucker punch can do what they have done in 2 years why cant a much larger team?
as far as i know and im 99% confident that R* would have hundreds more staff than sucker punch has there only a small team.
also look at resistance fall of man sony gave them less than 1 year ted price himself said that and look at that game.
it is so much fun with a MP to boot and no bugs ive found, if insomniac can do it, if naughty dog can do it (uncharted) if sucker punch can do it what is EA’s and R*’s and all the other 3rd part devs excuses?
there much larger teams so shouldent they be able to get the same amount of work done in the same time.
the price of games have gone up also.
most games on ps2 were 89-99 now ps3 games are 109-119.
not to mention the collectors editions wich are normaly 130 up to 180 like the MGS4 one.
Well actually, they HAVE gone up, but by less that the normal CPI . .(Consumer price index) but overall, they are still teh same . .
Games only 8 yrs ago were $100 or more and you could NOT bargain your way down from that. That was the RRP, and that was that.
Now, while we have a RRP, barely any store actually follows that RRP as their actual sale price, unless of course a customer simply walks in, grabs the game and pays for it like a nilly.
Games have remained universally stable over the last 10 or more years with nothing more that a $10 rise or fall on each end. BUt now, we can walk into say JB Hi-Fi and walk out with a normal $99.95 game for $79.95 or less, or trade in 2 games and $10 and get the latest game, or trade in 3 games and get the game “free” . .
None of this was available even 5 yrs ago. Sure – you had secondhand games, but NOT to the scale they are b=now, and definitely not exploited like they are now by the gamer. Do some research on games for the earlier consoles, the cost of the consoles etc and you’ll be staggered at the prices they were asking for them at that time. And at a time the Aust $ had more power than it does now, making them even more expensive when compared to other store items of the time.
The first Playstation 2 sold for over $700 and even more at high-end stores. The difference now is, numbers – pure and simple – numbers exceed the levels they did even 3 yrs ago. Thus it has a smaller window of purchasing periods between games, and thus gamers want more games, and thus spend more on said games.
Its sort of a false over-spending as it were. Earlier on, one game would get released per console every few weeks or so, not like now where you have possibly 10-20 games on a bad month being released for the huge number of consoles available. ALmost 1 game every 1.4 days. That’s almost insane.
So yes, you DO end up spending MORE, but on more games, an dthat way it feels more intrusive than it did before. It was easier for me to buy and keep a huge number of 1st-gen xbox games, without too much hassle or financial burden at the time. Now, I’m lucky if I can buy many games at ll due to the high number being released. Yet the prices for the games has only risen $10 across the board, and has been around that figure (and more in earlier years) for over a decade.
lmao and you know why EA are loosing so much money?
look at all the games they have released in the last 2 years, only 2 were good games and even worse only 2 worked properly.
merceneries 2 riddled with bugs godfather 2 same thing army of two same thing.
the only 2 good games EA has come out with are deadspace and mirrors edge.
EA, all devs need to stop being stingy sit down and focus and make the best game they can, make it for pc 360 and ps3 have 3 different teams working on each so they can optimise the code for the hardware.
yea it would cost them alot of money but it would rake in the sales, look at crysis 90% of people dident buy that game because there comp couldent play it imagine if a game like that came out on all platforms it would fly off the shelf.
as ive allways said quality over quantity, i would rather make a small profit on a game and go down as one of the best devs ever than make a huge profit and it be meh.
Ahh yes, YOU might, but if you were being funded by SHAREHOLDER, which ALL publishers, and Developers are, you’d be signing a totally different tune mate, trust me – you would.
Shareholders you say, WTF do they have to do with it. Well, without them EA, Ubisoft, Naughty Dog etc would not have the future funding to invest in games like Mirrors Edge, Dark Space etc as new IP’s, let alone the follow-up iterations that help keep the money flowing to keep the shareholders happy and thus re-investing in the companies. EA lost $US1 billion last financial year (google it) . . now do the math on that and ask yourself, if you had shares in that company, would you keep those shares there, or move . . .
Take away that return for the investors, and they move on to greener fields. The publisher goes belly up, you lose the games you want to play.
Basic mathematics at play mate. In an “ideal world” they’d love to spend more time, deliver a finely polished product that could well take 5 yrs or more to develop. But it’s not a perfect world, consumers consume 10 times more now than they did even as little as 3 yrs ago, and it is only getting worse, not better. Hence the length of games getting shorter to match that turnover. Again, back down to basic math.
true.
but what im saying is if they put some work into there games and make shure there polished to the extent of perfection than may be they would sell better.
why did gears of war 2 sell so well?
1 because its a follow up to one of the most highly praised new IPs.
and 2 its quality to put it blankly gears 2 is THE BEST FPS ive played, so polished so much fun.
getting eaten buy a giant worm and slicing its arterys to kill it classic.
if EA adopted a epic or naughty dog aproach and took pride in there work may be they would be able to lower there losses.
hopefully dantes inferno will take that approach because it has the potentional to be a contender to god of war 3 IF done properly.
and seccondly name 1 big company thats not made a huge loss this year.
were in a recession of course companys are bleeding money ATM.
i dont blame the fans.
valve has just gone greedy like capcom ive lost alot of respect for both devs now.
you cant talk up your game promise all these things for it than 1 year later release a sequl with a full price tag, without releasing the content you promised the customer.
thats what i hate about devs these days they would rather make a crap game and bring in the millions than make a good game and make half the profit.
reputation has gone out the window.
You do realise of course, that even the big boys like EA are Losing money hand-over-fist (http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/54131) in this market they lost over $US1,bil last year alone, and Apple could well buy them out, as they are running at a loss. (not apple, but EA).
http://videogames.yahoo.com/events/plugged-in/rumor-apple-to-buy-ea/1311530
If you knew anything of the difficulties developers, and their publishers face daily, you’d be signing a different tune.
ALl you see it from is an end-users point of view, and have the view that dev/pub are there for YOUR benefit . .WRONG.
They are there mainly for the “Shareholders” which fund future developments of games, without which “you” would be without games altogether.
Gamers these days really do not know just how lucky they are when it comes to choice, diversity, the genre’s available and the hardware to play them on.
Even as little as 5 yrs ago, gamers NEVER had this much choice or opportunity. And most Dev/Publishers (which are separate things btw, were doing quite well and games sold then for the SAME price as they do now.
In fact, many sell for LESS now than they did 8 yrs ago. Yet the dev time, cost on production, the huge extra funds required to advertise and promote each game, and yet the sell the games for the same figures they did 5 or more yrs ago.
So something has to give. You simply see it from a greedy “me me me” perspective, not the “big picture” – which is typical of a huge % of Y-Geners.
good article….i honestly still don’t understand why everyone is so pissed….me personally am looking forward to playing this and yes i will shell out 60 bucks for mine (360 guy here). From my understanding its mostly pc users that have their panties in a bunch and from what i’ve read its because valve “promised” a lot of dlc for l4d and noone has seen it, aside from the survival mode. However valve has stated that they dont’ plan on stopping the support for l4d so again i don’t understand why people r pissed. Hell valve has even stated that they are looking into putting the original four campaigns on l4d2 so everyone won’t have to switch over to the original just to play the old maps. So in my honest opinion i think everyone just needs to chill. Valve isn’t screwing anyone over.
i think you completely missed the point here… the reason gamers are un happy with Left 4 dead 2 if the fact that they havent really made a new game, or really done all that much, a few new maps, a new game mode, some new guns, some new chars, and some new infected. but the game it self is identical… so why should i have to shell out another $50+ for basically a DLC? if this game has some kind of deal for people who already bought Left 4 dead, im sure all the outrage will be unfounded.. but to have to pay full price for a game with that little new content, is just a kick in the balls… that my opinion, and from what ive read alot of places, alot of people’s opinions.
have you played it, have you “seen’ it first hand, have you seen the list of new equipment and features?
No, most likely not, but OXCGN crew have while in LA, and they can attest to the fact that it in their words is, bloody fantastic, and a decent step forward from the first one. And that is from :gamers” not pr ppl or sales ppl or ppl who simply want to pull the woool over your eyes and sell you something so you will buy the game.
The team are gamers, play games almost every day and love them, if they come back from the US which they have now, and say, wait till you see Left4Dead when we get review copy” . .well I trust their judgment 110% over someone who hasn’t seen anything yet, or even had a play of it, which these guys ‘have’.
Again, as I always say, until you personally have played a game, any game, on any platform, you can not definitatively state that a game has not changed, is not very good, ihas poor this-or-that. Basically because you have not “experienced” it.
Not having a go at you personally mate, just making a statement that many gamers need to take into consideration when that make a comment. With L4D2, the game has been improved and is worth a new release, just the same as any Rainbow Six game was/is, or the earlier Splinter Cell gamers did etc.
@D
“but the game it self is identical”
Clearly you haven’t played it or you haven’t read up on the vastly enhanced technology and features in the sequel.
I’ll try and clear that up for you with my hands on and interview with Valve next week.
Take care mate.
Haha, Listen to the new Listen up over at 1up.
“It doesnt feel like a new game it feels like an expansion pack”
Must say that I would trust their oppinions over yours.
And what the hell, someone on your site is allowed to have an opinion with out you guys jumping all over them.
Of course you are, but you also have to understand we too have had a solid hands-on time with the game, discussed the issues with Valve in an in-depth interview and feel many gamers are simply over reacting. You could say many earlier games or follow-ups of games were simple “expansion packs. But they added new content, ne weapons, a different storyline, which is what Left 4 Dead 2 does as well.
Thing is, no one was jumping up and down then, as there were fewer games to chose from then, and we waited for any new game to come along.
These days gamers are basically spolit for choice, so much so that they have become exceptionally picky and demanding of developers.
I certainly would not want to be a developers in todays market, that’s for sure.
i would love to be.
in fact thats what im studying now for to become a dev.
come on you cant seriously say you wouldent want to be working on halo reach wright now, get to play the game year before its out.
What, when the game is unpolished?
So that when the game comes out you know it inside and out?
So that you cant really be excited about playing the game in its final state anymore because you have played it WAY too much already??
Sounds AWSOME! :\
Great article. Very insightful.