Apparently I was a bit late coming to Dtoid's GOTY party because I only found out just now, reading a c-blog, that Left 4 Dead won Dtoid's GOTY Award.

To which I say: hell fucking yeah! A friend lent the game to me a few days before Xmas (I do not own my own copy...yet) and I have to say it does deserve Dtoid's top honors, in spades. I probably can't really say anything about it that hasn't been said already, but...damn. The game actually makes multiplayer FUN. Which says a lot, considering how I'm not a diehard multiplayer person. (I do play multiplayer occasionally, but I played more L4D multiplayer in these last few days than I have played some titles all year.)

Well, I guess I could say one thing about L4D that hasn't been said yet. And that statement is: what makes L4D fun is the people. It's not just the gameplay - the people who regularly populate L4D really make the game fun for me. With the exception of a few assholes I've encountered (which are inevitable in any multiplayer game, really - it's the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory) almost all the players I've encountered in L4D have been nice, lively, reasonably intelligent, accomodating to newbies like myself, and generally great people to play a game with.

Maybe it's just the Christmas Spirit(TM) infecting these players like the zombie virus, but it's something that's been on my mind. Why are the players of L4D so much nicer and more decent human beings than players of other multiplayer games? What is it about L4D that makes players nicer to each other, or at least attract the sort of player who doesn't feel compelled to fill the airwaves with racist, homophobic banter? (And I'm playing the Xbox 360 version, folks.) I'm not sure what's going on here. Is it the game itself? Is it the market it's attracting?

What do you folks think is going on here? Am I just lucky? Post what you think is happening in the comments. In the meantime, have a happy holiday and stay uninfected!