Making a hit franchise like Left 4 Dead opens plenty of doors. After developer Turtle Rock managed to flip cooperative multiplayer on its head with the four-player FPS epic, the team saw a great deal of attention from both the consumers and other game creators. It was a big moment for such a small team, but it can be difficult to move away from the towering shadow of such a success and try to start something new, according to studio co-founder Phil Robb.
"Being part of the team that created Left 4 Dead opened up a lot of doors for us," Robb told OXM. "But yeah, there's always that question. ‘How much did Valve do? How much did this person do? How much did you guys contribute?’
"I can tell you that without the original Turtle Rock team, Left 4 Dead never would have happened. It's our creation, we gave birth to it. That is not in any way to diminish Valve's contribution to the game – they had a huge contribution. Those guys are smart, they know their shit. They were really good sort-of mentors for us. When you're in with those guys, they… we were always able to take our ideas and throw them at them and see what they thought."
With Left 4 Dead being such a money-maker, why move on to something like Evolve? For Robb, there was a simple desire to do something new.
“Yeah, we worked on Left 4 Dead, but we're ready to do something new,” he continued. “And this is the point where Turtle Rock proves that we are our own independent entity and that we can do our own awesome game experience by ourselves.”
