Gameranx recently released its Top 10 list for best co-op games, to mostly jeers in the comments.

As it happens, I’ve played many of these titles and I tend to agree with the comments and not so much with the list…

When Left 4 Dead 2 was announced at E3 2009, many gamers were flabbergasted. This was a sequel that was scheduled to be released a year after the original Left 4 Dead. Valve hadn’t delivered on the downloadable content it promised for L4D, and it appeared as though the company was merely cashing in on the franchise. The outrage over the sudden release of L4D2 has since subsided, but Valve has learned an important lesson from all this.

Valve will soon release The Sacrifice, a new expansion compatible with both Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2. It fills in the storyline gaps between the games that lead to The Passing, the expansion in which the two game casts meet each other. It will also allow players to choose which of the original game’s survivors doesn’t get to be called a “survivor” anymore.

Valve is a glowing example of the success a game can achieve through developer/community interaction. In the past, Valve produced mutated game types every week for Left 4 Dead 2 to give players something new to experience. The community also had the ability to create their own unique maps and campaigns if they possessed the expertise. Valve is taking some of those community created campaigns and presenting them to the rest of the community in a big way.

If you were looking for individuals with fast reaction times, tons of coordination experience the ability to think quickly in random situations look no further than the Xbox Live community. Playing games online with other humans is one of the best places to use your wits to outsmart and outmaneuver the opposition. Xbox Live is teeming with individuals with potential to become real life agents and this is why a government intelligence organization named GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters) will use Live to recruit.

GCHQ is a British intelligence agency located in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire (England), that partners with MI5 and MI6 agencies to protect the UK’s security interests.

GCHQ will run ads for six weeks on Xbox Live’s dashboard as well as within games including Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Assassin’s Creed 2 and Left 4 Dead 2.

All is happy and good in the land of Left 4 Dead 2 fans.

Well, OK, not exactly but the co-founders of a group boycotting the upcoming game are now satisfied with Valve’s efforts to support the original L4D.

Today (October 14, 2009) the boycott leaders announced the closing of the group and, at least in their eyes, an end to the boycott. Valve flew group co-founder known as Agent of Chaos to its studio for a free tour and to assure him that the first game in the successful zombie shooter series would keep getting support.