Problems and the L4D Community

There are a few problems with the L4D community. To be blunt, it seems to be dying. Player counts are dropping only six months after release, dedicated servers are disappearing, and worthwhile custom content has been next to nonexistent. With the DLC being delayed for what looks like another month, and no relief in sight, it is reasonable to come to the conclusion that the L4D community is not sustainable.

So here are the problems:

The community is making really bad content.

Let me explain by what I mean by "bad". Take a look at L4Dmaps. If you see a problem, skip the paragraph below.

Most of the maps are terrible, unrefined, unbalanced, and stylized towards stereotypes and cliches of horror films. They take the concept of "a game with zombies" to a childish extreme. Every map is stupidly dark, and full of so many corpses that it makes a grindhouse film blush. This is a problem because L4D is not a horror game, it is a survival action game. It must follow conventional multiplayer rules for the map to be successful.

There needs to be quality control. L4Dmaps current system is a joke, any user can submit any score of their choice with no underlying objective standard. The end result is pointless noise and chaos with the end user's only means of judgement being trial and error. Either someone needs to play the art critic and argue a permanent score for each map, or an honor system and objective standard needs to be formally adopted by the community. A community full of idiot children and griefers. WONDERFUL.

Good content keeps the community alive. Valve learned early that fresh content being pumped into a community prolongs the life of a game to almost ridiculous proportions, and without that content and constant motivation, otherwise a game gradually withers and dies. Which brings up the next problem...

L4D custom content takes a long time to develop.

I dont need to say this, but L4D is unique. Mapping calls for both high replayability and the chance to impart narrative in a multiplayer environment. Final products take months to design and implement. For individuals, the process takes years with the only outlet being episodic releases and iteration. For full campaign development, the workload is far too much and ambitious projects fail even before they began. The only reasonable option is to develop smaller maps like scavenge or survival and leaving campaign development to the patient or stupid. The flaws in this are apparent, for those developing full campaigns the only option for them is to suffer in silence, or release the unrefined components they have made so far and never return.

Is there a solution? I think so. The community should focus less on making end products with full aesthetics, and focus only on barebones gameplay. This means releasing full working campaigns in preset textures and gradually establish a rule set for L4D development. Production time is spent by far on making things visually interesting and less on how the game is played. In temporarily abandoning the aesthetic side of development, better and faster campaigns can be produced. Once an optimal map is established, aesthetics development can be returned to, gameplay intact. Is this an insane solution? Probably, but at the cost of privacy and personal glory, the community can establish a respectable design library for future campaigns. That said...

Valve support is the only thing keeping L4D alive.

Although Valve has been silent over the progress of the new DLC, there are two new campaigns coming soon for L4D1 and L4D2. These will hopefully merge the communities, establish new interest, new modes, and perhaps a compelling narrative. That is the optimistic side of this problem.

The gritty and real side is that because everything is riding on the new DLC, it further implies that L4D is not a sustainable platform for mod development. L4D3 will become the only viable alternative for the franchise if that proves true.

The solution here is to offer an incentive for more community L4D support. Contests, prizes, and a community spotlight would be key for attracting more players and mappers alike. If community TF2 maps can make it into the official rotation, I dont see why L4D campaigns cannot as well.

All things considered, L4D is stuck in a vicious cycle. It takes too long to make good content, so bad content is released by default and Valve is left with nothing worth putting in a spotlight, thus making little incentive for future mappers. Naturally this cycle needs to be broken and there are three alternatives.

• A demigod mapper can make a mindblowing campaign.
• Valve will offer a more cohesive spotlight for the content that is worthwhile.
• Someone will make a L4D design contest with prizes.

The future looks bleak as always, but maybe I have my information wrong. L4D has always been fun so maybe all it needs is time for mappers to set up shop. Whatever the future holds, I'll be right here, waiting and mapping.

Update:

Valve has the formal release date of the DLC on the 22nd, with all sorts of new features. The mutators seem to be changes in general gameplay mechanics, and what I am assuming is a new supply area being "foot lockers". Even though the DLC will add a new campaign and a new level of replay value I still think my concerns remain. The community needs more quality content, the community needs a valid outlet to reach the normal L4D player, and that outlet needs to offer incentive for mappers. In any event, lots of fun to be had next week.

Minecraft

About a year ago, a very talented man by the name "Notch" started making a game dependent on the way the player wished to play. It is a sculpting simulator. It is an open-world exploration game. It is a survival game. It is both single-player, and multiplayer.

It is Minecraft.

Guidelines for L4D level design and beyond...

In between heavy studying and a monster headache, I quietly resigned myself to a quick rest and worked on outlining guidelines in my personal mission statement. Naturally after an hour or two of refinement, it seems good enough to keep a running list. So lets get started...

-Gameplay Must Come First
Without fun and general enjoyment any narrative that can be formed will not be suffered through, and I do establish that with a degree of regret. Gameplay and fun is the current market demand and as such any game needs to meet those demands to be successful.

-Gameplay Must Make Sense
There needs to be flow and unity in the world that is being projected, if something doesn't make sense in the narrative or the gameplay, it doesn't work. This is where feedback and iteration comes into play. Stylization is important in creating a unique aesthetic, but if few understand it, few can appreciate your hard work.

-Objectives Should Never Contradict Each Other
Players are going to do what they want to do and often are going to be working against your established goals anyway, so why attempt to create drama while also breaking your game? Objectives should remain clear at all times.

-Do NOT Let the Player Get Stuck
...on world geometry. Player clips and tool brushes exist for a reason, it is no excuse to have something as lethal as getting stuck on a rogue prop.

-Players Need to Know when They are in Danger
Being killed by a threat that you didn't know existed is almost as bad as a sudden CTD. It is unfair. You are not being clever, you are being a lazy developer. For crescendos, the following should never be done:

• Infinite Crescendos - If used in the right way, it can be a masterful, but more often than not, it simply is a lazy alternative to add tension.
  
• Surprise Crescendos - Crescendos are made so that the survivors plan while they are not progressing. In having a surprise crescendo you are exploiting your place in an information economy and leaving the player in the dust.
• Roadblock Crescendos - Trapping survivors in one set area is rarely acceptable. Facilitate player strategies by allowing players to retreat or run ahead to safer areas.

-Darkness is a Tool, NOT a Stylization
Darkness is a tool that limits visibility, it forces the player to slow down and reassess their own insecurity. Having it in some places is good, it creates atmosphere and forces players to work together. Having an entire area dark is just annoying. If you are using darkness as a stylization, use ambient lighting, if the player cannot see the corner of their screen then bring in more light entities.

-Never Betray Player Expectations
That title should also read "when there are consequences". The path should always be well lit, but there should never always be a monster under their bed. Understand the player base and be prepared to mix things up according the how the level is paced. Just remember to keep detours brief.

-Avoid Repetition
If you are worthwhile as a level designer, you should have a style, and that style should be full of set pieces or themes. Those themes are what keep players looking for your name, but the set pieces need constant upgrading. Here are some techniques to consider:

• Verticality - Always integrate hills and variable terrain. Unique angles and flows keep the player engaged and challenged, even if it is just standing on top of trashcans or boulders.
• New Light Environments - Demonstrate empirically how different new environments are. Show the progression of time, use new light entities, create striking shadows across your environment, anything that makes familiar items look new or interesting.
• Quirks - Most players enjoy level quirks, which is a theme, or a motif that keeps returning into gameplay. This shouldn't be confused as a set piece as it doesn't establish itself as being integral for the experience. Good examples include the antlion pellet in HL2 Ep2, or Kuribo's Shoe in SMB3.
  

-Allow For the Player to Solve Challenges Creatively
Allow for problems to be solved multiple ways. Give the player an environment that can reflect their actions and choices. Be creative, so the player can be free to express themselves. It can take maybe an hour of work to create days of replay value.

-Narrative Should be Unobtrusive
Unless you are absolutely sure that your story can engage every possible player, the narrative should be subtle. This is NOT to say that narrative should be a secondary concern. The narrative in games should be discovered, hidden behind closed doors until the player calls upon them. Games are not an interpretive medium, they are an interactive one! Reflect that by keeping the player engaged in problems they are willing to solve. Further guidelines:

• Stay away from cutscenes! But if you must, do not interrupt gameplay, and keep it short and simple.
• Back-story should not be important in any format, if you can incorporate it into the gameplay, DO IT.
• No individual piece of information should make or break the game. Narrative should be ambient or reflective on player input and discoveries. No matter how many times a player plays your game, they will not catch everything, so they should at least get most of their information through the environment they are experiencing.

-Convey Narrative Through the Environment
Look around you, every single item around you has a story. How it came to be there, why it is there, why it looks the way it does. Developers have a great deal of freedom in how they shape their environments, and at times it may go to their heads. Do not get stuck down by an ambitious project. Use what assets you already have to create stories, if you find enough ways to recycle and are creative enough, you will find that you rarely need new items.

-Facilitate Immersion
Realism should not be the goal of any game, just like creating a person is not the goal of sculpture. However, immersion can be facilitated for by creating environment that are familiar. Images and actions eventually add up and the more patterns the player can recognize, the more of their brain they devote to understanding the game. Establish environments in common settings, use common equipment or props, use sounds as users would expect them to sound, and the player will be more engaged.

-Be True to the Gameplay
Left 4 Dead has zombies, but it is not a survival horror game. In fact, other than the use of horror archetypes and set pieces aside, it has very little to do with horror. L4D is at its core, a survival game, so design maps accordingly. Do not become blinded by your prejudices and initial perceptions. If the shoe fits, run with it.

Ok, that is it for now

Desura

I applied for an invite to the Desura BETA out of curiosity, and to my surprise I got in. For the past week or so, I've been testing it out, downloading mods, and seeing what it has to offer.

For those of you who dont know, click here.

Desura is essentially a content delivery system for user generated content.

My conclusion is that in terms of functionality it is imperative that it comes to fruition. Current technical flaws aside, there is so much potential for growth here that it isn't even funny. So here are some predictions about it...

Desura Will Unite the Mod Communities

ModDB is a wonderful place to find new mods, maybe make friends, and become more involved with the gaming community, but one of the things it doesn't do well is being user friendly. Bad mod installs, scattered learning communities, and obscure release windows often catch the better of new people who are usually interested in getting free content. Desura will be able to fix all of those problems and gather the best of the mod community into a common spotlight, while being very user friendly. No longer will people have to manually download and install files by hand. Desura will become a platform for all gamers and developers alike to meet, play, and reach a new generation of gamers.

The inverse of this naturally is a problem with security, censorship, and legality. Like all new systems, Desura will have its fair share of kinks that will eventually be resolved. Sure it will be a problem, but I'm not particularly worried. The guys who are making it have endured a stealth development period upwards of 2 years. These guys intend quality which brings up the next point.

Desura Will Create an Industry-wide Content Control Imperative
Mods are free, and Desura will be free, and unlike payment based systems, Desura will only have the best of the best user generated content on its system. In supplying context and popularity it will be easier than ever to get free content for games you already own. Not just the standard mod content, but excellent content, and this will offset what consumers are willing to pay for commercial games.

New commercial games will need to have modular engine technology to create a new mod community, or they will need to be the defining games in their genre. History as taught us that both are imperative, otherwise HL1 and Quake would have never taken off, and HL2 would not be considered the greatest game of all time. When Desura goes out of beta, the consumer demand for better games will skyrocket. I'm not completely sure how it will effect the "games are art" argument. On one hand, multiplayer mods are more popular due to the increase in internet connectivity and raw fun, but on the other, more interesting narrative mods will eventually increase due to raw exposure. I guess it would be business as usual on that front.

Desura Will Rival and Possibly Destroy Competing Content Delivery Systems
Naturally Desura is no threat to Steam. Steam for developers has the best publishing agreement, the best 3rd party plug-ins, and very helpful support. Steam for gamers has awesome weekly deals, wonderful community features, and again, wonderful support. Steam really isn't the issue, Steam is going to be successful just because it has an excellent business philosophy.

D2D, Impulse, and GamersGate, however, will suffer greatly. As businesses, they are successful only to a very specific crowd of indies and overcautious consumers, everyone else uses Steam. Desura, as stated, will unite the mod communities, and create content control. Thus creating a polarization of consumers as internet connectivity increases exponentially over rural areas, and higher bandwidth increases in urban zones. Group 1 of consumers will use Desura and Steam in conjunction, for deals, and ease of use. Group 2 will be a rapidly decreasing group of micromanagers who either are either so interested in deals that they can manage all of their games manually, or indies who fear authority and censorship so much they will retreat into an introverted shell, which wont last long because of the next point...

Desura Will Be a Portfolio Platform for Commercial Developers to Scout Talent
The current hiring method to get into the game industry is to either be a game tester and sneak your way in making powerful friends, or to be one talented son of a bitch with an amazing portfilio. Thankfully, most mod developers fall into the latter category. Desura will be a primary release platform for getting attention and maintaining it for boosting a modder's career. While before it took a resume, content files, and constant career management, with Desura, employers will be able to look at individual modder profiles and see who has the skills they need to make their project successful. On the inverse of that, with commercial developer profiles, modders can shape their projects to meet the demands of employers. Is this rather optimistic? Probably, but it is a rather strong possibility.

(Remember Adam Foster who made MINERVA: Metastasis? He was hired by Valve.)

Generally that is the end of my predictions for Desura, and that said, it still has a long way to go, at least two or three years of constant iteration and policy structure. There are tons of bugs in the current build, and as established by the developers, it is more or less a proof-of-concept. Am I excited? Very! Although today may be horrible for games in some respects, bad games, studios going under, too many casual players offsetting market demands, etc, tomorrow will prove to be better with a new noncommercial distribution platform for modders to express themselves and show off their work.

To my knowledge, I have release no information that is inclusive to my function as a beta tester. I have given no technical data beyond what is public knowledge, and any or all hard functionality I had digressed is based upon social response, and thus is mere speculation.

4 Years Later: Alma Wade

I was a big fan of FEAR1. I liked the realistic FPS action and horror elements. I liked the memorable ambushes and slow-mo effects. I liked Alma. I found it easy to say that Alma is one of the most scary antagonists in gaming, that is, until FEAR2 Project Origin.

Now I find myself loving Alma. To be exact, I am IN LOVE with Alma. No longer is she the creepy little girl she was, no longer is she prone to crawling in vents towards you, and no longer is she leaving little bloody footprints everywhere. Alma is now a lady, and she has needs.

Sexual needs.

Needs that as any heterosexual man, I would like to see more of.

(Above: Michael Becket making Alma feel feminine)

Compared from FEAR1 to FEAR2, Alma has changed the most. No longer is she trying scare you like a cruel child. Now she is trying to impress you with the only thing a 5 year old girl with a 20ish body can. VIOLENCE, EXPLOSIONS, AND LOVELY BREASTS seeming to be the norm. Upon which, it seems that she has taken a fancy to the new guy, Michael Becket, the current holder of the +5 Slow-Mo amulet.

This is perplexing because not only does this make Alma to be more human than previously considered, and painting her to be a victim of circumstance. But it is also the worst plot move the series could make. FEAR1 was scary because Alma was characterized as a deranged child who became increasingly dangerous as powers grew within her. Leaving vague corporate scientists little option but to kill her and prevent the end the world (and getting everyone fired). FEAR2, on the other hand, isn't scary at all, rather than fearing the strange hallucinations and odd transformation sequences of the first game, you are greeted with a sudden grab from Alma and a quick-time event to stop her from kissing you with her quantum corpse lips. Michael Becket has to literally kick the ladies off him as this happens upwards of seven times.

From thinking about it, I can not really see FEAR2 as a horror game, horror set-pieces aside. Under all the FPS action and shiny graphics is an awkward story of romance.

(Above: Alma requests some "sugar")

Throughout the game, Alma assaults you in varying forms, from her dead, corpse-like form, and later, a more youthful form. Attacks are frequent and it is implied that she is testing the player's capabilities. The level progression onward plays similarly to a "save the princess" archetype. Becket is constantly challenged by whatever Alma throws at him, be it the abominations, the Replica soldiers, or the ghosts and the reward for surviving all of this is to be strapped within the "Telesthetic Amplifier" with Alma in an attempt to contain her like a sexy version of Tal Rasha.

She promptly rapes him with lingering emotional attachment. The game later ends on a cliffhanger, yet it doesn't leave a lot of room for a sequel.. or does it?

(Above: Alma showing Becket her cowgirl impression)

Looking back on it, the only thing that Alma has done is activate the Replica soldiers who are controlled by Paxton Fettel, kill the people who have wronged her, and dish out the spooky. The POINTMAN in FEAR1 is the one who blew up the city in an attempt to kill Alma, and the good people at Armacham Technology Corporation are the ones that made all the weapons to begin with. Alma isn't really that bad. All things considered, everything the player knows about Alma is what the scientists have told us, which is starting to look more and more like crying wolf, massive damage to the city aside. The end result of this is the player wondering if Alma is the crazy psychic girl we are told she is, or a normal girl horribly tortured for being born with psychic powers.

FEAR3 probably will not be great. Lets get that out of the way now. However, it will probably be adequate and will attempt to clean up the mess of a plot that FEAR2 created. It will either switch back to the FEAR1 POINTMAN, and his continued misadventures in spooky town, or it will continue with Becket tied down to an expensive chair being Alma's husband / toy / friend with benefits. Alternatively, it will have a new character, with a better gimmick than the slow-mo, and a surplus of redesigned horror elements, but that is just wishful thinking. Will I buy it? Probably. This series is starting to become a train wreck, and I just cant look away.

In closing, playing the game was very strange for me. Rather than being startled by the stark environment changes as in the first game, I welcomed them in the second game just to see a bit more of Alma. The level design was well detailed, and the gameplay was the FPS affair as expected, yet what struck me the most was Alma's constant attacks. I found myself not caring about any of the plot boosting MacGuffins, or what horror cliche I was fighting through. My only concern was to see her again, and nothing else mattered. I don't know if that is what the developers were going for. Alma is one of the more complex characters I have seen. At first she is portrayed as a soulless being bent on revenge, but now she seems pitiful. She is unable to understand what being an adult means and rather than being trapped in a vault, she is trapped with an adult body with needs she doesn't have the memories and experiences to comprehend. From her point of view she must be terrified of everything with emotions she has little experience with dictating her every action. At this point, she can only clumsily move forward with trial and error, not so much a monster, as much as she is a normal human being.

On completing the main campaign, and the DLC Reborn, I can safely say that Alma will haunt my dreams yet again, but in ways I don't think anyone intended.