About Us
Left 4 Dead 411 is a fan website for the upcoming game Left 4 Dead, a multiplayer cooperative survival horror shooter. We had the amazing opportunity to take a trip to Valve and play Left 4 Dead! Read about our trip, see the pictures we took while we there, and then enjoy our extensive hands-on preview of Left 4 Dead. There’s a ton of details in there, covering everything about the Survivor side, the Director, the voice system, the achievement system, playing the Infected side and more! If you have any suggestions for the site or see anything we missed, please contact us.
What’s the 411 mean?
This question has been asked many times by visitors from outside North America. It’s not something we really thought of while thinking of a name (oops), but “411″ is another term for “information”, due to the telephone number 4-1-1 being used for decades in the U.S. and Canada for local directory assistance. Doing a Google search for 411 returns many results of equally unknowing North American-based webmasters. Don’t hate!
History
It’s early 2007, Squerl and Frogopus are drifting in a gaming abyss.. MMO’s occupy their time, sure, chasing that carrot and letting them believe that they’ll get to the “fun part” soon – but after hundreds of hours, MMO’s have all ended in the shocking discovery that the fun part doesn’t actually exist, and they’ve just been going through the same keyboard sequence the past 5,000 fights with little enjoyment for nothing. Deathmatch-style shooters such as UT2004 numb their minds, where gameplay is boiled down to basic primal instincts of move-jump-shoot, repeat. Some resemblance of team awareness is required with Onslaught, but otherwise, none.
What Squerl and Frogopus wanted was some mix of styles – tactics and brainpower being necessary, but also relying on twitch ability. Tactical action games such as Counter-Strike are the games that many players flock to, as Squerl and Frogopus had, but hundreds of hours poured into this genre also ends with a sad realization. The hypercompetitive environment of these games drives players to play more and more to get better, with the illusion that as soon as you are “good enough” or as soon as you get enough skill, at some point it’ll be all fun, no headaches. Unfortunately, due to this hypercompetitiveness, and most of the “fun” being derived solely from winning and not getting your face pwned, many times the winning team has a blast while the losing team gets upset and angry. This is even more the case in competitive clan matches, the one part of the game where tactics actually become important. On top of all that, player vs player hostility isn’t just the norm, it’s a part of the culture and of the game.
The game that Squerl and Frogopus dreamed of was nowhere to be found – a game that always required teamwork, where players played with and against each other without needing to lessen the experience for one another, a game that was challenging, and most of all, contained what seemed to be lacking in other multiplayer games – unrestricted fun. Fun that could be had when winning or in the face of absolute devastation. In the first days of 2007 while floating in the gaming abyss, with seemingly no game to turn to, a glimmer of light appeared in the distance.
While skimming an IGN article on the editor’s most anticipated games of 2007, Squerl happened upon a game that immediately piqued his interest. From the short description: Co-operative gameplay with a group of four players.. 28 Days Later-style zombies.. Valve.. a number replacing a word in the name.. the ability to play super-zombies? Squerl immediately searched for more information, each new fact revealing more and more of what could only be considered a miracle. Could it be true, could it really be happening?! The heavens rang out with a chorus of trumpets as the light from the darkness that was Left 4 Dead shone brightly upon them! Their prayers had been answered! And they only had to wait a few short months until the Summer 07 release!
First design of L4D411, early January 07
In his search for information on L4D, Squerl realized that there wasn’t a single place to find everything, so he got to work. Left 4 Dead 411 launched on January 12th, 2007 with a small FAQ and links to the very few existing articles. The official website for Left 4 Dead launched later on in the same day (http://www.l4d.com/), and afterwards recognized L4D411 as the first fan website in this news post:
1st L4D Fansite goes live
An unknown fan has put up www.left4dead411.com. A simple design that looks good and has lots of content.
Boomer puke design, 1/29/07
On the 29th of January a new design featuring the Boomer and green puke was launched, and also the first method of community interaction, the shoutbox. A couple days later we received an e-mail from Mike Booth:
Hey there Left4Dead411 people!
I like the new look of your site, Boomer vomit and all (although the Boomer’s vomit is mostly blood, which is red).
I’m contacting you to see if you guys would be interested in visiting either our studio or Valve (whichever is closer) and trying Left 4 Dead for yourself.
Let me know.
-Michael Booth, 1/31/07
Boomer puke design fixed
The e-mail was a great surprise. We listened to the big man and changed the site to red, responded and the ball got rolling. We were set to head out to Valve HQ on April 1st.
Paper design of Left 4 Dead 411, 3/10/07
We updated the look yet again in preparation for the trip, and finally added forums on the 17th of March. The trip to Valve took place, and 7 days later we posted about it and also the first part of our preview.
Wide paper design of Left 4 Dead 411, May 2007
In May the design was widened to accomodate more content and part 2.
Sixth design, 9/30/07
The sixth design that was launched on September 30th, 2007 featured a much darker style, and got met with mixed reviews. The current design was done by an artist friend which met with overwhelming approval and glee, and everybody lived happily ever after.
