Will Left 4 Dead 3 Happen?

Will we ever see a third entry in the popular series from Valve, Left 4 Dead. The answer is probably not but heading into 2021, one of the higher profile games expected to release this year is Back 4 Blood from Turtle Rock Studios. If you don't know anything about the game, it’s the spiritual successor to Left 4 Dead, the fantastic co-op survival shooter published by Valve and created by Turtle Rock just before they were acquired way back in 2008.

Founded in 2002 with just six people, the team at Turtle Rock gained mainstream attention with their zombie shooter Left 4 Dead and as of today has blossomed to 126 employees based on their LinkedIn page. Despite a somewhat inconsistent portfolio since their inception in 2002, if there is one game that Turtle Rock could hang their hat on, it would be the co-op zombie shooting of Left 4 Dead. Although, with over a decade since the last mainline entry in the series, the big question is do enough people still want that.

Zombie Phenomenon

It’s no secret that the fever pitch for zombies was near an all time high at the turn of the last decade. In the movie world, the phenomenon started to gain traction around 2002 with 28 Days Later by Danny Boyle which would make over 82 million on a small budget of around 8 million. This would open the door in the following years to come for movies like Dawn of the Dead and Shaun of the Dead to become critical successes and as the final domino would fall we would see the mainstream fully embrace zombies with massive box office results for titles like Zombieland in 2009 with over 100 million and World War Z in 2013 with over 540 million in sales.

In the TV landscape, one of the biggest shows from the past decade was The Walking Dead that began in 2010, that has produced ten seasons, two spinoffs and at the height of its popularity drew in more than 10 million viewers per episode. This obviously began as the comic series in 2003

Finally in gaming, things take a little longer to develop, so a fast follow on the success of zombies in film and tv isn’t quite as quick. Left 4 Dead, being released in 2008, happened right at the perfect time when people were hungry for more zombie content. Treyarch also released a secret zombie mode in Call of Duty: World at War in late 2008, which is still a integral part of Call of Duty to this day.

Even in the following years, many other companies would have zombies in their games including RockStar in their expansion to Red Dead Redemption with Undead Nightmare in 2010. Fans and myself are still holding our collective breaths for Rockstar to deliver an Undead Nightmare sequel set in the Red Dead Redemption 2 world, although the studio seems focused on RDO and GTAO. Other notable zombie centric games included the anticapted Ubisoft WiiU launch title ZombieU, State of Decay in 2013, and even The Last of Us in 2013 from Naughty Dog.

Over Saturation

However, people seemed to be exhausted from over saturation that happened with the zombie phenomenon. Walking Dead is a shell of what the series used to be, drawing in a crowd about a quarter of the size of its all time highs. This fatigue and exhaustion of zombies transfers to gaming as well. If a new game is focused around zombies, it will be criticized for using a tired idea, leaving it with even greater expectations to overcome bringing Days Gone to mind. Even before its release the narrative was tired ideas.

This is where my concern for Back 4 Blood stems from. Left 4 Dead was a critical and commercial success. The issue is that the success of the series is over a decade old and gaming has evolved. Using Google Search Trends we can see that the popularity of Left 4 Dead was at its highest point in 2009, one year after the release of the first game and the same year as the sequel was released. Since then it has been on a constant downward slope, with the highest being around ten percent of that level at the end of 2020. Is ten percent enough for the game to succeed?

This makes sense as Back 4 Blood was revealed at The Game Awards in early December 2020 and quickly followed up with a closed alpha in second half of the month. The concern is that even with an announcement at The Game Awards, which according to their Instagram, drew in a record 83 million livestreams worldwide, Left 4 Dead was still only trending at around ten percent of its peak popularity. Even when using trends to see the popularity of “Zombie” we can see a downward slide as well from its most popular time at the beginning of 2012. The term is now trending less than half, at 44 percent, at the start of 2021. Not being completely oblivious, Turtle Rock is aware of the fatigue “at some point, you’re kind of tired of it and so we’ve really wanted to fight against that” said Chris Ashton, Turtle Rock co-founder.

Turtle Rock History

If the primary concern is that people are just tired of Zombies in 2021, then a very close second concern is the history of Turtle Rock. The studio is most known for Counter Strike Source in 2004, Left 4 Dead in 2008 and Evolve in 2015. This means that since the studio was formed in 2002, Turtle Rock has only three titles that would classified as mainstream successful. To put it lightly and use the words of Jay-Z from his song Takeover that was directed at Nas, that kind of success rate is not great.

Left 4 Dead was a great game that had fantastic co-op and an addicting gameplay loop. Left 4 Dead wasn’t perfect though, as it drew criticisms for its lack of narrative, something that would also be raised when discussing Evolve. Counter Strike Source was almost a guaranteed success as fans of that series usually port from one version to the next. Their crown jewel, Left 4 Dead, was a great original IP, and after their departure from Valve, partnered with Take Two for the development of Evolve.

Evolve could be considered a success on the commercial level as it did manage to sell quite well initially according to GameSpot, as Evolve sold around 2.5 million copies across all platforms within just a few months. Even Take Two CEO Strauss Zelnick claimed that Evolve was now considered as one of their “key long term franchises” alongside GTA, Red Dead, BioShock, Civilization and Borderlands. However, those comments were made in 2015, well before the fall from grace that happened very quickly with Evolve. I strongly doubt that Mr. Zelnick still feels the same way about Evolve today.

Evolve was a fun game for a short while as it lacked depth. The worlds were interesting, the monsters were original, the weapons and mechanics were spot on, as expected from Turtle Rock, especially when enjoyed with a group of close friends. However, the game lacked the same fun factor when played with strangers who weren't communicating. It also struggled in areas that could have kept it going longterm including progression and narrative.

Evolve sold well enough, but the dwindling player base, and failed free to play pivot were the final nails in the coffin. In 2016, just one year after the release of Evolve, Turtle Rock ended support and shut down the dedicated servers in 2018. If Back 4 Blood doesn’t have progression figured out properly or if there isn’t enough narrative, then fears would clearly rise about a repeat of Evolve, despite the words from Turtle Rock and their desire to support Back 4 Blood in the long term.

Co-op Niche

A double edge sword is the lack of excellent co-op shooters that are available and even more so ones that feature local split screen. This could be a great opportunity for Turtle Rock to fill a niche again. The other view is that lack of games available on the market that are either built around co-op or even feature it could speak of the lack of interest from gamers.

Halo, for example, made waves when it removed the split screen local co-op from Halo 5: Guardians based on how it would’ve sacrificed the vision 343 had for the title. This drew enough noise from the crowd that it will be reinstated into Halo Infinite, when that hopefully gets released at the end of 2021. This could be viewed as a beacon of hope for the interest that still burns for local co-op in the gaming landscape. There is still a large gap in the market for great co-op shooter experiences as most are just additional modes in games.

Why not Valve?

There is also the slight wondering of why didn't Valve make Left 4 Dead 3? Sure, there is the theory that Valve doesn’t like threes or that they are not really in the games business anymore, but they have definitely released some high profile games since 2009, when Left 4 Dead 2 came out including Portal 2 in 2011, CSGO in 2012, Dota 2 in 2013, Artifact in 2018, and Half Life Alyx in 2020.

Bigger companies like Valve aren’t always right but they don’t take unnecessary risks without doing research or having a great reason to create. Maybe Valve understood that the market for Zombies was drying up or maybe they felt that co-op shooters don’t show much return on investment. Whatever the reason may be, it is curious that Valve stopped the franchise after what seemed to be two successful releases.

Can Back 4 Blood Succeed in 2021?

After the December Alpha for Back 4 Blood, most outlets came away with positive impressions for a number of reasons. However, the most surprising reason of all could be what sets Back 4 Blood apart from Left 4 Dead and possibly gives it longevity and that is deck building. Thats right, Back 4 Blood basically has a deck building aspect integrated into the game that makes you create a deck before you begin. These cards are broken down into different categories and you select a few cards before the first level. This would include health buffs, accuracy buffs, speed buffs etc and as you progress farther into the level and reach a safe room just like in Left 4 Dead, you are able to add an additional card to your hand.

On the very flip side of that coin, the game is also drawing random cards to make your chances of survival even harder. This could just be the fresh innovative idea that this game needs for success. This would drastically increase the replay factor of the game with the same combination of cards likely never being repeated the exact same way causing a new dynamic every time.

It could also be what sinks the game if not handled properly. Micro-transactions were pretty aggressive in Evolve, the last AAA game that Turtle Rock Studios released but that could have been more from the pressure of the publisher 2K games and their parent company Take Two. If not implemented properly, the deck building aspect could be a very slippery slope if the cards are tied to pay to win.

Despite the pessimism, I am very excited for the release of Back 4 Blood in June of 2021. I am looking forward to playing it solo, I am looking forward to playing it split screen with my significant other and I am excited for cross play so I can play it with my PC friends as well as we are always looking for new experiences that we can jump in quickly during our busy lives, though this feature has yet to be formally announced.

Turtle Rock Studios does have a uphill climb ahead of them with the release of Back 4 Blood between monetizing the game properly, showing people a reason to care about zombies in 2021 and providing the right amount of post game support. With cautious optimism, the hope is that Turtle Rock can navigate the horde of challenges and deliver a smash hit like they did over thirteen years ago with Left 4 Dead.