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VideoGamer.com: Your millions of fans across the world want to know about the follow up to Portal, which has sort of been semi-confirmed...
CF: People are crazy talking! I don't know.
AdvertisementVideoGamer.com: OK, assuming it does come, will you guys pump out something similar to the first game or will you try and flesh out the idea a bit?
CF: I would never try to guess what we will say it's going to be or what it will be. We always listen to the response of play testing and learning from the people coming to play our games and those people will help us decide what that game should be. It's just a process we work in. We don't come out with this big design document and go THIS IS THE GAME, WE MUST MAKE THIS! It's just not how we work.
VideoGamer.com: So you'll look at feedback from the community?
CF: Well we always look at feedback from everywhere, right. And then we also then have the actual play testers coming in play testing. We have our design ideas right. And definitely have things we want to try but we're equally willing to say those were wrong once we play test. A classic example, in Episode One, we had this thing where you had to shine a flash light on the power box while Alyx repaired it. It sounds like a great thing, you're helping your buddy, you're working together, but it just sucked! It never worked right and the player never had fun doing it. We tried different things and it just never came together. So as much as we thought we were smart to have thought of that the play testers proved to us, no you're not, it's not very good.
VideoGamer.com: So the follow up to Portal will be an organic process rather than you deciding now what you'd like it to be?
CF:Yeah, again I'd hate to speculate at all on anything of what's going to happen or even if we're going to do it!
VideoGamer.com: Oh right, I'm sure I saw a quote online where it was confirmed...
CF: Some people may have been talking... I don't know! I'm so busy on Left 4 Dead I don't know what we say all the time.
VideoGamer.com: OK. Back to Left 4 Dead - are we likely to see a demo?
CF: As we get closer to shipping, we'll start thinking about those kinds of things. I definitely think letting people play it is its strength. It's not trying to trick you into like, oh we'll get you to buy it by because we showed you some flashy add or some flashy cut scenes. The game stands up. Once people play it I think they get it. Letting more people play it is just going to help the game.
VideoGamer.com: Sometimes demos can have a harmful effect...
CF: Sometimes they give you too much of the game, and I'm like yeah that's enough, or they just don't hit it for me. Burnout Paradise demo just didn't do it for me but playing that game, I loved that game.
VideoGamer.com: So why didn't the demo do it for you?
CF: I don't know. I guess it was one of those games where I just didn't get the whole what is was going to be. I really loved the Burnout games and I was like, man! You screwed me on this! And then I played the full game and I'm like, all right, yeah, I get this now. I'm totally having fun doing it and I'm like yeah it's a great game.
VideoGamer.com: So if you guys are going to do a demo for XBL for Left 4 Dead what would the considerations be?
CF: People smarter than me would figure out what we should do and I would go yes you are right.
VideoGamer.com: OK. So you're the writer for Left 4 Dead, what can you tell me about that side of it?
CF: You want to have some story, you want to have a reason you're fighting. We have an overarching story, but less is more, right. You can have the greatest story ever and a crappy game and it's still going to be a crappy game. You can have just too much story and then bog a good game down. We want it to naturally come out, it's replayable a million times, so you don't want to bore people with hearing the same lines, so how we deliver this story is different than most of our games. Every time you play it you get a little different bit of the story and it comes through.
VideoGamer.com: So will it be delivered through traditional cutscenes?
CF: No. It's always on the fly. We don't want to slow up the game. People want to play. The fun thing is shooting zombies right. The biggest thing we're working on is making sure you can play with your friends, you can talk about it with each other while you're playing and afterwards you can have that kind of experience where you're talking about what you just did.
VideoGamer.com: Thanks for your time Chet.
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