Portal: the Validity of Mechanics, Rules, and Cake

Valve’s Portal is an interesting game that challenges the norms of game design and emotional response. It allows the players to learn skills and plot implicitly while keeping the concept of logic-based puzzles. However, the game explores what it really means to be a first person shooter. Through observation of players, one can see that Portal’s design and play of mechanics offer the balance between one’s thirst for rebellion and structured puzzles.

Coming in the Valve The Orange Box series, Portal offers a unique look into first-person gaming that keeps the player constantly enthralled in the game. Dan Adams says “[i]t's quirky, clever, polished, and presented with a spark of a subtly evil humor that it's hard not to enjoy the quick romp through Aperture Laboratories” 1. Starting out as a mere design pitch of students, Portal how now developed into an extremely popular game. The game manual offers a good summary:

In Portal, the player controls the character named Chell from a first person perspective as she is challenged to navigate through a series of rooms using the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device ("portal gun" or "ASHPD"). The portal gun can create two distinct portal ends, orange and blue. Neither is specifically an entrance or exit; all objects that travel through the one portal will exit through the other. If subsequent portal ends are created, the previously created portal of the same color is closed. Not all surfaces are able to accommodate a portal. Chell is sometimes provided with cubes which she can pick up and use to climb on or to hold down large buttons that open doors or activate mechanisms. Special barriers exist at the end of test chambers (and within some) which, when passed through, close any open portals and "emancipate" (disintegrate) any cubes carried through; portals cannot be fired through them.2
Its simplicity, coupled with the logical application of given tools offer a unique game experience.

On introduction, the main character is revealed to be in some type of holding facility. One later discovers that “You're evidently a lab rat in an 'Enrichment Center' specifically designed to test your ability to use this device to navigate an absurdly hazardous obstacle course, led along by a lilting, broken-sounding synthetic female voice that rings out from tinny speakers” 3. One discovers that this female voice is GLaDOS, an artificial intelligence species that narrates throughout the game, offering the slightest hints of plot and litters the game with moments worthy of a fit of giggling. Tom Frances summarizes the mood of the game well commenting that “Portal is a comedy puzzle game. A pretty black comedy, granted, but firmly a comedy. Most of the jokes revolve around you being lied to, killed, or thirsty to the point of delirium, but that won't stop you chuckling at least once per puzzle” 4. The humor of the narrative adds a special spark to the plot itself.

Portal has quite a simple plot, however, it takes quite a little time in game play to expose it. While you soon discover that you are a test subject in an advanced science research facility, you are not given any back story. For example the only hint that you are given into your past is when the narrator lets it slip that you were an evil person before and you were unwanted. She states that “You’re not a good person you know. Good people don’t end up here”. This peaks the player’s curiosity to learn more about the female character they are playing. More plot clues can be found by not-so-hidden ‘secret’ rooms, meant to be unknown and unseen by beings in the testing facilities. These rooms have “been daubed with graffiti by other test subjects in later rooms, which suggests some degree of rebellion” causing the player to rethink the character of the omnipotent GLaDOS and achieve an overwhelming sense of paranoia that already has its underlyings because of the very clean and composed nature of the environment.5 This is further fueled by the unreliable narrator. As soon as level four, GLaDOS reveals itself as “enhancing the truth” before. Swift, a designer for the game, comments that “"On its own, the [Portal] game play would be alright. Honestly, a little on the dry side”.6 He emphasized the importance of clever writing in the beloved title. Not to worry though, the paranoia does pay off and not without humor. Leading up to the climax of the game GLaDOS politely asks, “Didn’t we have fun though? Remember when you were on the platform sliding into the fire put and I was like ‘goodbye’ and you were like ‘no way!’ and we pretended we were going to murder you? That was grand.” The humor of the narrator just adds to the creepiness factor. As a new way to look at first-person shooters, Portal’s plot and narration allow the reader to become immersed in this simple, yet addicting game.

To study the social and tutorial aspect of Portal, I merely watched people play the game. I had played and beaten the game on my own accord, but luckily enough time had passed that I forgot most of the solutions to each particular puzzle and merely only had an advantage because of the gained skill-set in playing the game previously. I wanted to make sure that I watched people who have either never played or never heard of the game experience it for the first time. I felt that this way, the player would really be implicitly and explicitly learning while the game was going on. First, I watched a single player play through the first half of the game. Ryan, the observed player, was familiar with the XBOX 360 platform and had heard of the game, knowing only about the idea that one creating portals for game play, but had never played any of The Orange Box series before. Therefore, he was not familiar with the environmental aspect of the server, or the nature of the games.

For my second player experience, I observed a group of six to seven students who had never played the game before. These students had ranging video game experience, but all seemed to have grasped the basic concepts of gaming. I had these students pass off the controller on each level. As a group they conquered the level, providing input and suggestions to the controlling player. This type of social atmosphere fostered and enhanced the growing sense of eeriness and paranoia that the game hopes to accomplish. These players seemed not only to learn from their own mistakes and attempts in the game, but also from each others erroneous endeavors.

To gather data, mainly I wrote down the reactions of each of the players to the implicit and explicit rules and game information as it presented itself. I felt that this play-testing of sorts would ultimately give me the information I would find most useful. The idea came to me from the Portal designers themselves who stated that:

Play-testing is probably the most important things we ever did on Portal. Actually sit down and watch people play your game. Watching how they react tells you what they want from the game, where they need more training, where you need to reinforce game play mechanics, and whether they get the story. 7

Therefore, I decided that this would work best when observing the players’ reactions to the game and given information.

Portal offers the chance for the experimental game design that the first half of the game is merely a tutorial for the more action-packed second half. Through implicit and explicit education to the game mechanics and skills, players build an infantry of knowledge that will eventually help them in the ‘real world’ of the game. Tom Bradwell commented on this stating that “The first levels serve as a gentle introduction to the various concepts at work, and it's a good few minutes before you gain access to the weapon itself, and even longer before it's fully operational”8. Sal Accardo offered a similar view saying:

The initial puzzles train you in certain concepts, like carrying a box through a portal to hold down a switch, or creating a path for an energy ball to reach a power receptacle. But once you're given the ability to place both entrance and exit portals, puzzles soon become devious, introducing moving platforms, live turrets, the need to place portals in a timed sequence, and generating momentum to fling yourself across large distances.9

Another critic, Tom Francis states that, “although it introduces its concepts to you gradually, it's a complex equation by the end” 10. These skills allow you to finally beat the game by mastering and honing your knowledge of the mechanics of the game. The game is set up as if the entire first half was merely a tutorial. Accardo also commented on this declaring that:

As it turns out, most of the puzzles are just training to prepare you for this last section of the game, at which point you'll have a vocabulary of skills that free you up to experiment instead of looking for that one perfect solution.11

However, the player does not even realize this until things begin to heat up (forgive the fire-pit reference).

The design of the game itself lends to the balance of creative innovation of the player, coupled with the feeling of confinement versus rebellion. The narrator of GLaDOS is key to achieving this. In the in game commentary, designers discuss that “GLaDOS's announcements serve not only to instruct Chell and help her progress through the game, but also to create atmosphere and develop the AI as a character”.12 Not only does she offer humor and critical phrases that move along the plot, such as her nagging references to cake, she also gives the player knowledge of the mechanics of the game. “Anyone who's played Portal has heard GLaDOS state, ‘Speedy thing goes in, speedy thing comes out’. That line sums up the mechanics that distinguished Portal from the rest of the herd” Jeremy Alessi explained.13 Most of the game mechanics deal with the play of physics and perspective that a first person shooter has to offer. Alessi comments on this as well stating, ““In the end, Portal uses the traditional teleportation mechanic with a velocity and orientation change”.14 Even though the game is mainly meant for logical, possibly hesitant, play, it does leave room for that Rambo/Bond character in all of us. David Craddock comments in his review of the game that “Portal doesn't allow the player to carry any weapons per se, that doesn't mean no hostiles will appear to antagonize the test subject during her adventure”.15 Tom Francis explains very well about the diversification of the first person shooter mechanic. He states:

What's surprising about the turret encounters is that they're not purely puzzles: most of them can be conquered with speed, quick-thinking and makeshift cover, and they're entirely freeform. In other words, they're combat. It's a refreshing change of pace from the thoughtfulness of the rest of the game, but if you do prefer to use only your brain, there's always a clever way of avoiding being shot altogether. 16

This aspect allows the game to achieve a certain level of playability.

Portal’s playability is determined by many things. The most obvious of these are the rules. Every game must have rules. Rules establish the boundaries of the game and differentiate it from play. While sometimes players are given explicit instructions via the diagrams on the floor and walls, these must be discovered to be useful by the player, rather than just pointed out to by the narration or context of the game. However, most of the learning in this game takes place on an implicit realm. Often, players must discover for themselves what things will kill you and what will not and what to do in each given situation in order to pass the level. Bradwell discusses the implicit learning of portal placement stating that:

Framing the game play are the portal placement restrictions - grey concrete floors, walls and ceilings can accept a portal, but reflective black sections, moving surfaces, doors, glass partitions and other world-objects cannot - and those springy metal rods tied to your calves, which allow you to fall over vast distances without incurring damage.17

All of these things must be learned in the game. Through the use of trial and error, the player learns what is allowed and what is not. Dan Adams also has a comment on this discussing:
The trick is that you can only have one entrance and one exit meaning sometimes you'll encounter several kinds of brain teasers on how to use the portals correctly, and in some cases, quickly and often. It'll make you think about which portal you're placing, the exact location of where it needs to go, and the timing of when portals need to be switched. 18
This is all done by trial and error, the implicit experiments of the game in order to get a player to follow the rules and plot. This manipulation of the environment in order to achieve the access to the next level is the very basis of the game. The HalfLife server allows all sorts of objects to be used “rewrites the rules for how players approach and manipulate their environment”.19 Though implicit learning one advances in the game.

Implicit learning can also be used to move along the plot. Bradwell interestingly enough discusses how the design of this game guides the player to notice certain things. He comments that:

One of the game's great strengths, if not its greatest, is that concepts are introduced in such a way that players are entertained and informed without exception or confusion, guided by subtle design decisions that emphasize particular elements and concepts by constraining.20

An example of this is that the first ‘secret’ room that reveals plot hints of rebellion and doom appears in the first android level. Because the players usually find the need to drop some kind of object on the android, the game provides boxes. However, the boxes are placed strategically in from of the entrance to the secret room. Therefore, when the player removes the boxes in the hope of advancing to the next level and surviving the vicious machine guns, he or she will notice the secret room. This strategic way to get the player to notice a certain element without explicitly saying so is genius. For a game like Portal which is about bending the rules of physics and games, it is ironic that the rules of the game make it worth playing.

Through watching the different types of players, I noticed the way the game teaches and therefore makes the game playable. The short, interesting games offer fun for both the casual gamer and the triple-A market.21 The game keeps you on a range of emotions, while some like Bradwell find the game “rewarding, not frustrating, to sit and ponder one, partly because of that economy of design, partly because the pacing is so patiently considered, and partly because it always comes together with such delightful eloquence,” most find themselves getting pleasantly frustrated with themselves.22 This frustration though is conveniently targeted at the game, through the sense of the earlier discussed paranoia and need to rebel, so that it creates a competitive edge of beating the game and showing the narrator that you are not just some lab rat to a single player game, which by nature has no competition except for completing one’s self-goals. An example of this anger turned into passion to win that I encountered was when one of the players saw an obstacle and merely said, “I can just portal across so f*#& you!” This competition and anger is also fueled by the narrator’s torture of allowing you to become attached to a companion cube, which one player nicknamed ‘Cubie’, and then asking you to exterminate it when it is no longer needed without the chance to say goodbye, causing players to wonder just how much the narrator will hesitate to exterminate you once your use is over. This play with emotions was inspired when one of the designers, “Wolpaw was reading some declassified government interrogation documents and learned that isolation leads subjects to become attached to inanimate objects”.23 The game also evokes a certain sense of curiosity. Accardo comments that:

About 16 of 19 puzzles into Portal, it's easy to start wondering "is this all there is?" The answer, happily, is a resounding "no." What starts out as an amusing and engaging diversion gives way to an extended and memorable finale, leaving us hungry for more.24
This curiosity is still not completely satisfied plot-wise, but skill wise the game “becomes a unique puzzle game where the solutions always turn out elegant and satisfying once you've figured them out”.25 The mechanics and game play offer the balance between anger and satisfaction, allowing the game’s simplicity to blossom.

Both the implicit and explicit rules, coupled with the unique mechanics of the game offer a special experience of game play. The implicit rules of the game, when applied, move along both the plot and the game play, which was seen in the example of the discovery of the first secret room. The mechanics of the game offer the balance of allowing the user creative freedom to solve the puzzles how they want, but also to teach the player the necessary skills to beat the game. With these concepts, the game comes to life, playing with the emotions of the players and allowing one to question the validity of said cake. Overall, Portal offers a look into the future of the trend of simple, yet compelling games that challenge what one thinks of as educational, tutorial, and basic video game design conceptions.