Left 4 Dead, by the Numbers

April 30, 2009 - Charlie Burgin

Valve has always seen the value in gathering real-world gameplay data and using it to improve our products. Now we're hoping you'll find it as useful as we do. With the creation of the L4D stats page, our customers will now be able to see a wide variety of gameplay data across all of Left 4 Dead's various game modes.

Use the stats page to track your performance; see which aspects of your gameplay are improving over time, which are your go-to weapons, and how often you use various characters and features.

You can also use your stats page to compare your statistics against other players, giving you a quick and easy way to see how your accomplishments measure up to your friends and find players at your own skill level. You can also track negative statistics (like damage dealt to other teammates, for example), giving you a good idea of which players to avoid.

The stats page is broken up into four different pages: Overview, Weapons, Versus and Survival.

Overview
The Overview page contains an at-a-glance breakdown of your overall gameplay stats: your most recent game data; favorite characters; favorite level one and level two weapon; and how often you use and share pain pills and first aid kits. You can also see your total games played, finales survived, and the total number of zombies you have killed so far.



Weapons
The Weapon page displays your usage of the various weapons available in Left 4 Dead. For each weapon you use in-game, you can see the number of shots fired; your total kills with that weapon; your head shot total; accuracy; and percentage of kills.



Versus
The Versus page shows how often you play as each of the playable zombies in Left 4 Dead, and how well you perform with each. For every zombie type you can track your average life span; the most damage dealt in a single life; and the number of special attacks you did successfully. Additionally, you'll be able to tally the number of Versus games played you've played to date; the number of games completed; and the highest Survivor Team Score you've obtained.



Survival
The Survival page tracks your best time; the number of times you've played, and your medal level, if any, for each of the Survival maps. You can also track your overall Survivor progress, with a running tally of your total medal count for each medal type, as well as your absolute best time for any map.



We just made the L4D stats pages live, so check it out for yourself. The stats have been collected since 12/12/08 with weapons stats tracking beginning 2/11/09.

Don't forget, the Free 24 hours of Left 4 Dead starts tonight at Midnight GMT (8pm ET) and yes, free players will have their stats> collected.

To help infect your friends, the PC version of Left 4 Dead is 40% off this entire weekend on Steam, making it only $24 in North America.