Summary: What do you do if you don’t work for valve but you really want to make an update for your favourite First Person Shooter? Some write emails, many grumble over the unfairness of it all but a select few plough on ahead and make their own fake update anyway. So it was with Robotic Boogaloo. Hats were made to a metallic theme, given quirky names and fun little descriptions. An SFM video was made, a site, a comic then just before due date for release *pop* it ceased to be and all around wondered what happened. By now you know the truth Valve has made it real. We talk with the community team behind the idea and discover how the fake became TF2′s very first entirely fan made update. To accompany this audio interview we’ve asked a few questions of Valve’s Andrew Wilson. 1) Valve have used content produced by community groups before such as the polycount pack but this is first time you’ve taken an unsolicited community project in its entirety. What made you choose the Robotic Boogaloo to release over things such as Night of the Living Update? Robotic Boogaloo had a really nice comprehensive package. LOOK AT IT. I’ll wait, here. Even before it became what it is now, the fledgling content showed much polish paired with some really well thought out decisions. Concepts like Night of the Living Update have done a great job of showing us and the rest of the Team Fortress community what is possible in a theme. I don’t imagine that RB would have come without Night of the Living Update. Some of the design restrictions in Robotic Boogaloo helped this be a palatable first choice for us to promote the RB Team’s work. The stuff that the community is doing keeps getting better. At this point, it’s impossible to ignore, and so we’re not. 2) The community produced more items for RB than actually made it into this update. What was your selection process? What factors meant some items were accepted and others rejected? Since the robo-hats are based on other items, we wanted to make sure that didn’t destroy the value in some of the rare and mysterious items that already existed in the game in a limited form from promotions, events, etc. Other designs were based on game play expectations, implementation, or craftsmanship. Some of the hats had multiple submitted versions and in those cases we judged them against each other and the better-looking item was selected. Several of us got together and reviewed items based on those concepts, and the final list is the result of that. 3) The accompanying comic was created by Heartsman. Should Valve release another bound edition of the games’ comics such as “VALVE PRESENTS: THE SACRIFICE AND OTHER STEAM-POWERED STORIES” will his work feature in this too? On a further note, can President Kisses Von Butternubs now be considered to be canon? Anything canon should come from the team here; we view the comic as a possible alternate universe. This comic may inspire more community made comics and other branches of the TF universe. While we don’t want too many people steering the canon for TF, we love to see where the characters are taken, and having a bound compilation of TF spin-offs would be something I would love to have on my bookshelf. Why no mention of the future engineer? He’s pretty much incredible 4) RB sees the largest number of cosmetic items added in a single update. Will Valve be focusing on huge updates of this nature in the future or was this a one off? Are we going to see more old hats discontinued to make way for these new items? This is a new concept. Our players might love it. We think they will appreciate it, but that’s to be seen. We’d like to see the response. The import tool we used to help the RB come to fruition is designed to make updates like this more possible, and we hope to nurture even more events like this, should it bring widespread joy to TF. Broadly speaking, we would like to release more content faster, and the RB update has helped us consider just what it t[...]
