Play to Play Portal 2 Early!

[Shawn Zipay]

The main part of the Portal 2 ARG has concluded. The final phase has just begun. There's a new game afoot in the Portal 2 ARG and this time it's literally all about playing games.

The countdown timer has hit 0 and a new site has been uncovered.

Essentially you, the gaming populace of the world, determines when Portal 2 is released. Right now it's still scheduled for release on Tuesday at 7AM PST, but that can and will change depending on how much you play.

Play any of the Potato Sack games to increase the "Current CPU" for that particular game. The longer you play, the faster the bars will fill. Once a bar is filled for a game, the wait for release shrinks. If a bar is already filled for a game, play another one in the list that needs help.

It's really just that simple and entirely dependent on what you manage to accomplish as to when we'll all see Portal 2.

So what are you waiting for? Start up those games!

[K-16]

Re: Play to Play Portal 2 Early!

Also worth noting is that potatoes are being counted as units for "auxiliary power." I don't know how potatoes are being counted in the game, since each game has them implemented in different ways. As one example, can anyone actually collect the potatoes in Killing Floor? While I would check on the VALVe ARG wiki page for the methods, it's um... Flooded by us and puking out 503 errors. Also, it appears each game's actual popularity was taken into account to determine the scale of computations, as 2000+ players was enough to complete "The Wonderful End Of The World" progress bar. But it appears the result is also scaled, as that completion only saved us an hour. I can only imagine how much time gets knocked off if 5000+ players (highest player count of the list) is only producing minimal computational progress.

... I can't believe I fell for this marketing campaign to convince me to buy not one, but fourteen games. I totally fell for this giant, somewhat hidden, commercial. Unorthodox way of advertising, but still advertising none the less. And it works perfectly on my skeptical brain. They got my money, and yet I had no hesitation to fork it over. This is the kind of campaign I want happening more often in the game industry on foundations (platforms) that can handle such marketing ideas. My money and I got owned big time.