Left 4 Dead - Eurogamer Interview

[Evo]

Over at Eurogamer there is an interview with Mr. Doug Lombardi and Mr. Eric Johnson regarding Left 4 Dead, Co-Operative gaming and Valve in general.[br]In a quick side note, Eurogamer had this interview with Doug and Eric because the Turtle Rock team are too small to worry about frilly PR interviews! But on with the interview low-down![br]

Eurogamer: Did you encourage Turtle Rock to work on its own IP, or did Left 4 Dead come entirely from Mike and the team?[br]Eric Johnson: No, we told Mike, 'you build the best AI of anybody we know, and we have a set of technology that we know you can build a game around'. That was pretty much all the direction that we gave him. 'Play to your strengths, you're a relatively small team. Use this technology that you've already built and go shape an entire experience around it.' Left 4 Dead is what they ended up building.[br]Eurogamer: What is it that makes Turtle Rock's AI so good?[br]Eric Johnson: Over the years we've built bot AI in our games also, and Mike has a pretty similar approach to AI in terms of thinking about it from a player experience perspective, and not in terms of IQ level. Looking at what you want the person playing the game to experience, rather than how you can build something that will outsmart them no matter what they do, is a real difference between a good AI engineer or designer and a bad one.

[br]A very good interview and I highly recommend you give it a read. Find it here[br]Thanks to Smash for the link on this!

 

[DigiQ8]

" We feel pretty good about saying it's going to be the thing that finally beats Counter-Strike. "

hmm i hope its true..

 

[Asuka]

Interviews!!!! Woot! Reading!!! Hope Its Good!

That was a really interesting read.

 

[Ennui]

Aw, evo, I was gonna get that when I got home

 

[Evo]

Aw, evo, I was gonna get that when I got home

:E

You beat me to the other thing earlier, got my revenge!

<3

 

[Naudian]

" We feel pretty good about saying it's going to be the thing that finally beats Counter-Strike. "

hmm i hope its true..

HA!

That is all.

 

[Iced_Eagle]

HA!

That is all.

Sorta agree.

While L4D is really fun, I don't believe it can knock off CS.

 

[DjBourgeoisie]

Already decided to get this when it comes out, wish they would just hurry up and release.

 

[hool10]

Left 4 Dead is coming to the PC this summer. An Xbox 360 version is planned for "late 2007, early 2008".

Spring>Summer>?? Hopefully that release date stays that way!

 

[nervousquirrel]

Sorta agree.

While L4D is really fun, I don't believe it can knock off CS.

You mean to tell me that you've played it?

 

[Cole]

Iced_Eagle has played it.

 

[Hectic Glenn]

Ahh yes he did, and he wouldn't tell us what he'd played before it was announced. Evil man indeed.

 

[Mr-Fusion]

" We feel pretty good about saying it's going to be the thing that finally beats Counter-Strike. "

That's a woeful comment.

Why are they even marketing the game like this? When the game is nowhere near as successful as counter-strike they'll blame the market as "not being ready" rather than saying "I agree my comment was purely idiotic, i was in fact high on exctasy at the time of the interview and had 5 morphine tablets to reduce the pain of the leg amputation i had the other week"

 

[Asknoone]

lolz.