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Valve's fake, rigged, waste of time Progress Quest troll Portal 2 ARG
- Thread starter V_Ben
- Start date
BuddhaRockstar
Member
I think what's especially shitty about this ARG is that absolutely no effort was made to keep the forth wall intact, and it was already broken from the beginning. I mean, look at the page we're all staring at now- it's supposed to "computational grid status" page, and it has a picture of vines running down the side, 14 links to Steam, and a huge banner at the top that explicitly tells you what you're supposed to buy.
Instead of all this stupid potato crap they should have had it so it looked as if GlaDOS was "infecting" your Steam client and causing some of your games to become corrupt (portal content in the indie games). At least then the marketing wouldn't have seemed quite as gimmicky.
Instead of all this stupid potato crap they should have had it so it looked as if GlaDOS was "infecting" your Steam client and causing some of your games to become corrupt (portal content in the indie games). At least then the marketing wouldn't have seemed quite as gimmicky.
The_Player
Member
Prove it!TheExodu5 said:
Nappuccino
Member
BuddhaRockstar said:
I have to admit, that would have been pretty badass.
Liu Kang Baking A Pie
Member
Valve fucked up, we get it bros.
They're a good company that openly talks about the things they can do better. They'll get it right next time. I'm sure most of them are probably looking at this end part and thinking it's coming off much worse than they assumed it would.
They're a good company that openly talks about the things they can do better. They'll get it right next time. I'm sure most of them are probably looking at this end part and thinking it's coming off much worse than they assumed it would.
Nappuccino
Member
Fredescu said:
In theory, the blue line should have been largely affected by the green line.
but considering we dont' know how it works (how potatoes affect things, when they sample the CPUs, if there is a minimum movement or maximum movement etc) there is a lot up in the air about what the graphs actually mean from a correlation/causation view
Revolutionary
Member
Well, there goes the possibility of 75% overall progress being the milestone we're waiting/hoping for.
What's left? 500k and the 24 hour mark? lol
What's left? 500k and the 24 hour mark? lol
morningbus
Serious Sam is a wicked gahbidge series for chowdaheads.
Fredescu said:
I'll try to explain what's been going on this weekend.
We've all been like:
And Valve has been all like:
That actually would have been amazing, but I wonder how different the sales would be.EmCeeGramr said:
Although, what with retailers, it's not like they could actually keep it a secret.
Your argument is completely valid, except for the fact that everything leading up to this weekend has been awesome. Could it have been more awesome? Without a doubt - your suggestion to infect the Steam client is a pretty creative one - but that doesn't diminish the good things that have been done here.BuddhaRockstar said:
Lasthope106
Member
Pardon my late-night ramblings, but could it be that the disappointment a lot of us are experiencing was planned by Valve. Make the user base feel completely hopeless in completing the bar and give up hope, but then at the very last minute release a "special" surprise that makes up for all the pain.
3!
L4D
Visualante
Member
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=jeep+portal+2Lasthope106 said:
While I wouldn't be surprised at all if they announced something at the end of all this, I highly doubt they planned for their fan base to be disappointed.
I also love all the people who seem to have forgotten that the Potato Sack actually has games in it. Most people bought it before the countdown thing was even known, because it's a great fucking deal and the new Portal-themed content is rad.
Fix The Scientist
Member
Wow things have really slowed down recently... I've given up any hope of this coming out within the next 24 hours, it's been an honor gentlemen.
speculawyer
Member
Screw the ARG, just fix TF2, damnit.
ThoseDeafMutes
Member
Kritz said:
I bought the preorder in a rush on Thursday expecting it to come out friday/saturday. Sigh.
Spire said:
This is why I find the comparisons to Twitter/Facebook/Whatthefuck-athons somewhat disingenuous. In those scenarios the only companies that benefit at all are those that set up the shenanigans (e.g. EA with the 1m "likes" requirement for the BF3 trailer) and the host social network (e.g. Facebook). In this scenario with Valve, in addition to themselves (which is where a lot of the cynicism stems from, understandably), you have 10 indie developers who have no doubt seen a huge rise in sales and will profit greatly from that.
Also, you can bet that Valve will actually learn from the backlash this final leg of the ARG has received.
I just ran some interesting numbers, not sure if they've been ran before by someone else, but it proves two things.
1. Potatoes are definitely doing nothing right now.
2. We will have to fill all the progress bars for the games to fill up the main progress bar.
Now allow me to explain my calculations:
At the time of this posting, this was the data I was going off of:
Now given that, I used an OpenOffice.org Calc spreadsheet to make this calculation:
75.304% is pretty damn close to 75.230% Now granted, we technically don't know the exact value of any of the progress bar, which is probably why there is the slight discrepancy between the two results.
The bottom line though, is that the progress we have made so far has not been affected by potatoes at all, and is only coming from what we have done with the progress bars. Obviously, we know everyone is right in the strategy of "get the easy games done first" as that will push us closer quicker and will shave more time off, if only just a small amount.
I apologize if this is old, but it's something I realized.
1. Potatoes are definitely doing nothing right now.
2. We will have to fill all the progress bars for the games to fill up the main progress bar.
Now allow me to explain my calculations:
At the time of this posting, this was the data I was going off of:
Now given that, I used an OpenOffice.org Calc spreadsheet to make this calculation:
75.304% is pretty damn close to 75.230% Now granted, we technically don't know the exact value of any of the progress bar, which is probably why there is the slight discrepancy between the two results.
The bottom line though, is that the progress we have made so far has not been affected by potatoes at all, and is only coming from what we have done with the progress bars. Obviously, we know everyone is right in the strategy of "get the easy games done first" as that will push us closer quicker and will shave more time off, if only just a small amount.
I apologize if this is old, but it's something I realized.
D
Deleted member 1235
Unconfirmed Member
haven't played a single one of those and I'm not going to, despite owning some of em.
Yeah, second point has been arrived at before by a few people. Doesn't stop a few randoms from suggesting that the local and global bars aren't linked, though.
The potatoes are tricky, because there isn't a clear picture of what the completion rates would be like without them. AFAIK they're enabled, but not contributing enough to ramp things up significantly. High-tater CPUs probably smooth out the dips caused by varying CPU counts, but we've yet to see spectacular gains.
The potatoes are tricky, because there isn't a clear picture of what the completion rates would be like without them. AFAIK they're enabled, but not contributing enough to ramp things up significantly. High-tater CPUs probably smooth out the dips caused by varying CPU counts, but we've yet to see spectacular gains.
One could also offer the theory that only the tater CPUs are "overclocked", meaning that the periodic variation of CPUs corresponds to normal people playing and quitting those games, while the hardcore ARG people leaves their computers idling most of the day (plus they may have already had most of the potatoes so their individual rates wouldn't increase much). If the hardcore ARG people with potatoes have much more of an effect on the rate, then the periodic CPU count going up and down might indeed not affect the overall rate.Botolf said:
Bla bla bla math theory stuff 2 a.m. I look forward to hopefully not being spoiled, hopefully somehow finding a few hours to play bits of the game between work and sleep, and hopefully not talking about bars and statistics for several months.
Well, yeah, shit like that sucks. I don't like how untransparent Valve have been with the end game of this arg, but it probably wouldn't have been as exciting without it.ThoseDeafMutes said:
I kinda suspect Vave wanted to release early, but at some point someone said, "wait we can't actually do this without a shitstorm" or something.
It's disappointing, but at this point, we're only a day away anyway.
This is the payoff. Or, there might be more hints in Portal 2, and then another week of clues, and then a timer that counts down for a week to the Episode 3 release. Once the timer expires, there will be a second timer, for a date 2 years in the future, at which point Episode 3 will be delayed further.Zzoram said:
(or maybe not)
Well, I don't think taters would contribute completion in and of themselves, they're multiplicative to the CPU contribution. If one was to take all CPUs offline, one would lose the potato effect as well. So it's hard to clearly separate the two.Hylian7 said:
Yeah, this is certainly plausible, though it would probably mean the death of the global overclock idea. But in any case, not many outside of the ARG thousands will be sticking it out anyway, so either way the result will probably be the same (good or ill).Blizzard said:
Stabby McSter
Member
Emphasis on some!SalsaShark said:
Zombie James
Banned
FYI, it's been a little over 24 hours since we've hit 50% and we're now at 75.5. If the same pace continues, this whole thing should be done by ~3AM EST tomorrow... BUT... this is really weird.
Ok, so, as it stands right now the game will launch around 4:30AM EST tomorrow, but there are six games left to finish. Assuming each game decreases the time by 40 minutes, the game could be unlocked before the ARG is even completed.
Unless I got my math wrong?
Ok, so, as it stands right now the game will launch around 4:30AM EST tomorrow, but there are six games left to finish. Assuming each game decreases the time by 40 minutes, the game could be unlocked before the ARG is even completed.
Unless I got my math wrong?
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