Valve's Chet Faliszek Part 2

his is part two of our interview with Valve's Chet Faliszek. Read part one for the other half of our epic chat with the Left 4 Dead man.

How did the massive reaction to the boycott affect your plans with that?

Faliszek: We always planned to continue updating Left 4 Dead 1, we always planned on making Left 4 Dead 2 bigger than what you saw at E3. One of the weird things at E3 was we knew we weren't showing the complete package, we knew there was a whole bunch of stuff we were holding back but we wanted to show something.

As you look across the summer at us showing the game you see more and more of a complete box that was still being worked on. We said it at E3 and then stopped saying it because it was becoming tiresome: 'trust us, this is all going to make sense'. Now as we get closer to launch we see the reaction to the demo, pre-orders are four times what Left 4 Dead 1 was, people's excitement, the boycott itself and how it's changed... I think people are just excited now.

Surely even you guys didn't expect the size of the reaction that boycott would generate. It must have changed your plans somehow?

Faliszek: It really didn't affect plans per se, it affected how we talked about it and how we talked with everybody...

So it was more of a marketing thing?

Faliszek: Yeah. Because again the underlining thing is this is what we've always done. You really think we're not Valve, that we're something else? I work on the TF2 updates myself. Robin Walker works of TF and now he works on Left 4 Dead. There's so much crossover there it's not as if we go off on our own.

Do your foresee a portion of the community complaining when Left 4 Dead 1 gets DLC and the sequel doesn't?

Faliszek: Well... no. Honestly I made the joke and it's true: If you put $20 in a box and charge $10 for it someone would complain you didn't put $50 in a box. Not to say some of the concerns raised aren't valid, but you're always going to have some kind of upset and that's not how we work. We work at looking at the project and trying to get it out.

I wish we could've got Crash Course out before E3, that would've made a lot more sense, people would've been happy. We struggled getting the authoring tools out so we saw VPK stuff and the add-on come later - that would've been better.

But we try to make sure that stuff we're releasing is working right - that's the right thing to do and we're going to keep doing that. Maybe some people are confused by that but I think the bulk of people understand.

While the announcement at E3 had a negative reaction that was very organised, the unorganised reaction - e-mails to me - by about 3:1 was positive, excited and wanted to know more about it. Being able to be very focused and on-message for what their concerns were is cool right? It's cool to be able to have your community express that to you.

Right now I'm engaging a lot of the tournament and competitive players and we're getting really clear feedback. That's helpful - the worst thing is to work in the dark without any feedback from the community.

Do you think, in building this rich history of supporting your games with free content, you've become your own worst enemy? The community would go mental if you didn't give it stuff for free, right?

Faliszek: We always look at it this way: we play a lot of games ourselves. Having Steam we know a lot of companies, we know a lot of games. We like games, we play games, we make our games and try to deliver content in ways that we would want to. We don't see any reason to stop that.

If it becomes confusing or people have expectations that we always have to fit... I think you can see from pricing TF2 at $2.49 for two hours we like to experiment and try different things. As we do those experiments, as we do a game in a year for the first time we're going to have people being vocal about liking things that way or not liking things that way. Our plan is to keep experimenting and trying different things.

The PC version of Left 4 Dead has a great selection of user maps and mods now. The Xbox 360 version is missing out on those... are you working on finding a solution for Xbox players?

Faliszek: We're looking to find a solution to reward people who make great content and make sure that more people can play that great content they've created. One of the problems now when you look at a lot of the mods that are made is they can't run on low-end PCs, they can't even run on mid-end PCs often - they can only run on high-end PCs. They can't run on Xbox 360.

There's a lot of work we do to get things to the performance levels that are acceptable for us. You look at a lot of the modders and obviously that's a very technical thing; you have to know the engine and the tools very well. They're really interested in delivering this experience, this coolness.

We've talked with some of them about that issue, we've talked about maybe working with them, maybe after Left 4 Dead 2 comes out having some sessions with them. Because the coolest thing we could ever do would be to take something that was made by the community and share it with everybody - including Xbox 360 owners. How that happens and what work needs to be done is a little bit complicated.

TF2's maps are pre-constrained, pretty tight. They've also got a year on us in development, their developers a little bit more sophisticated. Now we're working with those people and making sure they're making things that we can deliver to other people. We would love to do that with Left 4 Dead. How that works though is something we're still working on.

Are you bored of people asking about PS3?

Faliszek: Nah. I bought a PS3 actually before I left for London because I wanted to play Uncharted 2. I borrowed a PS3 previously when I wanted to play games but this was the one that sold it to me.

So you know, we're gamers. We play on the PS3. Obviously if you look at the Orange Box we weren't so happy with our interaction with PS3 customers and what we could've done there. Right now for Left 4 Dead 2 we're looking at PC and 360 because the community aspects really fit the game - it's all about playing with your friends.

But that's the short term. What we're looking at for the long term... if it works out, it works out. Right now don't not buy it on the 360 because you think it's coming out on the PS3 - it's not going to. Right? It's coming out on the PC and 360. It's going to be exclusive for that. Again, it's the communities that those offer. For any other Valve game let's see - who knows. But for Left 4 Dead I think the community aspect of it...

So this is a decision very much made on a game by game basis - Valve's not blacklisting PS3?

Faliszek: Oh no. We own Wiis too right? So who knows. But definitely for Left 4 Dead, in hooking up with your friends and the community aspects, I think the Xbox 360 is head and shoulders above the PS3. The 360 and PC are on par, right?

It feels like it's been all Left 4 Dead at Valve for the last few years. When are we going to hear about your non-Left 4 Dead stuff?

Faliszek: There are other teams at Valve, they're working on stuff as well. Everybody at Valve gets to work on whatever they want to work on - a good example is Kim Swift works on Left 4 Dead but most people would know her from Portal. It's that ability to get excited about what we're working on that's why I think we make good games.

The other things we're working on we haven't been announced yet but things are being worked on and other stuff's coming. Not just Left 4 Dead.

And Half-Life 2: Episode Three is still in development?

Faliszek: We'll see.

We'll see if it's dead?

Faliszek: No, no. Until we have something we have to announce we tend not to talk about what we're working on. But we're a studio of 250 people now and about 60 made Left 4 Dead 2. We're actually moving next year from our 30,000 square feet office to a new 70,000 square feet office.

Thanks for talking to us and good luck with the game. Do you have any plans for the launch?

Faliszek: When Left 4 Dead 1 came out we had this contraption that launches the game on Steam so that's officially our launch party, we're all sitting in there and it's a private, Valve-only party.

That happens at 9 and then by 9:30 a group of us were all up in our office playing, actually taking people on in Versus knowing that we had a little bit of an advantage. We'll probably do that again in Scavenge.

The cool thing now is we can do 4-vs-4 matchmaking. That's coming to Left 4 Dead 1 and it'll be out of the box in Left 4 Dead 2.

One thing I wanted to add before I go for you Brits: communicate. Don't be scared of a microphone. You guys are notorious non-talkers on both 360 and PC. Americans are just chattering away, working together as a team. If you want to work together as a team you've got to talk.

You can go into a random 360 game on US servers and it's crazy talk. It's fun. I think a lot of people knock that community but again and again I'm surprised by how fun that is. I've played expert campaigns where by the end of it we're best buddies.

Realism mode will prod you - you have to talk. If you don't talk you're not going to make it. Instead of being harder Realism's actually more challenging as a team because you have to communicate. When a Smoker pulls you off somewhere you've got to yell because nobody can see where you are.

The first time you see people play, somebody will go in a house to get some stuff, turn around and be like 'shit, I can't see anybody'. It's a scary feeling. We'll see if that maybe stimulates the British sternness.