Hero image: Deadlock: City Never Sleeps. Image: Valve
I will say it plainly: I think Deadlock’s hero vote is the best idea in early access right now, and I wish more unfinished games had the nerve to try it. Valve’s latest update brings six new heroes, and instead of dropping them all at once, it is letting you pick the order. Two a week, you vote in the pregame lobby, and the winning team’s votes count double. I mean, how often does a studio this big hand you the steering wheel?
What won me over was not the vote itself, though. It was the note Valve wrote alongside the update. It says, in so many words, that the game is unfinished, and that it is unfinished on purpose. “We think building a multiplayer game is very hard and risky,” the team wrote, “and the best way to minimize that risk to make sure that we are able to have it in players’ hands from an early state to help us shape it and tell us what is fun and what isn’t.” I read that and thought, finally, someone said the quiet part out loud.
You know the other version of this. A studio builds behind closed doors for years, shows you a trailer, sells you a launch, and only then finds out the thing you actually wanted to play was the mode it cut. By the time your feedback lands, the game is set in concrete. Is it not better to argue about a hero’s kit while it can still change?
I also like that Valve is honest about what it has not done. The note admits things like hero remodels were in its head as something to get to later, and it names the Midboss, the Guardians and the Walkers as things it considers important but just hasn’t got to yet. That is not a polished pitch. It reads like a to-do list, and I trust a to-do list more than I trust a sizzle reel.
Now, I am not pretending a vote is a design document. A lobby full of people picking the hero with the coolest poster isn’t the same as a studio deciding what the game needs. But that is not really the point. The point is that you get a reason to show up on a Tuesday, you get to feel like the game is moving because you’re in it, and Valve gets a very loud signal about which heroes you’re excited for before any of them ship. Doubling your votes on your first win of the day is a cheeky little nudge, and I think it’s a fair one. Who does not want their pick to count twice?
So here is my ask, to every studio running an unfinished game. Tell us it is unfinished. Tell us what you have not got to. And let us have a say in something, even something small, like which hero walks through the door next. You would be surprised how far a little trust goes with people like me.
Source: Valve on Steam – City Never Sleeps, Deadlock – City Never Sleeps, Valve on Steam – Listen up, Crumbums! Your King is here