Left 4 Dead Demo – Beta or not?
I’m in two minds about the Left 4 Dead demo. On the one hand Valve are being typically community-vigilant and are responding quickly and personally to people’s well-founded gripes. On the other, Valve are yet again making up their own untrustworthy definitions to blur the public’s expectations of their deliveries.
A “Demo”(nstration) game is meant to demonstrate to the public what they would get if they buy the full thing. If I bought L4D on the strength of the demo as it was released yesterday I’d frankly be a moron. The gameplay may be great (once you’ve found a server that isn’t lagged to buggery, that you don’t get unceremoniously booted from 5 minutes later) but the product is patently incomplete. Semantics aside, a Demo (particularly an FPS one) is widely considered to be a fully-featured, but abbreviated version of the full game. This is clearly not a demo, this is clearly a Beta test.
Valve have quite the reputation for dubious PR. First there was the unprecedented delays of the HL episodes, then there was the increasingly obvious (and later acknowledged) fact that “Episodic Releases” weren’t really a workable strategy. I would have thought experience had shown they needed more care, quality control and deliberation in their releases, but evidently not.
Valve seem to think they can get away with petty deceptions and failure to deliver, by making up for it by being proactive after the fact, but it simply doesn’t wash with me. My consumer confidence is knocked down more than their community-centricity raises it up.
Having said all that, I’m not saying the L4D demo isn’t great, nor that the final product won’t be similarly awesome. The failings in the lobby system are made up for by the exhilarating gameplay 10-fold. My problem is Valve’s attitude. I worry that it sets an irresponsible precedent.
Modern software development is embracing the internet in ways most people fail to appreciate. Project management and delivery hinges upon Agile project management methods requiring constant interaction between all members of a development team and the customer. Valve is eager to be seen to embrace these practices, but they clearly don’t understanding them fully, interpreting “Release Early, Release Often” as “Release anything, fix bugs” which is critically different. Then they rest back on their laurels, expecting the community to assume their lack of QC is “the new release style” and expecting them to forgive their mistakes as part of the development process! Valve seem increasingly reliant on the consumer to spot their mistakes and seem to hold little significance in the raising up and crushing of thousands of expectations when it comes to previous release dates.
If my company released broken products and claimed the mistakes were just part of some “lolgasmic, pro-active paradigm shift in trans-relational client feedback prototype bollocks”, and that it was “all good”, we’d lose business. Someone needs to point out to Valve that being cool simply does not cut it all the time.
If Valve had called it an Open Beta, the early buyers would feel honoured and would remain aware that its not a final product. Blogging would probably be cautiously optimistic, but positive. Do they realise how foolish they look for releasing a “Demo” that more people can be seen to complain about, than praise? How about a little more pride in your work, Valve – come on, pull your socks up!
Great article, really interesting read. I’ve put up a news item about on my site. Love your work here
, defiantly going to be a returning reader!
Two things, first off: There’s a difference between a demo which serves entirely as an advert and a demo which is currently to people who have already bought the game. The latter is acceptable to be beta, to some extent. And secondly, this post looks a bit silly since Valve seem to have fixed the cpu overload issue in the overnight update.
The hint is in the name, imho. I’m unaware of any other commercial game where the word Demo has given to software still in testing, particularly so close to release, where the developers even acknowledge that its incomplete and request feedback. The word conjures specific expectations, specific basic levels of functionality. Like i said though, its not about semantics, its much wider than that. In fact its much wider than this being a Demo, or that there was apparently some CPU issue which i didn’t even mention in the main article. I’m am bringing attention to Valve’s behaviour using L4D as an example, nothing more.
On the plus side, the game seems to be increasingly solid. I’ve played last night and several times today without any problems whatsoever, both with friends and with randoms. It’s been an absolute blast everytime.
I’ll have some more thoughts soon….
Dave, suddenly it’s a crime for a game to be patched between the demo and the full release. It’s a common occurrence – especially with games that can only really be tested properly when released to the public. The only difference between Left 4 Dead and other games which did the same is that Left 4 Dead patches and updates automatically whilst I’m sleeping – why is this such a bad thing?
You seem to be repeatedly misreading this. Despite the title of the post, its not about L4D specifically, but it has been triggered by it. Note that in the image, Gabe is burning a book about project management, not the L4D code or similar. My issue is with their confusing treatment of the consumers. Thats not to say the final games don’t turn out to be awesome (and i’d agree fixing games while i sleep cannot be knocked), but I wish they had paid a little more attention to the expectations of the fans, before releasing incomplete software called a Demo.
Every valve release of the last few years has pissed off an unusually large number of fans in some way, but since the finished games are second to none Valve are let off. Every software release pisses off fans somewhere, but Valve’s have been notorious. I’m of the belief that they should have learnt by now. I believe they know their fans will let them off the hook if the product is worth it and I believe that is wrong.
Whether you’re willing to accept it or not, calling software a demo changes the perception of what to expect. If that demo is incomplete, you feel let down on some level. Its not a crime and its not the first time a company has used end-users to fix problems, but Valve had lead me to believe they were better than that.
Perhaps i’m just a stickler for propriety, I dunno. When demos/games were released before the internet existed to do regular patches, there seemed to be a lot more control. Steam has revolutionised delivery, but it has also made every launch a ‘Soft launch’, as games can be fixed daily, rather than spending the time and effort before launch. Its a double-edged sword which I feel valve are using to their advantage without consideration for old-school business ethics.
Maybe we’ve had different experiences of the Valve products, the Left 4 Dead pre-order demo is the only release of theirs I’ve played which has had significant issues, and these were fixed on the night of its release.
To my knowledge, other issues were mostly centred on games requiring online activation – which was mostly complained about in Germany, which we all know to be because Germans like their pirated games. Compared to Starforce and such – which are included in several larger companies releases we’ve gotten off pretty lightly here.
The only major bone was regarding release dates, and the confession that episodic content wasn’t viable in the ways and to the extent they had initially hoped.
So, from my perspective – however you spin it, this post is about Left 4 Dead. Which means it’s entirely about an early access demo which had issues for a single day. Please enlighten me as to these other issues as I’m obviously completely oblivious to them.
Yes, and my issue is with release dates and what I see as a deliberately confusing demo release. I’ve made myself clear (except to you), I don’t have the patience to clarify the point yet again, sorry.
Yeah, I think Dave’s primary point here, which I agree with, is simply: Why did they call it a ‘demo’? They should have called it an early access beta, or beta demo or something, just so that people were prepared for slight wonkiness at the start.
The public demo they’ve now released can happily be called a demo, because it’s slick as Boomer belly.
From a PR point of view, given the nature of Angry Internet Men, it was a bit of a needless mis-step. The number of people demanding refunds on that first day was bizarre – but something that needn’t have happened if they’d properly described it as a beta.