The response of a harsh public

Joel Goodwin discusses the effect of destructive criticism on game developers.

THERE WAS this guy I met at a software development conference in Cambridge last year. Long-term memory has smudged his features so I wouldn’t recognise him even if he was standing in front of me right now, but I recall he spoke with a soft Scottish accent and might have been slightly taller than me.

He said he worked for a games developer, Realtime Worlds, on something called APB. This was somewhat more impressive than my job which involves spreadsheets, databases and yawn. I told him I’d read all the buzz about APB on Rock Paper Shotgun, and there had been plenty of buzz, stacks of it. Sounded like a great project to be on.

As if trying to temper my enthusiasm, he said: “I just hope everybody likes it.”

A year on, APB has been ridiculed, Realtime Worlds has gone into administration and the developer who might have been slightly taller than me is likely out of a job. Hostile descriptions of APB like “absolutely retarded beyond belief” litter game forums and blogs. But all I can think of is a softly-spoken Scottish developer reading all this online vitriol, damning years of work. I just hope everybody likes it.

Now it’s no big surprise that on the internet anyone can be a critic. While professional reviews can be brutal and punishing, down at the anonymous, anarchic end of the scale, criticism can mutate into public humiliation and denouncement of not just a game but also its architects. APB is not an isolated case. Zombie Cow’s Privates is a “game for perverts”. Terry Cavanagh’s VVVVVV is a “faux 8-bit piece of crap.” 2K Marin’s in-development XCOM is “like wanting a puppy for your birthday but getting dogshit.”

But what does this do to the developers on the receiving end?

Every relationship has problems

Arcen Games released AI War in 2009, a critically-acclaimed take on the RTS template which eventually became successful enough to convince founder Chris Park to give up the day job and go full-time with Arcen. Having recently followed up with puzzle game Tidalis, I asked Park whether destructive criticism has an effect on his work, particularly in the wake of AI War’s success.

“Some comments are easier to ignore than others,” he says. “When you are working on something that you know is good and other people think is good, it’s easy to brush off that sort of thing. Destructive comments about AI War rarely bother me these days, and so I thought I’d built up a nice thick skin. It was with some surprise that I discovered that negative comments on Tidalis were once again having an effect on me. When you’ve got dozens of positive reviews already in hand for a game, it’s easy to write these off, but when you have only a growing handful, the insecurity creeps in.”

Dan Marshall of Zombie Cow is upfront. “Negative comments are crushing, soul-destroying and it really affects me. Not every game is going to be to everyone’s tastes – and that’s fine. The trouble is that internet comments are so disposable and easy; people rarely write ‘the gameplay wasn’t quite to my tastes’, they’ll just declare it’s ‘fucking shit’ and move on.”

Zombie Cow is better known for humorous point-and-click adventures such as Ben There, Dan That! But Channel 4 recently funded them to make a sex educational platform shooter called Privates. It has seen both positive and negative reviews. The problem for developers, Marshall explains, is keeping everything in perspective: “I’ve had more lovely e-mails from people, saying how much they enjoyed Privates, than any other game I’ve made. And yet for every dozen comments that say they really enjoyed it, the one that slags it off is the one that sticks out in your mind.”

Think of the children

Park has blogged in length about maintaining a good rapport with players, as fans can provide valuable feedback and inspiration. He fears that some developers, feeling the heat of a vocal minority, might withdraw. “They just shouldn’t have to put up with that in their job,” he says. “It’s not bearable, and so to cut out the unbearable parts of a job they otherwise love, they turn away from players. I think it’s a really unhealthy cycle, and not good for anyone – developers or players.”

Continues…

By Lewis Denby

I was actually standing on the boat. Left 4 Dead has long been famed for its ability to bugger things up royally at the most inopportune of moments, and is all the better for it.  But man.  I was standing on the boat.  All that was required was for my team-mates to hurry the heck up and join me, and we could speed off to safety.

Instead, a Tank turned up, threw me into the water, then finished off the rest of my team before they knew what had hit them. Man. So close.  Left 4 Dead is very much back.

Daniel basically got it spot on in his review of the Xbox 360 version last week.  Left 4 Dead 2 is a chaotic, pumping thrill ride of a co-op shooter, a riotous reprisal of Valve’s multiplayer masterpiece.  It’s brash and stupid, yet improbably terrifying at various points.  It flits between huddling together in a terrible storm, to smashing zombies around the head with a bloody frying pan to the sound of banjos.

So there’s comparatively little I can say about the PC version that isn’t just riffing off Daniel’s excellent write-up.  In short: it’s great, but the formula isn’t as impressive as it was when it innovated so much a year ago.  The core mechanics remain unchanged – which, to be fair, is largely a good thing.  Left 4 Dead was excellent for a reason.  Its sequel understands this.

It understands this through its revamping of the special enemies.  There are new ones: Chargers who speed at you and pin you to walls or throw you off cliffs; Jockeys who jump on your head and control your movements; Spitters who cover you in horrible acid.  The old ones have been modified: Boomers are now of both genders; Smokers exist in more detailed models; and the terrifying Witches are more abundant, and now wander around in a sort of torturous amble, utterly frightening each time they crop up.  In the new Realism mode, attracting one’s attention means certain death.

Campaigns are longer, and fiercely imaginative.  Heavy Rain introduces the most insane of storms, which pin you back, separate your group and generally make your life hell.  Dark Carnival sees you chasing around a rollercoaster track in order to shut off the train to stop zombies racing after it.  Its conclusion takes place in the middle of a rock concert, pyrotechnics littering the air in a sort of insane firework display.

The melée weapons are a mixed bag.  Hitting zombies upside the head with a guitar rarely loses its appeal.  Wielding a katana means instant decapitations.  Baseball bats and frying pans feel a little gimmicky, but never truly detract from the phenomenal game that this is.  The PC version, with its astonishing graphics and inch-perfect aiming, is the one you should opt for.

//Tank grrl
I’m playing with Reso freelancer Phill Cameron and others a few afternoons ago, and we get to the end of Dead Centre.  We’re happily shooting our way through a sea of Infected, dragging gas cans over to a handily on-display car and ready to make our escape, when that music begins: the big, epic drums and the brass tritone.  “Tank!” someone shouts.  Three of us huddle together, facing outwards, scanning the hall for our giant adversary.  Aside from the beast’s terrifying audio motif, it is eerily silent.

Only three of us, because Phill’s upstairs, a couple of floors above, grabbing the last of the gas with which to make our getaway.  “Where’s the tank?” he shouts.  None of us know.  “Oh well. I think there’s a gas can in this room.”

He heads from the balcony above us through a doorway and out of sight.  Five seconds later, he comes storming out.  “TANK!”  We look up, to see Phill sprinting out of the door and full pelt across the walkway above, then out of sight again.  Seconds later, the Tank appears from the same doorway, hunched over, charging after him, growling.  Then it too is out of sight.  Then Phill’s health bar turns red.

The other two guys run upstairs to hit the Tank and revive Phill.  It’s too late, though – he’s done for.  The Tank races down two flights of stairs and smashes me up against a wall.  I’m down.  I’m firing half-blindly with a measly pistol as the Tank stamps repeatedly on my face, before clambering up the walls and nonchalantly feasting on our remaining team members.  We were only a couple of gas canisters away from escape.

Daniel was right.  With all the talk of whether there should have been a sequel, if Valve will keep their promises of continued support for the original game, if what’s here is really new enough to impress… well, it’s easy to lose sight of what really matters.  And the fact remains that the Left 4 Dead formula is one of the most viscerally brilliant in modern videogames.  When the sequel’s as wildly inventive as this, its inconsistencies barely matter.  When the PC version is so vividly detailed and handles so beautifully, you’d be barmy not to pick it up.

9/10

What does this score mean?

By Daniel Lipscombe

This review and its associated score refer solely to the Xbox 360 version of Left 4 Dead 2. Due to the nature of the game, we feel it only sensible to tackle the PC version separately. We will endeavour to have a PC review with you very soon.

Whose side were you on? When the battle between good and apparently evil raged, did you support those who wanted Left 4 Dead 2, or those who campaigned for a boycott?

No matter which side you chose, or whether you sat precariously on the fence, Valve plugged away at making the most controversial sequel in recent history. The arguments have died down, the dust has settled and we’re left with the game that so many want to hate. With such a small gap between the original and its successor, have Valve really managed to create a whole new game?

The changes and new additions are well documented. Uncommon zombies, melee weapons, new characters, new items and a whole new game world – it is indeed very much a new game. There’s very little here that’s been recycled from the first, ground-breaking co-op shooter. In fact, other than the core mechanics and HUD displays, everything is shiny and unique. In many ways, this is a good thing – it’s nice to have new things, new experiences and such – but it’s difficult to escape from the feeling that the original may just have been an experiment to test the water for this, the true Left 4 Dead experience.

Still, there are a great many changes for the better. Most obviously, Left 4 Dead 2 has a tangible story, albeit one that’s not overly prominent. If you play each of the campaigns in the order that they’re listed, you’ll find more interesting dynamics between the four characters. In the first campaign, Dead Center, our cast are fighting their way out of a burning apartment building, zombies everywhere and only a few weapons at their disposal. In fact, this level only starts you with a melee weapon or a pistol. After fighting their way to an elevator, our characters all take a breather on the trip down to the ground floor and, interestingly, all take turns to introduce themselves.

With everyone stating their name and a little quip to accompany it, you can see the archetypal character types standing out. Coach is the big, caring and smart member of the soon-to-be team, Rochelle a sassy, street-smart woman. Ellis is a typical young man, nicer then he is clever, and Nick is the arrogant loner of the group, who feels the need to shun those whose help he needs. As each chapter progresses, the team members become closer, talking about themselves and their homes, discovering this horrific world together. And discovery is a real theme here: in the first episode, the outbreak is fresh, the team referring to smokers as “them long-tongued things”. By the finale, they’ve named each of the infected, and call them out as we already know them.

This story is solidified by the introduction of CEDA, a company who seems to know a fair amount about the situation. They set up extraction points and help stations, and indeed, the first uncommon infected you come across are kitted out in CEDA hazmat suits.

It’s refreshing to find all these small clues to a back-story, and Valve lets you fill in some blanks yourself too. From the first campaign right through to the last, the transition between each is seamless: if you get on a boat to leave one campaign, you’ll arrive by that same boat in the next. It’s clear that Valve have worked to make the overall experience a lot tighter and more coherent, and the game benefits greatly from it.

[Continues...]

We’ve spent a couple of hours asking around those in the known in a mad panic, as our PR contact at Electronic Arts will long have left the office.  And eventually we’ve been able to discern that, seemingly, we were accidentally given the wrong time.  In fact, the general embargo for Left 4 Dead 2 reviews in the UK clears at 5AM GMT.

Daniel’s been playing the game for the past couple of weeks, surviving the onslaught with a group of German games journalists.  His review is written, screenshots have been added, and it’s all ready to go.  All that’s Left 2 Do is click the big blue ‘Publish’ button in our content management system.

We could schedule it to go up automatically, technically.  But on occasion, something goes a bit wrong with that, and it doesn’t post properly.  For that reason, we – by which I mean me, the ever brilliant editor Lewis Denby – will be rising bright and early at 5AM to make sure it’s there, front and centre (well, top-left, actually) on the site.

Then promptly heading back to bed.

Enjoy your zombie slaying, folks…