Valve's Reputation With The Gaming Community NEEDS FOOD BADLY.
I feel like I dropped $45 on an unfinished game a few months ago and finally received the rest of the game (that should have been ready at launch) a few weeks ago. Now they're going to ask us to spend another $50 in 6 months?
I'm not saying I haven't gotten $45 worth of entertainment out of L4D, but c'mon, Valve. Have you looked at the economy lately? Do you really expect people to be able, let alone willing, to drop $50 for a computer game that only slightly improves on a game that people already paid for? And to add insult to injury, the improvements are features (e.g. melee weapons, especially the chainsaw) that fans have suggesting since before the game launched.
And I understand that EA is likely not influencing this decision, but EA's reputation is
so bad that merely being having any business association with EA leads gamers, correct or not, to jump to the conclusion that EA is in some way responsible for every bad or questionable business decision made by any affiliated businesses. (The same could be said for Activision and Blizzard's decision to release Starcraft II as a trilogy.)
Now, to be fair, it's not exactly like this is unprecedented. Doom 1 released on December 10, 1993. Doom II released on October 10, 1994. That's only 10 months between the original and its sequel.
Doom II was not a dramatically different game from its predecessor. There were no major technological developments, no graphical improvements, and no real changes in fundamental gameplay. The game still consisted of the player negotiating non-linear levels, picking up keys to unlock new areas, and of course shooting down hundreds upon hundreds of monsters. However, due to there being larger and more complicated maps, with larger groups of monsters, the game required higher system specs than the original.
The main additions to the game were the additional monsters available for the player to fight. Doom II doubled the amount of non-boss monsters and started using bosses from the original Doom as normal level enemies. In addition, the multiplayer functionality was greatly improved in Doom II, including "out of the box" support for a vastly increased number of dial-up modems. The two player dial up connection allowed one player to dial in to the other player's computer in order to play either co-operatively or in deathmatch style combat. There was also LAN functionality added, which was improved upon as patches and updates were released.
The only new weapon addition was the double-barreled shotgun (named 'Super Shotgun' ingame), which used up two shotgun shells per fire but could fire out 20 pellets instead of the regular shotgun's seven pellets from one shell, making it very useful in dispatching Demons, Cacodemons, and any form of medium-sized monster.
There was also one new power-up item created: the Megasphere, a tan soul sphere that would give the player 200% armor and health.
Source:
Doom II: Hell on Earth - From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Same engine, same gameplay, introduction of LAN play (which was easily the most significant addition to the game), new monsters, one new weapon, and one new power-up. That's it. Yet I can't imagine there being as loud an outcry over the rapid release of Doom II as there is and will be over Left 4 Dead 2.
Then again, Doom II came out in 1994. That was before Quake made it much easier to mod a game (mods existed for Doom II, but they usually required hacking the game executable), Counter-Strike and other popular mods greatly extended the sales life of Half-Life 1, and Valve took 6 years to release a sequel (Half-Life 2).
People will argue that Left 4 Dead 2 includes new features (e.g. melee weapons, an AI Director that actually lived up to expectations and wasn't a disappointment, more maps, etc.) that many players felt should have been included in L4D at launch. Even having given the parallel of Doom 1/Doom II, I can't help but side with the complainers on this one.
NO VALVE. NO. GIVE US AN SDK AL-FRIGGIN-READY. Seriously, they said it would ship with the game, and it's not even out by the time they announce the sequel? Are they even going to make an l4d SDK? Or are they just going to make on for l4d2? AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUGH.
Valve
released a beta of the L4D SDK on May 15.