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Croal vs. Totilo - The Portal Letters
Today Newsweek's N'Gai Croal and MTV's Stephen Totilo conclude another of their fascinating email correspondences, this time surrounding Valve's recently released Portal . In part one, the two journalists explored the power of minimalism in gaming, and why that 'less is more' attitude worked so well. Part two saw the pair wrestling with some fundamental disagreements about the nature of character in the game. In today's finale, the twosome addresses the game's brief length, and how that made the game all the better. "What's great about Portal's approach is that suggestive spareness of the plot and the absence of characterization leaves us plenty of room to fill in the blanks with our imagination, which, when supported by a framework as precisely and elegantly thought out as it is here, delivers a more powerful final product than many other games that give us plenty of characterization and story but precious little genuine mystery ... Portal goes one step further and questions the very nature of the person thing giving us those orders; like you said, Valve's puppeteering of its players."
Valve Manager: Hey we're going to release this thing called Orange Box with HL2 and TF2 and we'd really like to pack something else in it to help fill out the press releases, any ideas?
Valve Coder: Well the programmers and I have been playing around with this little game called Portal. It's sort of based on the old game called Narbacular Drop, see you have this gun that creates portals and....
Valve Mangager: That sounds great. Polish up what you have and submit it to the testers.
Valve Coder: Well it's not really done you understand, there isn't a story or anything, and several of the designers have had to take leaves of absence after trying to figure out how levels might work.
Valve Manager: Look it doesn't matter, it's just a throw in. Nobody will be buying this for Portal, or HL2 for that matter, we just have to throw the community a bone for making them wait 10 years for TF2. Finish what you have and let's get it in there.
(9 months later...)
Game Pundits: A stunning example of minimalistic game design! A triumph of elegant simplicity and quasi-storytelling!
My cube spoke to me a couple times on that level. Perhaps you didn't hear it?