Competitive Multiplayer Was Cut from Portal 2

[Shawn Zipay]

Valve, in a recent interview with 1UP, revealed that they originally had a competitive multiplayer mode included in Portal 2. However, due to it essentially sucking, the idea was quickly scrapped.

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"Along with co-op, [we had] the idea of sort of a competitive Portal multiplayer," he said. "We went down that path, actually, for a little while and had something up and running -- the best way to describe it is sort of speedball meets Portal. You know, a sports analog. And it quickly became apparent that while it's fun for about two seconds to drop portals under people and things like that, it quickly just devolves into pure chaos. It lost a lot of the stuff that was really entertaining about Portal, which was puzzle-solving. Cooperative puzzle-solving was just a much more rewarding path."

Probably for the best the idea was scrapped.

[K-16]

Re: Competitive Multiplayer Was Cut from Portal 2

I wouldn't be disappointed about this; I can already see the mode inadvertently catering to griefers, where getting the ball to a goal with everyone armed with Aperture Science Handheld Portal Devices will cause mass havoc. Everybody will stop tending to the ball and simply focus on flinging everybody and everything everywhere, in every possible angle. So I can see why a competitive mode does not bode well in a puzzle-game if the mode itself uses similar mechanics to Speedball (I played the PC DOS version by the way).

However, and this is actually my point, I don't see any issue regarding a missed opportunity as long as VALVe Software does not pull an Infinity Ward. Should an SDK exist with Portal 2 assets, especially multiplayer, I would almost assume and expect plugins to be made within months after the SDK's release, and mods a year after that. And last time I checked, their SDK is well supported and still free (and full of examples from their own games to boot). Making it ourselves should be our answer to this, unless VALVe declares no SDK update for Portal 2, which I would be rather surprised and confused if that happens.