Opposable Thumbs

Valve put together a comprehensive and deep alternate-reality game to get the word out about the launch of Portal 2, as if this was a title that needed an extra level of publicity. The ARG lead to a lot of speculation, people playing games in order to speed up the release of Portal 2, and a network of players coming together to try to figure out what it all meant. Now Portal 2 has been released and the game is over—we think—and there are a large number of people oddly bitter about the whole thing.

That's silly: the entire point of any alternative-reality game is to publicize something, and there was no downside for anyone. For the gamers that played along, there was much to be gained. This is why the complainers have it all wrong.

A massive sale on independent games

Let's look at one of the largest parts of this whole mess, the Potato Sack. This is a bundle of independent games released on Steam, sold at a substantial discount. The bundle included 13 games, which would have been over $150 if sold individually. During the sale, which is still going on as of publication, the price for the entire bundle is $38.72.

This wasn't a bundle of no-name titles either; the games include Super Meat Boy, a game that was on many outlets' best-of lists last year. It included Amnesia: The Dark Descent, a game with almost universal praise. It included BIT.TRIP.BEAT. The games were almost all must-have titles, and they were being sold for much less than face value. This is a huge win, even if you don't care a bit about Portal 2.

If this wasn't wrapped up in a larger marketing campaign it still would have been one of the best deals in PC gaming this year. So why are people upset? Let's dig deeper.

The games received new content

As the "main" game progressed, the titles in the Potato Sack were updated with new levels and content. If you were able to finish that content you earned Potatoes that were used to move the whole thing along. The thing is, the new content was all Portal-themed, and gave new life to the games people may have already finished. In a world where people are used to paying real money for new content for their games, these developers were giving away new content for free.

The Portal 2 Toki Tori content

The organizational effort to get all these developers together, offer their games for so much less than the standard price, and then add new things to play in each title had to have been intense. Simply creating this mess at all would have been a huge undertaking, but everything went off without a hitch and players had fun trying to find all the secrets. While some claim that if another company had tried this, the backlash would have been more severe, what other company is in a position to try something this ambitious, and has the goodwill to get so many outside developers to play along?

Is this why people are mad, because gamers were given more content for free? Let's keep going.

The countdown

Valve then posted a countdown online, and the gaming press breathlessly reported that the game might unlock when it reached zero. We even hinted that you should take Friday off work to play Portal 2. We were overzealous, but then again so was every other outlet on the planet that covers games. When the countdown ended and it turned out we had to play the games in the Potato Sack to unlock the game, the reaction was less than pleasant. Despite the large amount of people who played the games to unlock Portal 2 early, the game was only released 10 hours before the expected time.

The timing seemed predetermined, with no real way change when the game would be released. This is a genuine point of contention: in the end it really didn't seem like we were able to change anything. Still, for those days we all played great independent games, shared secrets, and earned Potatoes—and it felt like we were doing something. It was fun, and gave us an excuse to play these games.

At the end, all the players that unlocked all the Potatoes were given the Valve Complete Pack for their troubles, a bundle that sells for $100 on Steam. There was some grumbling from players who already had the package—and since gamers were promised a reward for completing the task, that's a legitimate beef—but in general the entire thing played out smoothly.

Besides, you didn't have to pay attention

This is the most important bit. With people complaining that it was all just a stunt and people were silly to pay attention to it, the point remains that it was easily ignored. If you chose to not play along, nothing changed. The game unlocked a tiny bit early, a few games were sold for less money, and a few people won a prize for playing indie games. If you didn't click on the stories about a topic that made you hostile, you didn't have to be aware of any of this. Nothing was taken away from the community, and there was never a negative outcome at stake.

Speculating about what was going on was fun, a bunch of developers who have created interesting games received a lot of publicity, prices were dropped on good games, and gamers had a fun challenge over the weekend. This makes people bitter? We knew from the start that this was going to drum up publicity for Portal 2's release, but at least it did so in a creative and interesting way. Valve seems like a silly target for complaints this time around. If you find yourself upset that someone else is publicizing a game by offering a sale on other games, our best advice is easy to follow: just ignore the stories about it.