A very lengthy but very worthwhile read, the folks over at Gamasutra have detailed the evolution of the Portal 2 ARG, entitled The POrTAl TwO ARG: The Whole Story:
The Crescendo. By far the biggest mistake of the ARG was the decision to move up the timeline for the crescendo. We originally scheduled this to start 24 to 36 hours before the imminent 7 am Tuesday launch, but we worried that this would give ARG players in other time zones very little time to participate. So we decided to set the completion threshold much higher so that the crescendo could stretch over multiple days. We moved the start to Friday morning to make it easier for international media to pick up the story before the weekend.
So what really happened? When the final ARG puzzle was solved, it pointed to a webpage with a count-down timer. Players immediately assumed that this was the count-down for the early release of Portal 2 — a suspicion that they believe was validated by a clue that was sent to several media outlets that included the hint “4/19/2011_7AM=4/15/2011_9AM,” where the first time was the published Tuesday release date. In retrospect, it wasn’t very hard to see why the the community was surprised and disappointed when the timer reached zero only to be replaced by a page with another timer.
A definite read if you know anything about the ARG. Enjoy!
Leave a Reply