That said, I’ve been calling it The A/B Club for years now, because of the same thing Tom noticed. :)

The least we can do is hope that Valve does its usually thing. As in, not screwing up and making a huge mistake.

“There’s more content coming for Left 4 Dead in the fairly near term”

Which could well sort this out. I think we’ll see a downturn in furore over time, with it largely gone by the time it’s actually released. This kind of thing works takes off more the less information there is, because everyone can paint a worst case scenario.

I think there are pretty easy answers to the questions in your third para, but Valve’s company line mimics your reasoning: http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=23911

I’m still pretty optimistic about new free stuff for Left 4 Dead, but the quote at the end of that piece does not sound good.

It stings because it feels like an expansion pack. I know it’s a terrible example, but here’s something I posed to a friend: What if, instead of free class packs for TF2, they just released a new TF2 with all those weapons in it, different maps, and instead of blue and red it was just green and orange with some changing of the character silhouettes? It doesn’t feel right.

The only time I see it Valve’s way is when people discuss the whole “why not just make this DLC?”. I’d be all for that, but think in Valve’s shoes. They have some ‘new’ ideas here. If you made this DLC, how (and if at all) do you segregate the content? Would you stick the frying pan in the old 4 campaigns? Or leave them for the new ones? And what about the characters? Do they just stay in their 4 missions? And what about new zombie types? Same deal there. And don’t even get me started on possible new mechanics. Maps, maybe, but even then it’s a stretch (Considering the daylight missions). It wouldn’t feel right going into the original game like that unless Valve did some magic.

TLDR: L4D2 is the odd step child. Where does itgo?

Are those expectations (“entitlements” as others would have it) something that customers shouldn’t have? Most companies would kill to have so strong a brand that they can motivate sales on the expectation of future excellence.

None of this is to say that Valve have any kind of moral obligation to their customers to provide more L4D content. I presume they’re aware how this move is going to change hpow people view their brand (after all the forum furore, how could they not be), and either they;re going to do somethign to combat that or they;re content with it. It is fof course their decision.

But I can see why people feel a sense of betrayal. They were expecting one thing and got another, and I feel those expectations were legitemate.

In fact, in the one remaining story of his that directly relates to the topic, “The fable of the Sanvich and the Spy”, it seems the only character classes he was aware of were the Spy, the Heavy, and the Medic, who for some reason was only equipped with Jarate and a “Laser Monocle”.

Which is why 100% should probably never be given out.

It’s true you can’t quantify what 1% means exactly, but over a series of reviews scoring creates a landscape of quality that’s easy to assess at a glance, and in a publication like PC Gamer the way the mag scores becomes part of the magazine’s identity. You can look back over the hundreds and hundreds of reviews and see scoring trends, and quickly identify the classics. Notably, Gamer actually uses almost all of the scale, from 3% to 96%. Many do not, which leaves thim in the 7/10 trap.

This is a good opportunity to link back to one of my favourite James posts: http://snipurl.com/j9thl

PS: Must say that Steam Forum and RPS commenter reactions to L4D2 has been rude, arrogant and thouroughly unpleasant.

As for the rest, sure a good/bad scale doesn’t serve niche games, but then neither does a score system. You actually have to read the review to know they’re cult, so why not force people to do it? We have a language for god’s sake, that’s what we use to efficiently pass information on, not arbitrary numbers or picture of thumbs.

Summarise if you’re worried about the lack of attention. Here’s how you explain Doom 3:

Very old fashioned but fun shooter, will make you jump.

There you go, it tells you far more about the game than a score ever did, it took me five seconds to write and you even less to read. Are you telling me you couldn’t read twenty short sentences?

So you get this weird anger towards people who “should have given it xx%” from people who haven’t played the game and just assume it’s of a certain quality. It all gets a little too mad for me. The steam forums are this histrionic plague pit right now, all because Valve 1) made a mistake with their unlocks, and 2) are releasing a game.

If people would just read the review, the scores would be superfluous because it’s just a way of adding a nonverbal conclusion, like a picture of a kitten or eleven bananas. I imagine it’d be more useful in writing the damn thing, telling yourself what impression you’re trying to give. Plus, how do you summarise twenty game reviews without using a scale of how good they are?

You could use a good/bad system, but then what about Hinterland, or Peggle? What about Doom 3? I love a bit of D3. It’s like white bread, you know? Delicious, not good for you, novelty soon wears off, but I always come back. Take that, weird-zombies-that-can-use-guns!

Obviously these two are mutually exclusive, and both have their own problems. For instance if tommorrow I made the perfect… let’s say… train simulator, theory a) would give it a hundred percent, which seems ludicrous, yet theory b) would mean that, by virtue of being a train sim it would never be able to get 100%, no matter how good it was, which seems unfair.

This is why I’d prefer it if we all ditched scores altogether.

With the pick of the week or Editors Choice replaced with “AWESOME” or suchlike. The grades and percentage systems give a air of accuracy to a subjective thing. I dont care weather its 85 or 86% – i just want to know how you think it is.

also WTF is the percentage based on? What is at 100? Sex?

LEFT 4 DEAD TWO is here!

But that’s a low-percentage occurrence in any medium, if only because past author skill is a decent predictor of future author skill and enthusiasts, surprisingly, have some ability to judge good books by their covers in proper context. I wouldn’t consider a run of twenty non-craps to be statistically significant without info on their overall percentage of craps.

A) It’s the Onion.
B) ‘The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan’. Eh?

I wouldn’t know if they were, because books tend to repulse me unless the cover has either violence, implied violence or Roald Dahl’s name.

Compare movie critics, who often see everything and therefore offer more of a spectrum of opinions, to video games journalism, where you’ll often see a staff where one person tends to review all the flight sims. Music journalism also notably has this specialist effect: here’s Tom Ewing talking about it –

http://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2009/03/which-is-more-broken-music-criticism-or-metacritic/