Left 4 Dead dev says Valve meeting was “brutal”

pcgamesn.com:

Left 4 Dead has one of the best box art designs in recent gaming history. Simple, eye-catching, and memorable thanks to that neat little joke with the fingers, the bright-green, L4D cover was a staple of everyone’s PC gaming desk, or on the floor near their TV, back in the zombie game’s heyday. Chet Faliszek, however, a Valve developer whose credits also include Portal and Half-Life, says getting the Left 4 Dead art exactly right was a bit of a nightmare, with one particular meeting at the future Steam Deck maker being especially “brutal.”

It’s no easy task, trying to encompass everything a game is about in one, attractive, distinctive image. Left 4 Dead would eventually pull it off, earning its place among the best box art canon, but an image of a prototype cover recently shared online – which you can see below, alongside the final design – prompts Faliszek to recall the challenging creative process.

“The box cover meeting was brutal,” Faliszek says. “I was unprepared and got my ass handed to me for being sure what I didn’t think worked, but not being able to express clearly why.”

Faliszek, who also worked on the Half-Life 2 episodes, outlines in detail how the Left 4 Dead cover was conceived and finalised – and how it started with a reimagining of the artwork for Steven Spielberg’s WW2 TV series Band of Brothers.

“So there was a box art meeting,” Faliszek explains. “I didn’t know it was coming. I did not prepare for it. The Band of Brothers photo was the first one shown. I didn’t like it, and I was unable to express why I didn’t like it because of a couple of things. One, I had not lifted my head up – I had not looked up and seen where the project was with everyone else.

“This meeting made such an impression on me that