Potato Sack
The ARG began without announcement with the release of the "Potato Sack Bundle" on Steam on April 1, 2011, which offered the included games at 75% off their normal price.
In the case of Toki Tori, sections of new levels included braille code that referred to the latitude and longitude coordinates of Two Tribes' headquarters.
Players found that by completing certain tasks in the game, they would be presented with login screens for the fictional Aperture Science corporation within the Steam interface.
These provided players with compressed archives of pictures that consisted of Portal 2 artwork, including photographs from around Seattle (where Valve is based) embedded in their alpha channels.
By mapping these points, using locations commonly shared by one clue, players were led to the name of a Steam group that contained a single member by the name of "dinosaur", a reference to an earlier ARG used for Portal 2's announcement.
Screenshots within this user's profile gave a QR Code that pointed to a website with a countdown time set to expire on the morning of April 15, 2011.
[7][8][9][10] As April 15 drew near, about nine heavily involved players from the ARG appeared to disengage from the various chat rooms, leaving with the message "There's a hole in the sky through which I can fly"—a line used in early advertisements for Portal; when contacted by other players, these individuals remained coy and cryptic about their actions, appearing to have been "infected" by GLaDOS.
Spoofing other distributed computing efforts like Folding@home, the site stated that if players generated enough CPU cycles by playing the thirteen games in the Potato Sack, GLaDOS would be rebooted earlier, effectively suggesting an earlier release of Portal 2 before the originally scheduled time of 7:00 AM PDT on April 19, 2011.
[8][12] Only one game, Killing Floor, saw an update in this phase, where a special chamber in their Portal-themed map would be opened for players to complete for an in-game achievement.
[1] Only there did Valve explain the promotion, with the ultimate goal being the early release of Portal 2 at the conclusion of the ARG, according to Gaijin Games' CEO Alex Neuse.
[1] The developers decided to design the fiction of the ARG around the return of GLaDOS, who had been apparently destroyed at the end of Portal, leaving clues to her revival in the various games.
[1] Between the December meeting and second gathering in March 2011, prior to the ARG's launch, there was no direct verbal communication between Valve or the developers.
[4] Throughout the ARG, the players were monitored by the developers through the Internet Relay Chat, forums, and web sites that were being used to coordinate the solving effort.
[1] In some cases, players attempted to download beta versions of the patches to the games, but Valve was able to respond, usually in minutes, to block access to these.
[25][26][27] Pete Davison of GamePro considered it a "risky marketing move" that relied on Valve's long-standing reputation with the community to build on their trust, as well as a "hugely positive sign of support for indie games" from the company.
[25] David Ewalt of Forbes considered the tactic a huge benefit for the indie developers, whose games led Steam sales charts in the weeks leading to Portal 2's release.
[28] Ben Kuchera of Ars Technica noted that it was entirely possible to ignore the alternate reality game without any negative effects or losing any potential benefits.
[30] Leigh Alexander of Gamasutra also criticized the ARG for not providing an idea of the expectation of reward when it was successfully completed, comparing the ten-hour gain to a vignette in the movie A Christmas Story, where the main character after saving up money and waiting weeks for a secret decoder ring to decipher a message from a radio program, finds that the coded message is only an advertising blurb.
[31] Retailers in countries where the disc-based version of the game would have lagged a few days behind the Steam release opted to break their street date to avoid losing sales to the digital downloads.
[22] Dylan Fitterer, programmer for Audiosurf, noted that during the promotion, more than 6000 people were playing his game at a time, compared to 300 players before the event.
[23] Ichiro Lambe of Dejobaan Games was also pleased with the sales increased; while not a windfall, it helped him to continue to live comfortably.
[34] John Gibson of Tripwire Interactive believed that similar ARGs could be run in the future without the presence of a major title like Portal 2 as long as there is a significant payoff for the players.
