PC Gamer: Why is it free?

Jonathan Sutton: This is an experiment for Valve to see what would happen if we released a free game, with all of the tools and the SDK, and we could see what results came out of it, how quickly people start using the tools and building things with it. Historically Valve have had great success with mods, from Counterstrike to TF, so this was really something they wanted to encourage, so that’s why we did it for free.

PC Gamer: Is there any kind of plan to do any paid for content or extra campaigns or anything.

Jonathan Sutton: We haven’t announced anything yet.

PC Gamer: Is the whole point of the experiment that it’s free and free forever and that’s it?

Jonathan Sutton: Everything we’ve released so far will definitely be free forever.

PC Gamer: The campaign that’s in there at the moment is pretty huge. It takes an hour at least to play through, in my experience, and so it’s quite rare to find a game at the start of the campaign and get through it all the way with one team. Is there a reason you wanted the campaign to be that length?

Jonathan Sutton: Through the matchmaking, you can say, “I want to start on this mission, find me a game on this mission.” No, I mean, it wasn’t really intentional that your single player experience should be the entire game, so that’s why we let you go halfway through. Because in the Unreal version you couldn’t actually do that, you had to start from the beginning every time you started a game, so here we pretty deliberately said that for this to work with random people, you have to be able to start at any point. So, play with friends.

PC Gamer: There’s quite a lot of story stuff going on, did you intend for people to go through in single player and read that or did you think they would in co-op?

Jonathan Sutton: Well in co-op, when you’re in any multiplayer game, the tolerance for that is really low, most people just want to run through and shoot. So we knew that was going to happen. But there is a small group of people who will read through everything, and they will harvest all these little story pieces and get immersed in the world that way. And we thought, even if you don’t do that, it’s still good to have these things in the game just as a background, you might not read them but just knowing they’re there will help enrich the world and make it seem more real.

PC Gamer: I think that’s been my experience. I always stop and find out what they are, but I won’t read them because I’m with other people.

Jonathan Sutton: We did talk at one point about making them collectible so that you could look at them later, we just didn’t have time to do that.

PC Gamer: It seems that, as you level up, the unlocks become really universal. When you first start out the class you choose seems really important because you’re going to choose their primary weapon and the way you’re going to play, but the further up the ranks you get, the less it seems to matter. Was that an intentional decision to make class less relevant as you became higher level?

Jonathan Sutton: No, that’s mainly a result of: we wanted leveling up to still have a reward associated with it, and if we give you an item you can’t use, then people are going to have a negative response with that. But we do still have some class specific weapons, even high up, for example the the minigun that only special weapons can use. I think it was more just, fictionally, there wasn’t any reason to constrain the items, we wanted everyone to be able to use every one.

PC Gamer: What’s been the general reaction to the fact that it’s free?

Jonathan Sutton: It’s been really good. A hugely positive response! Its been great to read all of these reviews and comments and forum posts from all these people who have tried the game.

PC Gamer: Is there a degree of people saying, “Eh, it’s good for a free game”?

Jonathan Sutton: No, but we do see that people are more forgiving of any bugs or problems there may be in the game. If someone criticises something there’s always a dozen people who say “it’s free”.

head over to http://www.pcgamer.com/2010/09/12/interview-valve-on-why-alien-swarm-is-free/ to read the full interview...

I downloaded the game when it became available but I haven't played it yet :(.
What do you think of it?

it's a lot of fun with friends, not so sure about randoms it can be fun but sometimes you will find some "not so nice" people.

its a blast if you play with friends, though its boring with strangers and especially with not so team players.