Left 4 Dead News

Imagine GTA with AI-generated characters "just going along with whatever insane thing you say," muses Valve writer, absent-mindedly spotlighting what terrifies me about genAI

Like many people at companies preoccupied with discovering the next "goose that lays the golden egg", Half-Life 2 and Portal writer Erik Wolpaw has been "poking around" with generative AI. He and a small team at Valve have been testing out different applications, in what Wolpaw assures us isn't a "concerted" effort at implementing the soul-regurgitating, workforce-abrading gadgetry in any particular new game.

Wolpaw's current feeling is that generative AI isn't very good at anything "creative", like cracking jokes. But he does think Large Language Models could make for entertaining NPC voice reactions in games such as Grand Theft Auto and, indeed, Wolpaw's own Left 4 Dead, because AI is marvellous at being a fawning little gopher. It is fantastic at "going along with whatever insane thing you say and kind of adjusting to the flow of that".

The new co-op game being built by Left 4 Dead creator Mike Booth and Bad Robot Games, the development studio arm of J.J. Abrams' multimedia company, has secured itself a major publisher in the form of Sony Interactive Entertainment. Hot off the massive success story that is Helldivers 2, SIE has confirmed that it will be producing and publishing the "unannounced four-player cooperative shooter" for both Playstation 5 and PC.

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Left 4 Dead lead Mike Booth is making a new 'four-player co-op shooter built on the foundations of what made L4D special'

Left 4 Dead project lead Mike Booth is working on something new, and if you're hoping it's something like L4D but different in some undefined, hopefully additive way, I have good news: It sure sounds like it...
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Left 4 Dead's lead designer is making another four-player co-op shooter that "expands" the formula

The lead designer of Left 4 Dead has announced that he's making something like Left 4 Dead again - a four-player co-op shooter that "expands on the co-op-formula in ways I've wanted to explore for a long time".

Whatever they end up calling it, the game is in development at Bad Robot Games, a studio founded by the film and TV outfit behind Lost, Cloverfield and Westworld. So the project has both expertise and funding to spare, in theory. There is little else to tell, right now, but you can sign up for a playtest if all this has you combing the rooftops for Smokers and scrabbling around for your shotgun.

Few games come close to the quality of Left 4 Dead. From the hordes of zombies to the player interactions, it was the perfect storm of noughties gaming culture distilled into a brilliant game. Valve captured lightning in a bottle a second time around before leaving the series to languish in lieu of making a third entry (surprise surprise). However, the designer of Left 4 Dead, Mike Booth, is leading a new studio. Booth has confirmed on social media that Bad Robot Games is working on a co-op shooter in the same vein as his classic zombie game, and you can sign up for playtest access right now.