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Valve's fake, rigged, waste of time Progress Quest troll Portal 2 ARG

Drkirby said:
In fact, all the evidence we have shows they simply don't. That cpucount site was able to add up the accumulative amount of CPUs for each game, normalize it for each game, and find they do correlate 1:1, but the Potato count doesn't effect the rate at all.

At very best the number of Potatoes may tie into how much time gets knocked off when a game is completed. We have shaved what, 6 hours off at best? Right know it looks like the game will simply come out Monday Evening.
The current theory is that GLaDOS will 'overclock the CPU's when we get enough potatoes, which would speed up the progress of the bars. We probably need like a million potatoes though.
 

Hawkian

The Cryptarch's Bane
Yeef said:
No one is complaining about the potato hunt (which has been available since the beginning of the month). it's the Boot sequence that everyone hates.

Yeah, I get it. It's too bad it's not a faster unlock for those who have been invested the longest, I agree. For me, who just started unlocking potatoes, the countdown is like a time limit on how long I have to get all the potatoes, which is a cool feeling of racing the clock for me.

Really I feel like a lot of the reward here was all this extra content in games I might not have played for a long time or would never have otherwise played. I can't be the only one who thinks Justine was truly brilliant. It's like
Portal retold by Lovecraft minus the portals
.
 

Zomba13

Member
Drkirby said:
It is likely the Resurrection Pin will change in some way once this is all over. It will likely get ether get an alternative style, or a particle effect.
I hope so. Kinda sucky having two pins from two different things look the same. At least one is tradeable.
 

Sn4ke_911

If I ever post something in Japanese which I don't understand, please BAN me.
Restless Portal 2 Fans begin to send REAL potatoes to Valve HQ

XpoIY.jpg


haha
 
Hawkian said:
Yeah, I get it. It's too bad it's not a faster unlock for those who have been invested the longest, I agree. For me, who just started unlocking potatoes, the countdown is like a time limit on how long I have to get all the potatoes, which is a cool feeling of racing the clock for me.

Really I feel like a lot of the reward here was all this extra content in games I might not have played for a long time or would never have otherwise played. I can't be the only one who thinks Justine was truly brilliant. It's like
Portal retold by Lovecraft minus the portals
.
Justine was my favorite extra content from this whole ARG. Very well done.
 
Dance In My Blood said:
All I said was that if people wanted to play the games, they would play them. They're not playing them though once their self-imposed obligation to do so has passed. That's just stating a fact.
Surprisingly, that's not entirely true. I bought a lot of games off Steam because I've wanted to play them, but I haven't touched them at all. Some people need a little nudge to actually find value in what they've actually purchased. So now that I've discovered the brilliance of Defense Grid, I might actually buy their next game near full price or full price. Those ridiculous sales on Steam probably have multiple goals. One maybe for brand recognition.
 

Yeef

Member
Hawkian said:
Yeah, I get it. It's too bad it's not a faster unlock for those who have been invested the longest, I agree. For me, who just started unlocking potatoes, the countdown is like a time limit on how long I have to get all the potatoes, which is a cool feeling of racing the clock for me.

Really I feel like a lot of the reward here was all this extra content in games I might not have played for a long time or would never have otherwise played. I can't be the only one who thinks Justine was truly brilliant. It's like
Portal retold by Lovecraft minus the portals
.
But all of that stuff was available long before the CPU stuff started. I played through Justine before the countdown to Friday was even up.
 

f0rk

Member
If it's out in 16 hours all will be forgiven as I can devote all day to it. Got shit to do on Tuesday though :<
 

Cindres

Vied for a tag related to cocks, so here it is.
At this rate i can see BIT.TRIP Fucking flying once Toki Tori is done, and it won't have much to go anyway, it seems to be almost keeping up with like 2,500 less players. Which is weird.
 

Drkirby

Corporate Apologist
Hawkian said:
Yeah, I get it. It's too bad it's not a faster unlock for those who have been invested the longest, I agree. For me, who just started unlocking potatoes, the countdown is like a time limit on how long I have to get all the potatoes, which is a cool feeling of racing the clock for me.

Really I feel like a lot of the reward here was all this extra content in games I might not have played for a long time or would never have otherwise played. I can't be the only one who thinks Justine was truly brilliant. It's like
Portal retold by Lovecraft minus the portals
.
We don't know that for sure, there is a thin chance having 36 Potatoes will let you play the game 36 hours early! Though that theory will be put to the test in a 2 hours, and is very likely wrong.
 

Hawkian

The Cryptarch's Bane
Yeef said:
But all of that stuff was available long before the CPU stuff started. I played through Justine before the countdown to Friday was even up.

I take your point of course, I'm not saying that one aspect of this ARG justifies another or that I can't understand how someone that did start all this a month ago would be frustrated.

All I really want to communicate is that taken in total, this is a really cool event from my perspective. And I may not represent the average fan but if they wanted to do this all again I sure wouldn't say no.
 
Drkirby said:
No, now you get one for both. A Resurrection Associate Pin for playing all 13 Potato sack games at least once (Helping the reboot process), and a Companion Cube Pin was recently added (Which looks the same) for people who preordered Portal 2.

I know there's a Portal 2 preorder pin, that's why I specifically said "the Portal 2 pin that wasn't for preorder (that you got by playing all 13 games at least once)" when making my point.
 

Gigglepoo

Member
Dance In My Blood said:
All I said was that if people wanted to play the games, they would play them. They're not playing them though once their self-imposed obligation to do so has passed. That's just stating a fact.

You're logic is flawed. There are hundreds of games worth playing and many of them are completely overlooked. Companies can use marketing to get the word out on their games, reviews can nudge people in the right direction, and sales can make it easier for people to have access to them, but none of those steps solve the most pressing issue -- getting people to actually play them.

I've been curious about Amnesia for quite awhile now. I've been meaning to play it since it came out, but I've always been distracted by something else. Well, this weekend, I finally had a tangible benefit (early Portal 2) to coincide with an intangible benefit (fun) to play this game. And you know what? It's awesome. I may have never gotten around to playing it if not for this sale, so no matter how early Portal 2 is ultimately released, I'm really happy Valve did this.

There are some awesome games included in this potato scramble, and I could definitely see people getting their hands on Meat Boy or Killing Floor for the first time and realizing how fun they are.
 

Hawkian

The Cryptarch's Bane
Gigglepoo said:
Well, this weekend, I finally had a tangible benefit (early Portal 2) to coincide with an intangible benefit (fun) to play this game. And you know what? It's awesome. I may have never gotten around to playing it if not for this sale, so no matter how early Portal 2 is ultimately released, I'm really happy Valve did this.

fist bump
 

dream

Member
I don't think anyone is saying the potato pack and the ARG they built around it isn't a good idea. It's just hard to argue that the ARG didn't peak way too early and that the endgame isn't some brutal grinding bullshit.
 

Twig

Banned
dream said:
I don't think anyone is saying the potato pack and the ARG they built around it isn't a good idea.
Sad, but true: There are plenty of people in this very thread saying exactly that.
 

morningbus

Serious Sam is a wicked gahbidge series for chowdaheads.
The end phase we're in is seriously flawed from the "getting you to actually play them" perspective because the amount of time required practically forces us to leave the games unattended.

If an individual's share was, for example, half an hour in each game, then it would have been perfect. You would actually play the game because you might as well kill the 30 minutes. However, people are leaving these games running for hours - way too long to expect any reasonable person to actually play. So, what's the point of even attempting to seriously play the game if that won't be good enough? Might as well just walk away entirely.

Though, I did actually finish the Ball and played a decent amount of Rush and Toki Tori, a few games I've had for ages and been meaning to play.
 

dream

Member
Twig said:
Sad, but true: There are plenty of people in this very thread saying exactly that.

I know but I'm guessing they're just pissed because this is getting pretty stupid now.
 

Twig

Banned
morningbus said:
The end phase we're in is seriously flawed from the "getting you to actually play them" perspective because the amount of time required practically forces us to leave the games unattended.

If an individual's share was, for example, half an hour in each game, then it would have been perfect. You would actually play the game because you might as well kill the 30 minutes. However, people are leaving these games running for hours - way too long to expect any reasonable person to actually play. So, what's the point of even attempting to seriously play the game if that won't be good enough? Might as well just walk away entirely.

Though, I did actually finish the Ball and played a decent amount of Rush and Toki Tori, a few games I've had for ages and been meaning to play.
Yerp.

dream said:
I know but I'm guessing they're just pissed because this is getting pretty stupid now.
Stop making excuses for them! Manbabies is manbabies.
 

Kuga

Member
clip said:
I think that Valve just grossly overestimated the amount of people that would participate in the final phase.

Which is silly, because they knew that only a few thousand people were actively following the ARG.
 

Corky

Nine out of ten orphans can't tell the difference.
I don't understand, is there somekind of websitecode/timezone issue, because last time I checked it was at 40hours, which would mean the game coming out even later than a potential midnight unlock @ tuesday.

What's going on?
 
Corky said:
I don't understand, is there somekind of websitecode/timezone issue, because last time I checked it was at 40hours, which would mean the game coming out even later than a potential midnight unlock @ tuesday.

What's going on?
It was originally around noon-ish (Dunno which timezone) on Tuesday.

The last midnight release I remember is Left 4 Dead 1. And that was right on time and in EST too. Best night ever.
 

clip

Member
Corky said:
I don't understand, is there somekind of websitecode/timezone issue, because last time I checked it was at 40hours, which would mean the game coming out even later than a potential midnight unlock @ tuesday.

What's going on?

The default unlock time is 7 AM PST Tuesday.
 

Corky

Nine out of ten orphans can't tell the difference.
JPBrowncoat said:
It was originally around noon-ish (Dunno which timezone) on Tuesday.
.

38 hours from now is 11:50 tuesday, I'm getting the game 10minutes earlier?
 
Corky said:
38 hours from now is 11:50 tuesday, I'm getting the game 10minutes earlier?
Well once the other bars fill up maybe another two or thee hours will get shaved off. So maybe around 8 or 9 on tuesday morning.
 
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