The guys over at Rock Paper shotgun spoke to Valve’s VP of marketing Doug Lombardi about Left 4 Dead 2. Here’s a snippet of what he had to say:

Doug Lombardi: …we didn’t sit down and say, “We need to ship a sequel next for next Christmas, what features do we need?” That wasn’t the way it happened, that’s not the way Valve works. What did happen was, the team sat down and said, “We’ve got a bunch of ideas of stuff we want to do.” People were really fired up when the game was finished, and there was a lot of feedback and ideas that came from watching people play – on the scale of millions of people, as opposed to hundreds of people that we went through during the playtesting sessions. So we put a lot of those things on the board and said, “What can we do quickly? What’s going to take more time? What’s the best way to get stuff out to customers?” And part of that plan ended up with L4D2, with things like changing the way the finales worked, introducing some new Survivors, giving new dialogue, telling more about the story, introducing new Specials. We said, “Wow, that makes for a nice sequel.”

Doug seems to do a good job of explaining things but what gets me is this:

Doug Lombardi: L4D2 is a response to what players were asking for after the first one shipped. That’s really how it came about. I think if folks spot us a bit more time, they may see where we’re going with all this. The more they learn about how much there is in L4D2… I mean, twenty new weapons isn’t DLC! Three new Specials, and twenty weapons, and five new campaigns: that starts to feel like a sequel.

I completely agree with you Doug but what do we have as DLC?

The Survivor pack added a new game mode Survival. Survival is playable on the new lighthouse level and a bunch of cornered off parts of the original campaign maps. All campaigns are now playable in versus mode, something that should have been possible from the games launch. Lastly we got a plethora of bug fixes and a few slight changes in the games mechanics. Not one new weapon, not one new campaign, dialouge and story could have easily been added as part of an additional campaign. All the Survival pack does is make the game a finished product it doesn’t add anything I’d really expect from Valve.

Doug was questioned about the addition of content for Left for Dead:

Doug Lombardi: …we’re not announcing any of the specifics of that today. Like I say, stay tuned, there’s more coming.

Stay tuned? That sounds awfully familar to when you were questioned about Episode 3 in a seperate interview here.

Doug Lombardi: [laughs] Don’t have a new date. Since we missed the last time, I’m not gonna put out another one. I’ve said this before, but Freeman’s not done with his adventure. Stay tuned for more.

We’ve been staying tuned for two years now Doug.

You can read the whole thing here.