• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

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

Nab

Member
Campster said:
Third, doesn't this mean that any poor souls who bought the pack just to help with Portal 2 wasted their money? Not that it's necessarily a bad thing; I adore the games in the potato pack. But I have no doubt that there are people who dropped $40 hoping to move the date closer and it turns out that what they really needed to do was simply not do anything.

They've wasted their money either way.

Unless they like the games.
 

Twig

Banned
TheExodu5 said:
For the record, we said this would happen yesterday. That the final "OVERCLOCKED!" phase would just kick things into gear to get this released by midnight regardless of what happened.

That you guys think they're filling faster because users are stopping to play the game is...cute...
Spoilsport.

IT'S BUSINESS TIME

SERIOUS BUSINESS TIME

):
 

randomwab

Member
ultron87 said:
YOU'VE JUST BEEN HELPING HER WARM UP THE NEUROTOXIN!

You know, at one point early on, that idea crossed my mind. That helping GLaDOS reboot goes against the fiction fed to us by Portal. Then I went back to my own real life and masterbated some more.

Maybe I should have been more vocal and put on a tinfoil hat. We could have been thinking with Portals for days now.
 
People in this thread:
evil-dead-o.gif
 
theinfinityissue said:
OR even better, bring up a big ERROR splash page and glados is defeated, and chell wakes up and we get to play portal 2. That would be nuts.

Ah hell... my hype progress bars are starting to fill up again!
 

Jintor

Member
12:05 (Eastern Australian Time). PotatoFoolsDay Gaf thread has descended into madness. There is only one solution.

Warming up neurotoxin emitters.
 
Yo, I'm just a passerby but this:
Original-Blue said:
Look at the graphs... The whole time, when there was less users it filled faster!!!
...doesn't seem to be true at all. I'm assuming this user was joking as the later parts of the post were a joke.

As for:
shagg_187 said:
Let's take an example of Defense Grid:

8am - 9pm i.e. 13 hours: we saw a spike from 1839 CPUs to 3029 CPUs i.e. approx 1190 CPU increase.
During this increase, the percentage increased from 26.04% to 36.78% i.e. 10.72% increase

Compare that to the next 13 hours i.e. 9pm - 10am: we saw a decline from 1839 CPUs to 1535 CPUs i.e. approx 1500 CPU decrease.
During this decrease, the percentage increased from 36.78% to 49.45% i.e. 12.69% increase
The % is just an average of the bars. The faster % completion is obviously due to easier game bars being filled at that time.

EDIT: Nevermind, I'm wrong. shagg_187 is referencing Defense Grid, not the overall %.
 

dave is ok

aztek is ok
Three days is how long it takes someone being tortured to go completely insane. Thank you for being willing participants in Valve's study.

The most reasonable explanation for the bar moving even when less people are on is because it has always been set to expire at a predetermined time. Either that or it works with diminishing returns, so having 10k or 20k isn't much of a difference to begin with - and Valve thought it wasn't finishing quickly enough and sped the rate up.

Either way, you're all nuts.
 

Canti

Member
Tryckser said:
This is really getting stupid now, the Ball had like 500 players for 3 days and it isn't filled
I don't get the joke either? Surely in that case (people throwing around stats etc.) games with the fewest players would have completed their bars soonest (like, as mentioned, The Ball). Sounds like they just got to work this morning, lowered the requirements so bars may actually finish before midnight.
 

DrForester

Kills Photobucket
I think the bars have had a pre-set progress bar and are just filling up at random and is set to have them all filled up when the game will be released "Early".
 

hamchan

Member
Campster said:
Not to destroy a newfound sense of hope, but this doesn't make a lot of sense.

First of all, it's dependent on the ARG being influential enough to make everyone realize that the site had been compromised by Glados and that anything Valve/Steam tells us to do is backwards. But the number of people following the ARG is way, way smaller than the number of people who saw "PLAY GAMES = UNLOCK PORTAL 2" on the front page of their Steam client.

Second, it's completely counter-intuitive. Helping reboot Glados makes sense - we kickstart her systems to reboot her and get the story of Portal 2 moving. How does not helping Glados help get Portal 2 out early? I get that it might be the "right" move in the context of the ARG, but it's completely counterintuitive to those interested in getting the game early.

Third, doesn't this mean that any poor souls who bought the pack just to help with Portal 2 wasted their money? Not that it's necessarily a bad thing; I adore the games in the potato pack. But I have no doubt that there are people who dropped $40 hoping to move the date closer and it turns out that what they really needed to do was simply not do anything.

These people wasted their money anyways.
 
Do you think Valve were like "There's no way people will actually keep persevering with this ridiculous grind, surely they'll realise this is stupid and think about the advice they were given in the ARG after a day or so..."
 

Twig

Banned
In the course of, what, thirty minutes? You guys have brought this thread back from hell. Love it.

And now, I laugh. J:
 

TheExodu5

Banned
dave is ok said:
Three days is how long it takes someone being tortured to go completely insane. Thank you for being willing participants in Valve's study.

The most reasonable explanation for the bar moving even when less people are on is because it has always been set to expire at a predetermined time. Either that or it works with diminishing returns, so having 10k or 20k isn't much of a difference to begin with - and Valve thought it wasn't finishing quickly enough and sped the rate up.

Either way, you're all nuts.

Sounds about right.
 
StuKen said:
So its a marketing campaign that ultimately wants you to not buy and play things? Come on, get real children.

Nah, they want us to buy the games, they just don't want us to play them. Sounds like the average Steam user to me.
 

webrunner

Member
Pai Pai Master said:
Nah, they want us to buy the games, they just don't want us to play them. Sounds like the average Steam user to me.

Ironic that this got me back into playing Defense Grid. I've always meant to beat that game...
 

TheExodu5

Banned
webrunner said:
Ironic that this got me back into playing Defense Grid. I've always meant to beat that game...

I was really disappointed when I found out the most viable tactic in the CHAS map was to go all guns and cannons. I thought the game had better balance than that. ;_;
 
Look at you people. Trying to rationalize the relationship between the number of cpus and the fill rate of the bars when there is clearly none. Pathetic. Even rats in a skinner box learn to stop pushing on the bar when nothing happens. But not you. I don't think you're cut out for enrichment center testing.
 

Hylian7

Member
I am literally sitting here LAUGHING in the middle of the hallway in this building at my University about this shit. "The only way to win is not to play."

At this point I'm open to anything, but apparently the wiki shifted focus back to The Ball. At this rate I think it will release at 2am tonight.
 

EviLore

Expansive Ellipses
Staff Member
You're doing GlaDOS's bidding by participating, you know. That should be deterrent enough!
 

Original-Blue

Neo Member
Valves text never says to play 13 indie games to get portal 2 to launch early, it only says play the games to reboot glados.

The release portal 2 early is exclusive of the game playing.
 

Nab

Member
dave is ok said:
Don't worry guys. Only 43k potatoes until 500k. Then it becomes hyper super overclock mode!

If anything, that's dumber than the "not playing" thing. At least the not playing thing has some evidence from the ARG.
 

JaseC

gave away the keys to the kingdom.
dave is ok said:
Don't worry guys. Only 43k potatoes until 500k. Then it becomes Compu-Global-Hyper-Mega-Net!

Fixed.

Nab said:
If anything, that's dumber than the "not playing" thing. At least the not playing thing has some evidence from the ARG.

So did the 375k potatoes theory.
Not really.
 

The Technomancer

card-carrying scientician
Mind you, the banner does say "help release Portal 2 early! Play the potato sack to help reboot GLaDOS". There is a very strongly implied causation there.
 

EatChildren

Currently polling second in Australia's federal election (first in the Gold Coast), this feral may one day be your Bogan King.
I fail to see how rebooting GlaDOS and the peak in rumours of Nintendo's next system is not a coincidence.
 
Top Bottom