Left4Dead and Thermodynamics

Left4Dead is an exceptionally high point in gaming. It sits quite easily on my list of favourite games, joining other stonking titles like Quake 3 Arena, Dwarf Fortress, Speedball 2, Zelda: Link to the Past, and Planescape: Torment. Games like Left4Dead don't come along very often, at least not to my mind, and apparently others seem to think it's the bee's knees too.

So, why did L4D make my list? This is a good question, and it's one that I've struggled to answer. I've played plenty of great games, but they haven't made The List. Further, I can pinpoint quite easily why other games are on the list. For example, Q3A embodied the concept of the 'arena', and did so in the cleanest, and most visceral way; Planescape: Torment demonstrated how sophisticated computer RPGs could be, and there hasn't been a single RPG since that comes close -- not even one. Every game on the list is there because I can think of some kind of transcendental aspect that sits above its particular qualities.

What about L4D? It certainly has excellent qualities: the AI Director is clever, the co-op mechanic is elegant, the level design is intricate and thoughtful, and the atmosphere is just frightening. But these qualities alone aren't enough to put a game on my list.

I struggled with L4D's amazingness for a while before it finally came to me. I was in the Dead Air finale, with two survivors down, and no health packs left. I was standing on the fuel tanker, back-to-back with the single remaining survivor. The plane had a long way to go before it filled up, and a horde was screaming towards us. Suddenly, a Smoker yanked my friend off the tanker, into the rushing horde, tripling the difficulty of an already impossible task. As he was being dragged away, he sighed and said 'it's like we're just meant to die'. And then it hit me.

'Of course!' I said to my frustrated, soon-to-be-dead companion who I was accidentally peppering with bullets in a lame attempt to help him. 'It's thermodynamics!'

An Ice Cube in the Sun

(Note: I'm about to butcher the Second Law of Thermodynamics more violently than a creationist, but just roll with it.) 

Many games can be viewed in the context of entropy. Think of the game as the environment (like a hot day), and the player's presence as something highly disruptive to the normal state of things (like an ice cube). The game will try to restore equilibrium by making you inert (increasing entropy), and you're using energy/resources/actions to stop it (decreasing entropy). Essentially, the game is trying to kill you, and you're trying not to die. 

An RTS is a classic example. You're constantly under attack, which whittles away your base and units, and you must use diminishing or limited resources to stay alive. Dwarf Fortress is another good example. The environment, enemies, even the damn interface, exert a constant pressure on the player, making it hard to just survive the winter. I think it's this entropic threat that leads people to use words like 'punishing', rather than just 'difficult', when describing these kinds of games.

Coming back to L4D, I think Valve has perfected this idea of entropy. Ammo is limited, health is very limited, and there's only one win condition: survive. There are no moments of safety (set pieces notwithstanding), and the AI Director punishes you with wailing hordes, whether you're moving or not, and unleashes Specials that cause grief whether you're spread apart or huddled together. Unlike other games, L4D brings this entropy to the surface -- there's a palpable feeling of dread throughout, as if the world is relentlessly and mercilessly trying to turn you into a red mist as fast as possible. 

L4D's Versus mode is also interesting in this context. The vulnerable Infected players aren't built to make standalone kills, but that's not their jobs. Infected players should cause chaos, run amok, chip away, and ultimately open the door for the environment to come in and tear the survivors apart. If we go back to our first analogy, you can think of a good Infected player as one who holds a magnifying glass between the sun and ice cube -- in other words, they increase entropy in the game, not just make kills.

I think this is what makes L4D Important-with-a-capital-I. It's not just the AI Director, co-op gameplay, or Mike Patton's zombie squeals -- it's how it all comes together to produce a sense of universal threat. It's the unwavering, unintelligent menace of the laws of physics that I'm feeling when I play, and there aren't many games that can do that.