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

EatChildren

Currently polling second in Australia's federal election (first in the Gold Coast), this feral may one day be your Bogan King.
Love Valve and all, but a line has to be drawn sometime and this is where I draw mine. I dont mind if this is what they want to do, but with a projected launch of 93+ hours, and the tremendously slow movement of everything, I'm not going to bother staying up playing games. At this rate by the time it count downs it will be on the fringe of launch as it is.

If there were less time left on the clock I'd be down, but not this.

Goodnight all!
 
kswiston said:
Honestly, it surprises me that there are people with none of the potato games at this point. I never bought the potato pack and still have 9 of them. Do you ONLY buy big budget AAA titles? Because at least half of those games are excellent. Among the better titles this generation.

EDIT: half of these games have also been offered up in the 5 for $5 steam indie bundles as well. And all have gone on sale for $2-5 at some point.

I'm also going to go out on a limb here and speculate that the number of CPUs required is less than the number of currently owned copies of potato sack games. Meaning no one has to buy anything new, the existing owners just need to run the games.

Obviously the more people that own it, the easier this is done, of course.
 

Zerokku

WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?
Did the ARG wiki get taken down or is it just crashed from everything? Was wanting to go on and look at the potato guides, but cant seem to access the website. Any other location that had guides like that?
 

Jex

Member
Jay Shadow said:
A final challenge using the exact same games they've been using for every previous challenge. How dare they.
Well, it's not exactly comperable.

Before, people where getting involved with a fun ARG put out by Valve, they weren't exactly sure what it was going to deliver at the end but everyone was enjoying the ride.

Now the ride is at the end and it says "Play these games to release Portal 2 early". Being told exactly what you're working towards is very different.
 

Krev

Unconfirmed Member
brotkasten said:
Long count down? It was like 24h or less. How's that long?


So you don't have to collect the potatoes, just play the games from the pack.
I'm exaggerating a little for effect, just as I was exaggerating about not being able to forgive Valve without a HL(E)3 announcement.

Still a little disappointed though.
 

fallengorn

Bitches love smiley faces
Drkirby said:
Non Hat? Not interested!

I bet it is awesome, but I suck to much and there isn't enough time :( :( :(
Assuming this isn't going to be unlocked anytime soon, you can spend you're weekend doing it. There's only a handful of challenges that are a pain.
 

Baha

Member
If you are on my friends list and need help getting potatoes, shoot me a pm now. I'll try and help as many as I can.

1st 13 potatoes, use this link.

Potatoes 14-36, use this link.
 

Zerokku

WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?
Baha said:
If you are on my friends list and need help getting potatoes, shoot me a pm now. I'll try and help as many as I can.

We should get a group together for the killing floor ones.
 

dLMN8R

Member
My guess is that everyone needs to play the same game at the same time, one at a time. Once a game gets "unlocked", maybe it stays permanent, and then everyone needs to move on to the next game?
 

Drkirby

Corporate Apologist
Baha said:
If you are on my friends list and need help getting potatoes, shoot me a pm now. I'll try and help as many as I can.
Have to work on a major project right now, maybe later tonight. Luckily for the project I was able to find a really good reference that should cut out the bulk of the problems.
 

Atilac

Member
CONCURRENT? wtf!!! So if I log in to play killing floor and leave, it subtracts the CPU from the list? does it count each core of my CPU? Can I run multiple games at the same time? why are 13 games differentiated into 13 CPU totals? Why not one big total? This sucks cock, I canceled my amazon preorder because I thought it was coming out today on steam, I wasn't even going to cheat the system.

The largest and most complicated ARG in history, and it ends with a giant middle finger to those who care, who don't have the ability to organize this monumental task.

It's like a Christmas story... this is our reward for decoding ovaltine... Fuck this shit!!!!
 

WEGGLES

Member
The_Technomancer said:
It can't be bar size. Do people really think Valve wants 100,000 people to play Defense Grid all at once?
Based Gabe be crazy. wouldn't put it past him... Did you see all his knives?!
 

Zerokku

WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?
Atilac said:
CONCURRENT? wtf!!! So if I log in to play killing floor and leave, it subtracts the CPU from the list? does it count each core of my CPU? Can I run multiple games at the same time? why are 13 games differentiated into 13 CPU totals? Why not one big total? This sucks cock, I canceled my amazon preorder because I thought it was coming out today on steam, I wasn't even going to cheat the system.

The largest and most complicated ARG in history, and it ends with a giant middle finger to those who care, who don't have the ability to organize this monumental task.

It's like a Christmas story... this is our reward for decoding ovaltine... Fuck this shit!!!!

To copy from the portal 2 thread -


EternalGamer said:
People have a ridiculious sense of entitlement. Valve puts a lot of work in creating a fun ARG to promo their game. If people contribute, they get the game early. Totally optional. People can wait until release if they don't want to contribute.

And yet people bitch.
 
So, don't know how substantiated this is but people on the ValveARG IRC are claiming it is counting how long people are running the games. and they are suggesting that people start out by running TWEOTW first.
 

Drkirby

Corporate Apologist
They can't want 10k players at once to be playing, it must be some sort of cumulative number. Ether playtime or Potatos Collected from that game.
 

Tacitus_

Member
The_Technomancer said:
It can't be bar size. Do people really think Valve wants 100,000 people to play Defense Grid all at once?

Probably the amount of time spent ingame? Having more players would fill up the bar faster.
 
Atilac said:
CONCURRENT? wtf!!! So if I log in to play killing floor and leave, it subtracts the CPU from the list? does it count each core of my CPU? Can I run multiple games at the same time? why are 13 games differentiated into 13 CPU totals? Why not one big total? This sucks cock, I canceled my amazon preorder because I thought it was coming out today on steam, I wasn't even going to cheat the system.

The largest and most complicated ARG in history, and it ends with a giant middle finger to those who care, who don't have the ability to organize this monumental task.

It's like a Christmas story... this is our reward for decoding ovaltine... Fuck this shit!!!!

Dude, chill!

This comes as a surprise to you? Really? We are talking about Valve, the biggest troll in the video game industry.
 
PatzCU said:
Wait... so I have to actually play Amnesia for more than 10 minutes at a time? Impossible...

Haha, I loaded a save the other night and the whole screen was pulsing and a wet sloughing sound was coming from every direction at once.

Time played: Two minutes
 

morningbus

Serious Sam is a wicked gahbidge series for chowdaheads.
Could it have something to do with the number of potatoes a specific user has AND that specific user launching a potato sack game (i.e. them using all their potatoes to charge up GladOs)?
 
I barely own any of the Potato pack games just because I know what I like and most of those indie games don't appeal to me. I have Super Meat Boy because that's a fun game but other than that, I'm not a fan. I have audio surf also but it just isn't much of a game for myself.

Edit: I know a lot of people want Portal as soon as possible but if it is concurrent users, all the people participating should try to pick a time to play. I'm EST time zone and it's 12:40 PM. Most people are probably at work or school right now. Do what you need to do in real life and get back on around 5 or 6 or something. Most people aren't at home now and probably won't be tonight.
 

Ramenman

Member
EternalGamer said:
People have a ridiculious sense of entitlement. Valve puts a lot of work in creating a fun ARG to promo their game. If people contribute, they get the game early. Totally optional. People can wait until release if they don't want to contribute.

And yet people bitch.

So true. The game is still coming out the day it was announced. Where is the problem guys ?
 

Superimposer

This is getting weirder all the time
Why even try to get potatoes? I thought the whole point was to get enough people playing each game. Anyway, people need to try and co-ordinate and try and get 1 game at a time done, because otherwise this is going to be impossible. Maybe they all need to be played simultaneously, but even so there would be no harm in trying the ticking off one-by-one method. Right?
 

Zomba13

Member
CarbonatedFalcon said:
I'll be curious as to what the reward is. I won't get it (I don't have all the games and wouldn't have the time, even if I did have spare funds to buy the full Potato Sack).
I have a feeling it may be the
potato powered portal gun
that was in a few Portal 2 Pictures that were going around just before the countdown ended. I hope it's something cool.
 

Atilac

Member
Zerokku said:
To copy from the portal 2 thread -
2 weeks of a bizarre easter egg hunt, 2 weeks of decoding dan brown style clues, 2 weeks of people looking for signs and working their asses off. For a fucking marketing stunt? The culmination of that 2 weeks of work is this? You complain of entitlement, I say the people who slaved away at this stupid fucking stunt deserve to have the game released early.
 
As somebody who has ordered the PS3 version to get both versions and thus couldn't have the game unlocked today, I say yay!

Pretty amazing the way in which they're taking this ARG to the extreme. It's not my thing (no potatoes here) but it's great to watch roll out regardless.

Edit: Wow at the above guy. Slave away? It was an optional and fun thing for people to do if they wanted a challenge and to pass the time until Portal 2. Valve at no point promised anything - it's your fault for getting your hopes too high.
 

fallengorn

Bitches love smiley faces
Zerokku said:
To copy from the portal 2 thread -
GRRM iis right in that New Yorker article, this is the entitlement generation. :\

Atilac said:
2 weeks of a bizarre easter egg hunt, 2 weeks of decoding dan brown style clues, 2 weeks of people looking for signs and working their asses off. For a fucking marketing stunt? The culmination of that 2 weeks of work is this? You complain of entitlement, I say the people who slaved away at this stupid fucking stunt deserve to have the game released early.
Eh... Most ARGs (at least the most popular ones) are marketing stunts.
 

krzy123

Member
wow that the usage jump on some of the games ... if its just cpu's can't you just sit in the main menu? Wait it might be # of potatoes since there are bars next to each game (which isn't # of cpu based, unless its active owners/overall owners)
 
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