Footage from showdownLAN has surfaced on showing off a public playtest of Left 4 Dead, an ambitious zombie-centric -esque team game from Turtle Rock Studios (Counter-Strike) and Valve. Four survivors take on waves of the Infected (think 28 Days Later) and four Super Infected as they make their way to a helicopter landing point.

Shown in the clip is footage from four player-controlled survivors. Though the Super Infected can also be player-controlled, we don't have any video of that in action. There is, however, a moment where you can spot The Smoker strangling a survivor with its tongue. The video is grainy and shaky at times, but it's the best we've got on this so-far reclusive game.

Left 4 Dead 411 has impressions from people who attended showdownLAN, as well as a gallery of the event. The game is due out this summer for PC and this winter for Xbox 360. Video embedded after the break.

Sandbox gameplay. Destructible environments. Those are a few of the latest video game buzzwords used to sell ideas, and Grant Collier, studio head of Infinity Ward (Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare), is not happy with it.

In an interview with IGN, Collier sees a problematic trend with using sandbox gameplay and "total destructibility" without first considering if it will make the game fun. "And total destructibility, you can really ruin the gameplay," he said.

Collier cites Counter-Strike's über-popular Dust map, where the two choke points serve as the focal point of entertainment, and how that could be compromised with destructible environments.

"It's not fun because you can blow up everything," he said, "it's fun because you know where the action's going to be and there's races against time to get to that action."

"So I think right now it's a fad, and the fad will pass, we're not going to be bite on in it - we want the game to be fun first, and destructibility comes second," he said. The over-indulgence may be a fad, but the interaction that destructible environments and sandbox gameplay adds is something that isn't (and shouldn't) go away, and we think Collier would agree that said features, if properly implemented, can potentially augment gameplay.

Last week a student in Texas was classified as a "terroristic threat" after recreating his school in the game Counter-Strike. This morning Kenn Hoekstra of Pi Studios had an op-ed piece published in ForBendNow. He defends the right of the student to create the school with the same basic reasoning used to jump start every creative individual: You write/draw/design what you know.

Hoekstra writes, "I speak from experience when I say that just about every aspiring level designer starts out by building what he or she knows. In this case, this poor kid built his school because he was familiar with it. Over the years, I've personally constructed the house where I grew up, my old grade school and high school, my old work office building and my apartment complex in various level editors. Why? Because it was fun! Plain and simple."

Hoekstra better start running now because the Men in Black are probably going to be knocking on his door any second. Watch out aspiring game designers, keep your passion in the closet, because one day you too may be considered a "terroristic threat."

[Via GamePolitics]

Each week Dennis McCauley contributes The Political Game, a column on the collision of politics and video games:
You can draw a picture of your school.

You can sketch it in charcoal or paint it in bright pastels or subdued watercolors. You can take an artsy black-and-white photograph of your school or a high-pixel color shot with the sunset in the background. Frame it, crop it for a web page or iron it onto the front of a t-shirt. But whatever you do, however you choose to express yourself, do not recreate your school building within a video game.

That's the lesson coming out of Texas, and it's a hard one for 17-year-old Paul Hwang, a senior at Clements High in Fort Bend. By all accounts a decent kid, Hwang was adept enough with Counter-Strike's built-in level design tools to map his school. His handiwork is quite detailed and rather impressive. Joystiq, in fact, posted some screenshots of his level design yesterday.

Images of the maps made by the Clements High School student have found their way to the internet. If there are small children in the room, cover their delicate eyes. Might want to close the blinds, sweep the room for bugs, and unplug your webcam, too ... just to be safe.

The blood! The horror! The ... wait. Actually, they don't look half bad. Makes their school look rather appealing, wouldn't you agree? The "Let Freedom Ring for All People" banner is a nice touch, as well. Call us crazy, but we don't see what's so "terroristic" about these creations.

[Via Digg]

A Chinese student was removed from Clements High School in Fort Bend, Texas after parents complained he had re-created the school grounds in a game and uploaded the map for his friends to play. The boy was placed in the district's alternate education school and later arrested, as the police considered him a "terroristic threat". The Chinese community and the boy's mother have rallied behind him, saying the school has acted too harshly in the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings. No charges were filed, though the boy won't be allowed to participate in graduation ceremonies.

We don't have to point out how ridiculous this is to our Joystiq readers. How many people have created familiar surroundings using in-game editors? We once made a partial re-creation of our college in Dr. Lunatic Supreme With Cheese. Good thing nobody found out, otherwise we'd be blogging from a soft and squishy padded room right now.

Hosting its inaugural player draft far from the storied sanctum of The Garden, with a paltry $5 million league-wide payroll, (an amount routinely squandered on a single signing bonus for a young athlete in another professional league,) the Championship Gaming Series continues to take baby steps toward becoming a marquee "sports entertainment" business. Still, come June 12, 60 prospects will split the riches, as they're contracted to join one of six city-based squads that will compete in a small variety of games leading up to the CGS Grand Slam and World Championships this October. Not a bad gig, eh?

But what of this Playboy Mansion draft locale? If CGS is to be taken seriously, it's gotta avoid these WWEsque publicity stunts ... right? Maybe not. A lil' scantly-clad drama might be just the lure needed to hook viewers who might not otherwise tune into a glorified LAN party.

When a Washington Post story mentioned that Virginia Tech shooter Cho Seung Hui played Counter-Strike in high school, we were intrigued. When the nugget disappeared from an online version of the Post story, we were even more intrigued

To clarify the situation, we caught up with Washington Post Staff Writer David Cho, who was responsible for originally reporting the factoid. Cho said the information was based on talks with some high school acquaintances of Hui's who occasionally saw him playing at an cyber cafe during his high school days.

Cho said there was no solid indication either way whether or not Hui continued to play during three-and-a-half years at college. Hui's college roommates reportedly saw Hui on the computer constantly, but said he was usually writing, not playing games. Cho said a group of Virginia Tech Counter-Strike players he talked to had never heard of Hui, and that Hui hadn't attended a recent Counter-Strike tournament held on campus.

As for the removal, Cho said it was standard practice to replace a rougher online version of a story with the polished print version when it was available. The Counter-Strike connection was removed, Cho said, to make room for more recent, more relevant information. Still, the fact is on file at the Post, Cho said, and it's possible it could make it into a future story.

Weighing in at 160 MB, this map is one you're going to have to require everyone to download in advance if you plan on playing online. The creator, Soenke C. "Warby" Seidel, has an impressive collection of artwork and maps, including some 3D Shadow of the Colossus-inspired scenes, if you would like to peruse the artist's portfolio.

Color us impressed. Very impressed.

[Via bit-tech]

Christian Sellergren, a professional gamer who led Team Eyeballers to the 2004 CPL Counter-Strike championship, apparently took his own life last November over massive debts accrued from online gambling. The news trickled down to us through a rough translation of a recent story about the death in Swedish paper Aftonbladet.

According to the report, the 21-year-old Sellergren, who went by "divino" online, turned his competitive instincts to online gambling after retiring from the eSports scene. Sellergren lost his job and accrued over $13,000 in debt to fuel his addiction, which he kept from parents and friends.

While stories about pro gamers with six figure salaries and major sponsorship deals may make you think the scene is all about glitz and glamor, this story shows that is not always the case. Our sympathies go out to all of Sellergren's friends and family. If you think someone you know may have a gambling problem, please don't wait until it's too late. Get help.

[Thanks Will]

In an effort to ensure a more diverse usage of armaments, Valve is implementing a Dynamic Weapon Pricing system into Counter-Strike: Source. Essentially, all guns are divided into two categories: pistols and everything else. Within each category, data is collected from the servers as to how much money is spent on each gun. Every Monday, the price of guns will be adjusted to correlate with its popularity from the previous week -- the higher its demand, the higher its price.

With this system, Counter-Strike users will be able to balance the game through their habits. Players will continue to have a starting bank of $800, but each week will be forced to tweak their strategy in order to accommodate for market trends. The MAC-10, for example, is on a downward trend and the price is falling. As soon as the gun becomes viable for its respective price range, the demand will increase. Eventually, we foresee, an equilibrium will be reached where the change in price from week to week will be marginal.

The projected value of each gun and piece of equipment can be tracked on the DWP market page, where Valve has also provided a more in-depth explanation of their price-adjusting algorithm.

[Via Pro-G]

Reuters covers the release of Counter Strike, a game that charges players with the goal of sinking a U.S. oil tanker in a critical channel, blocking the path that two-fifths of all the world's oil travels. Iran's government sponsored the game for distribution within that country.

The topical nature of the game isn't new; Kuma Reality Games mirrored real-life U.S. strikes against Iraq. The anti-American sentiment isn't even new, as seen in Night of Bush Capturing.

This trend of all sides using games as propaganda interests us. Are games more persuasive than radio broadcasts and dropping leaflets? When will bombers start dropping games over enemy states?

Want to make big bucks as a professional gamer? Living overseas is probably your best bet for now. But Wired News reports that television deals and increased interest from U.S. sponsors mean salaries for America's top gamers could hit the stratosphere before long. This is in stark contrast to a similar Wired article from three years ago which detailed how even the best of the best pro gamers were barely getting by.

Today, more than a dozen U.S. gamers make upwards of $70K per year, according to the article, and a few have taken home six-figure purses in big tournaments. That's nothing compared to the costs for sponsors such as NVidia, though, who shell out money "likely in the eight-figure range" to sponsor the likes of Team3[D].

Nice work if you can get it, but remember that the top pros often practice for upwards of 40 hours a week to keep their skills honed. So unless you're planning on quiting your day job, you aren't likely to be the next Jonathan Wendel anytime soon.

Yeah, we may be on a bit of a "cheaters" rampage as of late, but we just can't allow this plague of the gaming industry to sit idly by. This video up on YouTube shows what life is like for a low down dirty scoundrel of CounterStrike.

In the movie, titled "Chapter 1: What do cheaters see when they cheat," you'll enjoy the disgusting pleasures of Aimbot and Speed Hack and then that thing that makes the colors all funky. Best part of the video, though, is the music. Loves it!

[Via Flicker Gaming]

[Update 1] We went ahead and put Chapter 2 up. In this latest installment, we get to see how to detect cheaters. Thanks for providing the link and footage Miller!]

What is it about Michael Jackson and machinima? After stumbling across this clever video set in Counter-Strike, I ran a couple of searches. This rabbit-hole goes deep.

There's plenty of MJ to be found in World of Warcraft videos (Beat It, Billy Jean) which is unsurprising considering that the entire male population of night elves appears to have summered at Neverland ranch in their youth (this would explain many of their pathological in-game tendencies, but that's a whole 'nother rabbit hole). Many of the night-elf dance moves are lifted from the King of Pop's library of signature jigs, including the pelvic thrust and twirly-hand-leg-kick thing.

Even denizens of Second Life appear to be thrilled by the opportunity to relive the days when Jacko only pretended to be ghoulish. Through machinima, fans of celebs who have dashed their careers against the treacherous reefs of fame can now travel back to the future. Fans can return to a time when their idols still had something worth worshipping.

It's a form of therapy.