Valve's ARG: A Time Sink and Cash Grab, But Who Cares?

Butler rather sheepishly deleted his entire last post.  But he has an ok reason!  Read on for his explanation.

I had a great rant all planned out.  I had spent my weekend participating in Valve's alternate reality game surrounding Portal 2 in an effort to get the game released early.  Long story short to anyone who wasn't following Valve's ARG and the recent developments, after lots of hints at an early release, Valve blueballed the community by really really making us work for it.  The goal was to accrue enough time playing 13 indie games (2 of which I reviewed last week) from a pack on the Steam store, and after logging the requisite amount, Portal 2 would unlock.  I had a many-tiered tirade all set to go up expressing my frustration that, after I (and many MANY others) spent the entire weekend buying games, playing games, tying up our computers by letting the games idle for hours on end, we were rewarded with an "early release" of a whopping 12 hours.  I still stand by my assessment that this campaign was a flop that essentially made me waste a weekend for something that I could easily have waited until Tuesday morning for.

But the second that Steam informed me that my Portal 2 files were decrypting, I completely forgot what I was so pissy about and proceeded to game until I could no longer reliably control where I was aiming.  And at the end of the day, it was a few bucks I threw at some generally fun titles and one weekend where I wish I had been more productive.  Did YOU miss any funerals for the ARG? Yeah, that's what I thought.

I will give the game a review proper when I have played it to a satisfactory extent.  Valve, you guys are safe for now.  But please, the next time you call something an early release, don't bullshit us on the matter.  Dangling the game in front of our faces but just out of reach is a good way to get us hyped ONCE.  Let's not get greedy, yes?

Though really, who am I kidding?  They could pull this
all over again for Half Life 2 Episode 3, and we'd still
crawl back like the battered lovers we are.