Portal, the dark horse included in the Orange box, has achieved universal acclaim since its release in 2007. The internet is now full of cake jokes and “Still alive” is probably the most recognisable song in a video game to date. In this article I’m going to try and list five reasons, not just why it’s such a successful game, but also what its success can teach gaming as a whole.
1. Even my mom has finished Portal: I’ll be the first to admit I’m awful when it comes to puzzle solving in games. While everyone else was having fun with Guybrush Threepwood and his chums, I was stuck trying to figure out how to open the door with a carrot and some marbles. I couldn’t even blow out pretentious hot air with the rest of my forum buddies over Braid because I was too busy being mocked by that last jigsaw piece on World 2. But I finished Portal... and so did my mother, and my girlfriend, neither of whom touch games and repeatedly scold me for my hobby.
We’ve all finished Portal because Portal is accessible. Most of the game is basically a tutorial, but we either don’t notice or care because playing through it is so much fun. Valve have found a way to gradually lead us through these puzzles at exactly the right pace, where you can be challenged in a way that’ll make you stop and think, but crucially not for too long. In my first play-through I never felt that familiar feeling of inadequacy and frustration I usually get from trying to solve puzzles, but at the same time I got the elation when I finished it. That sort of level design is top notch and extremely difficult to do. 2. A short game is not a bad game: When people talked about the more negative aspects of Portal, one phrase was trotted out again and again, “It’s such a pity it was so short”. This isn’t a criticism reserved for Portal alone either, any game that doesn’t span past the 10 hour mark will be admonished for it. RPG’s tended to be the only game that could span a campaign over a long period of time, but with the ever increasing amount of game categories, (open world games, sandbox games, multiplayer games), gamers these days expect playtime to reach upwards of 15 hours.
But there is a lot to be said for the short game. Portal has a play time of about 3-5 hours which is exceptionally short for a game, even an FPS these days spans about 8 hours and they usually include multi-player too, which increased the play time ten- fold. But because of Portal’s short play-time it is absolutely packed with gold. At the risk of drooling on to my keyboard, each minute is lovingly crafted and the style, humour and challenge of the game never wanes for a second. A game that lasts upwards of 30 hours is bound to have some sections that drag, and is going to include part that are merely more than filler, (Orzammar caverns anyone?). If Portal went on for another five hours, GLaDOS’ pitch black humour could have lost its edge, the challenges may have become boring and most crucially it mightn’t have had people begging for more. Portal 2 comes out later this year and Valve have said it’s going to be four times as long. I would be extremely surprised if they manage to stretch the gold over a period that long.
3. But they need to be priced right: Aha, nearly got you there! Of course when you talk about the length of a game the price has to be integrated within that. Creating a fantastic three hour long game that’s priced equally to Bethesda’s latest 70 hour epic is going to earn you quite a lot of ire. Portal was originally released with the Orange Box which included Half-Life 2 along with its two episodes, and Team Fortress 2, all at the price of about 40 quid. That means Portal itself was priced at about eight Euros. I have no problem paying for shorter games if they’re priced accordingly. Eight Euros is cheaper than your average cinema ticket and they tend to be only two hours long.
Portal bore the brunt of most of the criticism over shorter games, but it began to pave the way for cheaper, shorter games to be sold digitally. We now have a host of games (mainly indie) that cost a tiny amount and while the play time isn’t massive the time you do spend with the game is excellent. We need to rid ourselves of the notion that games need to be a set length of time and start embracing games of varying length and price.4. Valve can write....pretty well: The amount of quotes, meme’s, jokes and nerd references that have come out of Portal is staggering. Just try and Google “The cake is a lie” and watch the thousands of sites pop up. In the first point I mentioned how Valve have mastered level design in this game, but the way Portal actually plays only makes it half the game, if that. The writing in Portal is sublime, in terms of writing in games it surpasses the fantastic narrative of the Half-Life series and should be put right up there with Planescape: Torment.
GLaDOS is possibly the funniest character to appear in a video game and the Companion Cube has managed to endear players worldwide without actually having any lines of dialogue. The writers in Valve managed to create GLaDOS without any proper conversation, the only lines written for it are one way and are quite sparse up until the end. 50+ hour long RPGs have mountains of dialogue and histories written about their characters yet most of them don’t have anywhere near the amount of appeal that this psychotic robot does. The Companion Cube is even more impressive. Despite being no more than just a crate coloured differently, the Companion Cube is loved by gamers everywhere. It has no lines, makes only a brief appearance in the game and...well, it’s a crate, yet anyone who’s played the game will harbour this inexplicable affection for it. Valve could have just given you a normal crate but they didn’t, and turning an inanimate object into something that is now a top marketing product, is writing at its finest. The writing in Portal serves an important lesson for all those other developers out there. Writing is crucial to a game; it’s not just an extra layer. People have this insane notion that only RPG’s need to have good writing and for every other genre it’s just a bonus. Portal, a puzzle game, lasted in people’s hearts and minds because Valve made a massive attempt to write something genuinely funny and, without that, Portal would not have succeeded to the extent that it did.
5. There’s hope for us all: Portal is the spiritual successor to a game called Narbacular Drop, an independent game released in 2005 by the students of DigiPen Institute of Technology. Valve liked the idea and so hired the ten creators of the game and put them to work on Portal. This is a pretty heart-warming success story, yes, but it’s also important in the greater scheme of things. There are people out there creating some amazing games and the only thing that’s holding them back is their budget. Thanks to a few varying factors the last few years has seen a huge flourish in the indie market. Games like Minecraft, Braid and Sleep is Death to name a few are expanding the horizons of games past generic shooter #102 and that’s fantastic, but it can go further. Valve have the right idea in picking these people up and giving them a budget to aid them in making their ideas real. Incidentally Valve didn’t just stop with Portal, this also happened to Turtle Rock with Left 4 Dead and Icefrog with Defence of the Ancients 2. Some smelly hippies will tell you that big name companies should leave indie developers alone, but as fantastic as these indie games are they could be even better with a budget behind them. Nerbacular Drop is probably great, I don’t know because I haven’t played it, but Portal is fantastic. I’m sure the students of DigiPen will tell you their original idea wasn’t hampered massively and Valve brought more to the table then they took away.
