Portal ARG Still Ongoing

Greg Tito

PR for Dungeons & Dragons
Sep 29, 2005
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Portal ARG Still Ongoing



A Valve executive said that the Portal ARG was created by the game's designers as a way to extend the story and there are some nuggets that still haven't been discovered.

Speaking at a star-studded panel on connectivity in games at this year's GDC, Jason Holtman, director of business development and legal affairs at Valve, revealed that there was no marketing team behind the Portal 2 ARG. It was made by the design team on the game and was an effective way to extend the game world.

"I had nothing to do with it, which I think was really important," Holtman said. "The genesis for the idea came from the people who were working on the game. They were thinking about the people who consumed Portal. They thought about it as part of the game. They thought about it as this experience where you're going out and talking about the game's world." There was not a marketing team working on it and separate team on the game. The designers really thought of it as an extension of the Portal universe.

Holtman said that was ultimately why it was so successful. "We had 2 million forum views on that thread over the course of 8 hours trying to solve that puzzle," he said.

He also mentioned an interesting nugget about the change to the end of Portal that went live last week. "We actually didn't decide to make that change to the original Portal until a few days before it went live," he said. Holtman pointed out that was a benefit to the open PC platform. Valve wouldn't have been able to push that change out so quickly to an Xbox or PS3 game.

Unfortunately, Holtman was not able to tell any hints or secrets when I asked him during the Q&A session. But he did think that there is more out there to discover.

"Some of it's been resolved. You never know," he said.

Also, as the moderator N'Gai Croal from Hit Detection said, "the ending was a lie."

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Jared

The British Paladin
Jul 14, 2009
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So, possibl even more information we are yet to discover? Im intrigued. I wonder if it will give any solid lines between the 2 or just be vague intetrpretation
 

GiantRedButton

New member
Mar 30, 2009
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Wait that means they actually could have pulled people from the Arg-team to do Episode 3 ;)
Valve shouldn't have allowed this information to slip :D
The Arg was kind of interesting to follow but there always was someone faster than me, so I couldn't enjoy it al that much.
For example: I get the news that some morsecode is public. (everyone can translate that)

I click the link to the news article and get both the morsecode and the translation.
It was more of a thing to watch than a Avg that you played.
 

Idlemessiah

Zombie Steve Irwin
Feb 22, 2009
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This is all very exciting. Can't wait for more details on this.
Although I hope it's not more cryptic puzzles. Thinking about those radio signal images made my brain hurt =/
 
Jul 22, 2009
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This may seem like a silly question and pointless as it would have to remove most of the content purely because it couldn't be accessed...

Are they going to update the 360 version to have the alternate ending and in game secrets that don't require use of a pc and code breakers?
 

Soviet Heavy

New member
Jan 22, 2010
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"The Ending Was a Lie"

So, the ARG is still ongoing? Cool, perhaps there will be some information divulged about Episode 3!
 

samsonguy920

New member
Mar 24, 2009
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The cake is a lie, the ending is a lie, the sheep is a lie! AARGH!

Heck with it, I want more cryptic stuff with my Portal goodness.
 

Credge

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Apr 12, 2008
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Sounds like the recent publisher push EA put on Valve for the L4D series as well as the inability to properly support those games (as well as The Orange Box) has soured Valves opinion about consoles.
 

Megacherv

Kinect Development Sucks...
Sep 24, 2008
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Soviet Heavy said:
"The Ending Was a Lie"

So, the ARG is still ongoing? Cool, perhaps there will be some information divulged about Episode 3!
I'm pissed off at myself...GLaDOS sings that she's still alive, and a magazine cover showed her in the new Amazonian Aperture Science...how could you not figure that out Megacherv *goes to punish himself*