Left 4 Dead's first internal playtest was so disastrous, Gabe Newell asked its lead: 'Why don't I just play Counter-Strike instead?' then 'made me watch him play it'

pcgamer.com:

Chet Faliszek, the lead on Left 4 Dead—who is now making his own retro sci-fi version called The Anacrusis—says that Gabe Newell had some pretty strong opinions on the game during its troubled development.

That's according to an interview by GameDeveloper, which outlines the horde shooter's rocky start. Faliszek recalls stumbling into his position as project lead almost by accident due to Valve's funky organisational structure where people can drift towards projects they think are interesting. He says an engineer responded to Newell with a casual: "'Well, you should just talk to Chet, Chet's kind of the person.' Like, no one ever told me I'm running [the game]!"

The only problem is, L4D's early prototypes weren't working. The game was originally imagined as an asymmetrical game with a PvP focus—four gun-toting survivors against four special infected. That would later return as the game's Versus mode, where the zombies were far more fragile. Even so, the original playtest was a disaster.

Firstly, the matchmaking system didn't work, prompting a very blunt response from Newell. «Gabe just asked me very seriously, 'why don't I just play Counter-Strike instead? That's working.' And I thought he was joking. Like, ha, ha, ha. But then he made me watch him play it, he made me sit in his office and watch and play it.»

Faliszek does emphasise that it was a pretty good object lesson, rather than a weird flex. "[Newell] says, 'No, seriously, this is every single one of your customers, asking this question right now. What do you tell them?' Like, fuck, good question."

The other problem was that the concept just didn't really work—a common problem in these asymmetrical PvP games. It's hard enough to balance classes when both teams