Death

     Death in video games has always been a factor, especially once the games started advancing with better storylines and graphics.  Even though in the early games they may not have focused on the deaths so much, they were still there and they were still violent depending on how it's looked upon.  Super Mario stomps his enemies to death, Pacman turns himself inside out until he is nothing, in Burger Time the chef basically has a seizure, and so on.  In the mid 90s, when graphics were progressing and so were games, we had more visual deaths evolving.  And now through time with the advancement of video game genres/styles and better graphics with consols such as the X-Box 360 & Playstation 3, we have come to a whole new gaming experience than we had years ago.

     In Left 4 Dead 1 & 2, we experience these newest styles of death in video games.  The violence and deaths in this game are everywhere and occur almost every second it feels like.  When the rush of zombies come at you, you and your three teammates are littering ammo everywhere trying to kill everything around you.  When this happens you see limbs flying in the air, heads getting blown off, etc.  It is a much more realistic way of killing your enemies than in the older games, like Super Mario World or something. 

     Since Left 4 Dead is meant for replay value and the levels are fairly short, you don't really get to feel for the characters as much as you would with other video games, such as RPGs.  In lots of RPGs you get to build up your character over time and choose primarily what happens or what certain characters can do.  This then progresses the storyline and changes the game up due to what you have chosen to do.  Over time, you start to feel for the characters like you would in a movie, only this time you are in control of what they do so it can create an even further bonding experience.  In Left 4 Dead, there are several storylines to choose from with chapters within them.  On average each storyline can take an hour or so and then it is over with.  Due to the lack of backstory with the characters and the short length of gameplay per story, you cannot learn much about your characters, which in the end leaves you with less emotion and sorrow towards a character if they end up dying.

Expanding the Mayhem

Left 4 Dead was originally made for X-Box 360 and then moved to PC because of its popularity.  There were rumors going around on the internet that Left 4 Dead will be released for the Playstation 3 as well, but that turned out to be only a rumor.  As of last year, the Valve team has been fixing things up and adding new features to further enhance the PC and online gameplay, such as versus and survivor mode.  Valve's main plan is to release more updates and such for the PC game version and then later on group up these updates for the X-Box 360 version.  The game statistics allow the company to personally see what is going well and what isn't.  An example of this is that they "flipped the order in which teams play the next round based on who was winning the round before it."  This gave players a better chance to play through the final map.  The game's playing percentage jumped 5% after that change, which is small but it's going the way they want it to.  Other than statistics, Valve gets direct feedback from players as well to help out what they should keep and change.

Wicked Cinema

As I stated in my last post, Valve Corporation was largly inspired by all kinds of horror films.  One of the biggest goals for the art direction of this video game was to make it seem like the player is right in the middle of a horror flick.  This meant that they had to make the various environments around the game in a specific "filmic" way.  The art direction used five specific ways of creating this atmosphere: color, correction, film grain, vignette, and local contrast.  Some examples of what they did include:
For the color, they simply dimmed down certain spots in the game's environment while they enhanced the color on specific items to catch the player's attention (health, blood, exits).  While working with the film grain effect during the cinematic parts of the game, Valve realized that the effect added both a heightened sense of feeling/authenticity, but if used too much the players (at least game testers) got tired of it fast.  Therefore, Valve evened this situation out and let the darker parts get grainy, but the lighter the screen got, the less grain appeared.  Altogether, Valve wanted the player to have a "visually unique experience" every time they play, based upon their performance.  Blending all of the effects together in the end made the game look a lot more realistic and cinematic for the user's enjoyment. 

A Hellish Development

Left 4 Dead was an improvement upon Valve's Source engine (a 3D game engine which they developed) and allowed them to work on many different things, such as the physics-based animation.  This allowed them to use a more realistic portrayal on characters' hair and clothing and let them improve upon the physics interaction with enemies.  This also allowed the characters to move more realistically.  Because of these improvements, the game was able to run smooth as all of the zombies continued to keep coming.  Valve also used some sort of advanced shadow rendering as well for the lighting aspects of the game.  Horror films were a big inspiration for Left 4 Dead too, and a lot of the time you can see how they affected how it added to the cinematic parts of the game.


During the testing and development of Left 4 Dead, there were lots of features that were removed from the game, like various types of zombies.  Because the game is meant for its replayability and fast action, Valve decided to take away the long introduction and many of the cut scenes and replaced them with some narratives so that the players would have more time to focus on the gameplay itself. 

Back(breaking)-Story of Game Production

Turtle Rock Studios started to develop Left 4 Dead in mid-2005.  What they intended to make was a horror film-esq video game involved with good character narration structure and multiplayer interactions.  Ultimately Turtle Rock Studios aimed for a high game replay value, which they succeeded upon, in my opinion.  As time went by, the studio slowly released more information and demos on the game.  On November 20th, 2006, the studio publicly announced their game.  The first two places in which the game was first played were at the Showdown 2007 LAN in San Jose and at QuakeCon 2007.  Left 4 Dead was finally released through Valve Corporation (which had a long relationship with Turtle Rock)on October 15th, 2008.  Soon advertisements and contests for the game were showing up everywhere and the game took off from there.

First Blog - Left 4 Dread

For my video games & culture class at Hartwick College, I have chosen to research the action-packed, horror survival game series Left 4 Dead.  It takes place in Pennsylvania, where a virus has hit, called the "Green Flu," which causes a loss of brain functions and extreme aggression. This game is a fast paced zombie shooter that will never fail to keep you on the edge of your seat.  Throughout this class, I will be blogging much information about all aspects of this series.