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VALVe, my abusive mistress: Misadvertisement
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Oh awesome. More guns. Yay! Fun! Oh, wait...
I love VALVe. I love their games. They have done a number of incredibly good things to gaming in the last ten years.
Still, their business model often times fills me with sorrow, disdain, and excessive bruising.
Most recent in this string of beatings comes the purported features in Left 4 Dead. There is an advertisement that describes "10 New Weapons!" that occurs at the end of the demo, implying that you will see a large variety of new guns to slaughter the mindless swarms of infected with.
You don't. You won't. You're sad about it. In addition, among those ten are a propane tank, a gas can, and an O2 tank, all of which are implements that you carry, toss, and strategically detonate with a bullet to eliminate groups or start fires. Useful, yes. Fun, yes. Realistically, a new weapon? No.
Why advertise them as new weapons when there's no old weapons to speak of? All it does is disappoint fans when they find that the O2 tank counts in the same category as the automatic shotgun which is indeed as satisfying as it sounds, but it is something we've already come to know and love.
Does this change anything in the game? No. It remains an incredibly entertaining experience, but it somehow feels lessened when we discover that whe are to receive absolutely nothing new to deal out destruction with when we drop the lucrative $50 dime upon the game. It doesn't really change the experience at all, but it makes me seriously wonder why they would advertise such a thing only to disappoint their fans.
VALVe and Steam are popular enough now that they could make a pong clone sell like hotcakes simply by their reputation, but they seem to do a great many things that are clear examples of profit-mongering. They do fans a great service by making great games, but their business model doesn't always reflect that.
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