Game developer and publisher, Valve, has kicked off the next phase of its marketing push for Portal 2 on Friday, after whipping up a firestorm of interest during the alternate reality game campaign, which involved, among other mysterious elements, images of potatoes on its Steam website and within select games. The new phase explains the purpose for the tuber teasers, motivating users to download or play, as a part or in the entirety, the Potato Sack collection of independent games.
The purpose in doing so is to follow the goading by GLaDOS, the evil artificial intelligence in the Portal game series, to jump-start her system ahead of the baseline April 19 game launch schedule through “raw computational power.” Purchasing, if not yet owned, or playing those games, if already owned, would help achieve that end.
However, there’s been some confusion on Twitter and in some opinion circles about what moves the promotion forward, with some believing the promotion to be only driven by the calculated commercialism of sales, not the playing element. Others, however, have noted that Valve should be commended for supporting independent developers through its Steam platform.
Whatever the company’s motivation, according to a helpful stat counter, based on people participating in the promotion, Portal 2‘s launch has already been accelerated 22 hours.
[Source: GigaOM]
