Valve Software's Doug Lombardi

Left 4 Dead and more under discussion

It isn't often you get the opportunity for a one-on-one chat with pioneering developer Valve, and when your interviewee is Doug Lombardi, you know you're in for some honesty, and possibly a few juicy tidbits to boot. With this in mind, I sat down to address Left 4 Dead with the marketing boss.

How long has Left 4 Dead been in development for?

Jeez, I got to think about that one. So... Mike [Booth] started prototyping about a year after Half-Life 2. So I'd say since mid-2005. Almost three years, then.

Is Mike from Turtle Rock?

Mike Booth was a guy that fell out of Westwood who we wanted to hire. But he refused to leave southern California to be with the rains in Seattle. So, we said, why don't you work on the CS bot, and help us ship Condition Zero, and help us ship the version of CS for Xbox 1. Back in 2003 or so. And then he helped with CS: Source, and by then he'd hired a few people to work with him, and they called themselves Turtle Rock. So, he was sort in pre-production all along, in the back of his mind, he wanted to do a zombie game. His passion is AI, so he wanted to do co-op, he was the lead on Nox. So if you know that game, there's a relationship to that work there. Although it a very different game, if you look at it from the AI standpoint, its sort of a long lost descendant.

So, the game has been in pre-production since 2005, they itertated on two or three basic ideas. Although they were different. Then about a year later, 2006, a design was in place with one crude map. We knew how we were going to use the zombies, and then it was a case of expanding from there. It started ramping up. People at our shop got interested and started working on it too, and it was getting tighter and tighter, we also just get on really we with those [Turtle Rock] guys. We like them all a lot, and we wanted to hire them!

So it sort of became natural that we would become one company with two offices, and we would collabourate. Its been developed over the last two years really, although work did begin three years ago.

Is there a concern that the game will be compared to Dead Rising and Resident Evil? Did you set out with the intention of changing this genre?

I mean, there's a little bit of... 'we play games too', and we watch movies, read comics, etc. We're certainly fans of the genre, and there was always the feeling that if we were to do a game of this kind it would be done in a certain way. But then at the same time we always follow our own line, and we don't look too much at what other people are doing, that's the easiest way toget off track. Chasing what so-and-so said in this press release, worrying about that feature.

There's one really big example of that approach that's been in development now forever, and they've had a number of resets based on what others are doing. So, we try to keep the blinders on a little, while at the same time we're still consumers, so obviously we do keep an eye-out.

What sort of movies have influenced you?

Oh... you know... going back to the original Dawn of the Dead, George Romero's stuff. Obviously we all like 28 Days Later, the first more than the second. Resident Evil. We have mixed opinions on Dead Rising. I thought it was clever but other people take a different view. There were people that loved it, and people that didn't like it so much.

Is Left 4 Dead a serious game, or is it tongue-in-cheek?

Oh absolutely. This really goes back to George Romero again, he gave the world this genre in a way. This was the 'we're going to scare you, then we're going to make you laugh' approach. This game has its fair share of that. Comic books are also good at staying true to this approach. 28 Days Later was obviously really serious, and really dark, it sent the genre in its own direction.

With Sean of the Dead at the other end?

Absolutely. Right! Its completely out there. We're looking for that perfect mix. Nothing too serious, we like a laugh, but we also want to creep you out a little bit. When one of the boss Infected jump out at you we want you to scream, and yell!

Some of the horror films we've mentioned make veiled political points. Will your game have a hidden message?

Not at all. We don't take oursleves that seriously. We're so bad with our ship-dates anyway that were we to include some kind of message it would be teribly irrelevent by the time the game was released!

[Laughter]

Again, we try not too take ourselves too seriously.