BT: So, when you playtest are your testers not always hardcore gamers then?
CF: We try to get as wide a range as possible. If you’ve just got hardcore gamers then you’re going to get a really small percentage of your audience, right? So we have a cross-section and we use an internal wiki page where people can just add their names and email addresses and I’m actually the person to go through and contact them.
The real problem with play testing Left4Dead though is that we need four people at a time to test anything, unlike Half-Life where we just have one person in one game at a time. It makes everything slower. We even have clans come in sometimes to see how they interact with the game. We have different scenarios too; sometimes people are in the same room, sometimes separate. We want to test a whole load of things.
We kind of joke that when you get to a certain point in the game then all your work is just driven solely off of play testing.
BT: So, do you –
CF: And the thing that really got me, when I first joined the company and when I first saw this was ‘Where do we get all these stupid people from? How can’t they figure these things out?’ After a while though you realise that actually you’re the one who’s not so bright because everybody does the same thing.
Like, everyone wants to kill their buddy and we wanted to fiddle with that, but we had problems with the interface, so we thought we’ll take out friendly fire. But then, even with the problems, we’re not smarter than our customers.
BT: Do you think the accessibility provided by constant streamlining is one of the big appeals of Valve games then?
CF: I think that’s one of the things we’ve got, yeah. If you just throw features in and don’t give people a way to discover them then or train them on it, then they won’t use it. Then they’ll start asking why you didn’t put it in.
I mean, yes, there are things in there for higher-level players and especially for a game like this where you’ll play multiple times, but we always want to make sure that these things aren’t required for people to have a good experience.
BT: Do you think there are some things you just can’t do or just can’t communicate in a game though?
CF: Pfft. Look at Portal – we made people fall in love with a box. If you told someone that a videogame could do that then you’d be called an idiot because people think that they can’t. We spend all this time trying to get people to connect to human characters – which is sometimes less successful than others, but here there’s this inanimate box that people have fallen in love with. Portal is a great example of us being able to communicate any emotion or feeling with players.
BT: Did you work on Portal at all?
CF: I worked on it in the very beginning, then all my stuff was cut and it’s all Erik Wolpaw.
BT: And you knew Erik from way back on Old Man Murray, right?
CF: Yeah, I’ve known Erik for many, many years. <sigh>
CF: We try to get as wide a range as possible. If you’ve just got hardcore gamers then you’re going to get a really small percentage of your audience, right? So we have a cross-section and we use an internal wiki page where people can just add their names and email addresses and I’m actually the person to go through and contact them.
The real problem with play testing Left4Dead though is that we need four people at a time to test anything, unlike Half-Life where we just have one person in one game at a time. It makes everything slower. We even have clans come in sometimes to see how they interact with the game. We have different scenarios too; sometimes people are in the same room, sometimes separate. We want to test a whole load of things.
We kind of joke that when you get to a certain point in the game then all your work is just driven solely off of play testing.
BT: So, do you –
CF: And the thing that really got me, when I first joined the company and when I first saw this was ‘Where do we get all these stupid people from? How can’t they figure these things out?’ After a while though you realise that actually you’re the one who’s not so bright because everybody does the same thing.
Like, everyone wants to kill their buddy and we wanted to fiddle with that, but we had problems with the interface, so we thought we’ll take out friendly fire. But then, even with the problems, we’re not smarter than our customers.
BT: Do you think the accessibility provided by constant streamlining is one of the big appeals of Valve games then?
CF: I think that’s one of the things we’ve got, yeah. If you just throw features in and don’t give people a way to discover them then or train them on it, then they won’t use it. Then they’ll start asking why you didn’t put it in.
I mean, yes, there are things in there for higher-level players and especially for a game like this where you’ll play multiple times, but we always want to make sure that these things aren’t required for people to have a good experience.
BT: Do you think there are some things you just can’t do or just can’t communicate in a game though?
CF: Pfft. Look at Portal – we made people fall in love with a box. If you told someone that a videogame could do that then you’d be called an idiot because people think that they can’t. We spend all this time trying to get people to connect to human characters – which is sometimes less successful than others, but here there’s this inanimate box that people have fallen in love with. Portal is a great example of us being able to communicate any emotion or feeling with players.
BT: Did you work on Portal at all?
CF: I worked on it in the very beginning, then all my stuff was cut and it’s all Erik Wolpaw.
BT: And you knew Erik from way back on Old Man Murray, right?
CF: Yeah, I’ve known Erik for many, many years. <sigh>
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