Verno wrote on Apr 17, 2011, 01:16:

Cutter wrote on Apr 16, 2011, 23:52:

SpectralMeat wrote on Apr 16, 2011, 21:30:
So Valve wants to release the game early, and some of you are complaining about it?

It's how they're doing it. All this BS just to maybe release it a day early? Big fucking whoop. If EA, Activision or Ubisoft did something like this people would be looking to crucify them. Just because Valve is doing it makes it any more right. That is, for normal people who don't like to be dicked around.

What BS? It's an optional promotion that you can totally ignore.

That's pretty much it. Just ignore the promotion if you don't like it. I am getting the PS3 version so for me it doesn't matter if it unlocks early or not, but I enjoy playing the Portal 2 levels in those potato sack games and trying to unlock the game early for everyone.

I think this is a pretty clever way for Valve to promote those indie games and try and get people to play games that they normally wouldn't play. I personally much prefer promotions like this, or the one they had not long ago with the treasure hunt, then the "like us on facebook to unlock a trailer" type of stupid crap.

For content purpose: Those curious or dissapointed by the slow 'early' release, check out:
http://valvearg.com/wiki/GLaDOS@Home

Specifically from "how the site works":
"The main bar at the top represents the average of the length of all the red bars. Once this is full (when every red bar is full), we get Portal 2! "

So whilst we are seeing minor release changes now, if things continue at the current rate (and every game is filled, with the help of potato multipliers), then 1 calculated prediction gives us:
http://www.themcgoverns.info/portal/

For what little its worth Beamer, I thought it was a great post. But yes, it will fall on deaf ears, or TL:DR A.D.D posters.

I still check Blues every single day (or more), but checking the comments reveals just the same old tired diatribe from the jaded few, as opposed to when games were actually openly debated for their merits and flaws.

Checking the comments here is atually kinda humorous, as 95% of the time you can predict why there are 50 posts on a certain subject before even clicking to view them. Self entitlement, jade, DRM, x developer fucked you personally etc etc are always at the forefront before anyone actually considers the games themselves. The aging PC 'community' is self-destructive, and only has itself to blame (not that anyone will accept this - awaiting same tired responses to be shovelled out).

GG Valve, eagerly await your next game, your next mould-breaking marketing, your early release and your community engagement. Yes, we do exist.

Tango wrote on Apr 17, 2011, 06:14:
[...]
What is not obvious to me is why the adults on this site (and others) immediately respond in such a negative, childish fashion to a marketing initiative [...]
Do these same people work themselves up into such a frenzy about adverts at the movie theatre, or every time they drive past billboards? Do they scream and shout at the guy dressed up like a giant hot dog at the ballpark?
[...]

Uh could you elaborate on the connection between those two? I honestly don't get it.

Nothing Valve is doing with this is going to make Portal 2 any better a game.

FWIW, I agree with you and Beamer. We can all spot marketing initiatives when we see them. Of course this is designed solely to increase Portal 2 sales and make Valve more money. Valve are a business, and businesses have always existed in this industry since programmers stopped designing games in their bedrooms. This is all obvious.

What is not obvious to me is why the adults on this site (and others) immediately respond in such a negative, childish fashion to a marketing initiative which a) may get Portal 2 into the hands of gamers early, b) supports indie developers, and c) above all can be ignored by anyone who doesn't want to play along, yet will still give those people the benefit of the early unlock.

Do these same people work themselves up into such a frenzy about adverts at the movie theatre, or every time they drive past billboards? Do they scream and shout at the guy dressed up like a giant hot dog at the ballpark?

Meh.

Few here, or rather likely the quiet majority, take any enjoyment out of gaming.

And this is why you always come off as a pathetic corporate shill. This decision has absolutely nothing to do with gaming. It has everything to do with marketing. As a marketing decision, it's probably fairly smart - based on the sales charts, it appears to be driving sales. But that's it. And since when are gamers supposed to get any "enjoyment" out of marketing?

Nothing Valve is doing with this is going to make Portal 2 any better a game. It's not going to make you have any more fun playing it. So forgive us if we aren't all super-enthusiastic over Valve's attempt to sell more games.

Now when Portal 2 is finally released, and I get a chance to play it, if I like it, I'll be happy to say something nice about Valve. But I'm not going to based on their sales pitch alone.

@Beamer

Dude, put that crap in your newsletter, no one wants to read your long-winded rambling diatribes in a Blues News Post...

Exactly, it's a smart marketing gamble. I don't think people get how much of a risk this is in terms of pissing off their retail partners either. Valve is like any other company, they sell shitloads of their games at Wal-mart and Gamestop. No one releases early and lets their customers participate in setting that date in the traditional industry. This is a really big deal and could potentially set some future precedent. This kind of shit is great for us, people constantly bitch at the industry's inflexible release standards.

You have to wonder how much of a gamble it really is. I think there's a good reason why they started it on Friday and not last weekend. If it had started last weekend, the game would have likely been unlocked at least a week before retail. However, because they started it on Friday, it looks like the game will unlock on Monday at the very earliest. The requirements for unlocking the game seem pretty high as well. Also, Valve hasn't given any specific goals for players to meet. As mentioned by other posters, the calculations seem to vary per game. Killing Floor has by far the most players (and therefore highest total playtime), yet it's bar shows the least amount of progress. If the playtime for every game factored equally into the countdown calculation and Valve provided a specific number for the total playtime that players need to reach, I think players would be making much quicker progress. Finally, when you consider the fact that these indie games were never going to get as much playtime as other, higher-profile games, this marketing campaign doesn't really look like a gamble at all. Keep in mind that Valve knows exactly how many copies each game has sold and how much time has been spent playing each one. The fact that no specific goals have been set and that each game is weighted differently towards the countdown suggests that Valve has a lot more control over the Portal 2 unlock date than the players.

Once again, this is not a criticism of the idea of letting players affect release dates, so there's no need to start ranting about entitlements and such. However, Valve's implementation of this idea isn't quite as daring or altruistic as some of you seem to think.

This comment was edited on Apr 17, 2011, 03:46.

Projected Launch (after filling bars for 3 of 13 games):
52h:19m
(4am ish tuesday PST).


Default launch with no work:
54h:48m
(6am ish tuesday PST)

So really, its only going to launch 2 and a half hours early from all that work. Even if every bar fills (which is NOT going to happen), valve is at most gonna let it launch 10 or so hours early. My guess is that all this work and money will only end up launching the game 5 or 6 hours early.

Plus, what if valve ends up delaying the release for a few hours anyway? People expected a midnight release of hl2 and that didn't happen.

So far its all kinda a yawn to me.

Edit: Those release time estimators are way off since they don't take into account a couple factors.
The biggest one is that they think the bar filling is how much unlocking is happening. ITS NOT. The bar at the top is how much time is completed towards the finish line. So waiting 24 hours out of the 96 is by default going to show 25% done. Add the extra hour from 1 unlock and that only advances the bar another 1% for a total of 26%.
The actual formula to estimate is going to be a differential equation that has a steady unchanging rate increase in bar tied to time and a estimated additional rate that's dependant on how fast the bars are unlocking and how much CPUs are available AND the potato factor which is ever increasing. Plus each game's bar is NOT equal. Look at how many people are playing killing floor and its not going up much. My guess is valve did each game's bar based on some percentage of total owners and there's tons more killing floor owners.

All this stuff about upsetting retail partners. Aint gonna happen. The game will unlock earliest at midnight east coast. More likely midnight west coast. So yeah, its on for Tuesday release, just slightly earlier Tuesday. Valve isn't about to break their own release date, they are about the money and they don't think the money is in upsetting retail. If they did, they would have had a bigger discount on digital copies.

This comment was edited on Apr 17, 2011, 03:35.

Valve has yet to let me down.

KilrathiAce wrote on Apr 17, 2011, 03:09:
All this portal 2 hype and little games related to having it released early... its ok if you actually plan or like the games, but there is no way in hell I would be playing something I dont really care for just to have a chance at portal 2 being released early... There is plenty of good games to play and little time. Valve may think that Portal 2 is some kind of second coming of christ or something but in reality its just another game.

Just another game that a lot of people want to play...Valve is honestly just using the hype created by the players to hype Portal 2.

All this portal 2 hype and little games related to having it released early... its ok if you actually plan or like the games, but there is no way in hell I would be playing something I dont really care for just to have a chance at portal 2 being released early... There is plenty of good games to play and little time. Valve may think that Portal 2 is some kind of second coming of christ or something but in reality its just another game.

I think this is awesome, if I weren't in super crunch mode trying to ship our game I'd play more of these indy titles I've purchased but haven't had time to dive into. This got me to get my 20th bandaid in Super Meat Boy, complete a few more levels in Rush. I'm interested in checking out a couple more of the games in the potato sack, but don't have the time right now.
Now if it would only unlock on Sunday, then I'd have time to play Portal 2 before we ship. (unlikely, but hey one can hope)

Stolk wrote on Apr 17, 2011, 01:33:
what

I think it's something about tears, moaning and hypocrisy.

I could be wrong, it is 3am after all and I just spend 5hrs playing Shogun2.

This gimmick did get me to play the demos of several potato sack games. It's not like I actually care if Portal 2 is released 6 hours early, or believe my contribution would make a difference. But I might buy one or two of the games, because they seem worth it.

I guess from a customer perspective we can't complain since we had no reason to expect it might be released early. And if this silly gimmick draws attention to some good indy games, that's not such a bad thing.

Stolk wrote on Apr 17, 2011, 01:38:
Steam top sellers. Portal 2 number 1. The Potato Sack number 3. Portal 2 + The Potato Sack number 4. Such stupid marketing!!!

Exactly, it's a smart marketing gamble. I don't think people get how much of a risk this is in terms of pissing off their retail partners either. Valve is like any other company, they sell shitloads of their games at Wal-mart and Gamestop. No one releases early and lets their customers participate in setting that date in the traditional industry. This is a really big deal and could potentially set some future precedent. This kind of shit is great for us, people constantly bitch at the industry's inflexible release standards.

Cutter wrote on Apr 16, 2011, 20:18:
Classic piece of stupid marketing.

Steam top sellers. Portal 2 number 1. The Potato Sack number 3. Portal 2 + The Potato Sack number 4. Such stupid marketing!!!

Beamer wrote on Apr 17, 2011, 01:03:
This is why this board isn't fun anymore.


Few here, or rather likely the quiet majority, take any enjoyment out of gaming.
For the loudest of you the entertainment no longer comes from actually playing games but from bitching, moaning, whining and feeling like victims. It's not even fun discussing that topic anymore because it's beaten to death and some of you go further and further into some kind of loathing. It's hard to believe you still dedicate this much time to something you hate. Yeah, I know, "we want it to be what it once was!" but all your bitching and moaning isn't helping. Go away for a while. Get some bright air. Rather than complain that Valve is doing all this, or as someone in another thread claimed "wasting money on marketing" stop paying attention. Start being that guy that's happily surprised to walk into the video game section of Target and see a new game by your favorite developer that you hadn't been aware was on its way out.



What kills me most is how some of you fail to realize that you've changed as much as the industry has. On top of becoming bitter, jaded dicks you've just become more mature consumers, frankly, adults. There's an interestingish article in the newest KillScreen in which an author relates how he received the NES version of Dragon Warrior for free with a 2 year subscription to Nintendo Power (man, I remember getting my parents to sign me up for that deal, too.) He talks about how he was unable to play for 6 weeks after receiving the game, but he had the poster of all the enemies that NP included. He read the poster constantly. He memorized it. He worshipped it. It was religion to him and he knew every single tiny thing he could about the game without playing it. That game was his entire world and it completely captivated him. He was absorbed. Nothing could possibly matter more. I remember being the same way. For a long while nothing in my life mattered as much as video games. Games I played and games I didn't, honestly - I can think of a few games I was obsessed over based upon articles in Nintendo Power only to discover they totally blew, or games I obsessed over that I owned only to go back recently and discover that the game sucked and most of the joy was my own imagination running wild with the general theme of the game.
But the author will never, ever be into a game as much as he was into Dragon Warrior. I'll never be as into a game as I was Blaster Master or Doom or Duke Nukem or X-COM or Syndicate. We're not kids anymore. It's impossible for a game to captivate us like that. Games are far deeper with much more atmosphere than some of the ones I listed above but they won't hold on to me because there's so much in life that takes priority.

What kills me is how regularly I see comments here in which people blame the games for that. Some of you get irate that games don't make you feel the same way. You don't seem to realize that you changed more than games. Go up to a kid today and he feels the same way you once did.


Some of you a miserable, humorless, impossible to please and completely pointless. Verno, you always seem to think I'm talking to you and I'm not - you're fairly miserable at times and often humorless but irregularly for both of those and always thoughtful and worth reading. I'm surprised to see nin so bitter here as he usually is humorous in his hate and seems to enjoy gaming by and large. But there are some usual people here that never, ever say anything positive or interesting. Just a lot of one line comments like "suck my balls Valve" or "way to screw us over by trying not to go into the red" or "man, I haven't played an original video game since Space Wars, everything since is just you hitting a button and stuff happening just like that game!" Wait, not that last one - it contains too much content. People at least used to try - it used to be common to see the "popular threads" list have multiple triple-digit threads in which people debated the merits of various things. No longer even debate - just condemnation, industry ignorance and one line curses.

what

For some silly reason, the Amnesia DLC doesn't let you save. You either beat it in one go or you lose all progress. It's pretty dumb considering this is an intense survival horror game with a heavy emphasis on puzzles.

I believe Valve's clock only updates when a game is "completed". But the other clocks posted earlier in this thread have their own estimations of earlier unlocks based on total play.

Having the timer only count completed games doesn't make much sense, since Killing Floor is a multiplayer game and can't really be completed. Also, some games would take significantly longer to complete than others.

This comment was edited on Apr 17, 2011, 01:40.

DragonKP wrote on Apr 17, 2011, 01:21:

Rilcon wrote on Apr 16, 2011, 22:25:
The bitter, the entitlement... I can practically taste it all the way over here.

qq some more, please.

qq? what the fuck is this? some sort of dairy queen forum? qq???? I can practically taste your homosexual sense of gaming all the way over here.

I think you need to enter college. Earn your sense of bitter entitlement. Oh, and a good healthy portion of go F yourself.

If this reply isn't a joke, then I weep for society as a whole...