Lego Portal in stop-motion

Quick! What do you get when you cross Lego, Harryhausen, and Portal?

This video, created by Nick Larsen.

Inspired by the best video game of 2007, Larsen's stop-motion video is set to the Portal closing theme song, "Still Alive," composed by Jonathan Coulton.

It shows what appears to be a number of different subjects navigating through the environment controlled by GLaDOS. Not all of them survive. Some fall victim to misplaced portals, others to the perils of the puzzles, and still others just can't resist the offer of cake.

Take a few moments from your day to watch Larsen's vid. And browse some of his other stop-motion Lego creations, which are just as fun.

GDC 2008: Portal post-mortem

One of the interesting things to do with video-game development is to look back at those games that succeeded, deconstructing them in an attempt to figure out what the designers threw into the crucible that made the project a success.

We can do the same with failures, but that’s too depressing. Much more fun to focus on the positive.

It’s somehow fitting that my final GDC 2008 session was an opportunity to hear the creators of Portal, the best game of 2007, talk about what went into its creation.

As with so many of the seminars this year, the room was packed full, with interested attendees swirled around the outside of the room.

Portal was a sleeper hit. It leveraged the fact that it was packaged with the Xbox 360 Orange Box edition of Valve’s Half-Life 2: Episode 2 games to became a veritable pop culture phenomenon.

From the popularity of the companion cube to the mainstream airplay of the game’s closing theme song, “Still Alive” (written by musician Jonathan Coulton), by the end of 2007, Portal was everywhere you looked.

In the GDC session, level designer and team lead Kim Swift and writer Erik Wolpaw talked about how they were able to create a narrative in a game with only two characters and one-sided dialogue.

Portal was developed by a team of anywhere between five and ten people, and Swift and Wolpaw both agreed that the story from the game wouldn’t go very far on its own, nor would the gameplay be much when separated from the story. “It would be a race to see which would fail first on their own,” said Swift.

The thing that really seemed to drive Portal to be what it became, they both said, were the constraints. Restricted time, people, and resources forced them to come up with creative solutions to problems.

Wolpaw outlined the philosophy upon which Portal’s narrative was based. “Games tell two stories,” he said. The first is the story story that is told with cutscenes and dialogue, and the second is the gameplay story, which is the story told by what the player does.

Swift and Wolpaw also stressed the importance of playtesting to Portal’s final cut. Bringing in gamers to try the game and provide feedback was something they did early on, and Swift said it was invaluable to refining the game as it was developed..

When asked how they planned to overcome the challenge of not having the same constraints in developing Portal 2, assuming that a greater budget will be afforded to them, Wolpaw joked, “I’m content to bask in the moment without people bugging me about the next one.”

We do know, however, that there will be more Portal coming. Valve has promised. I can hardly wait.

Nominees for Game Developers Choice Awards

The nominees for the Game Developers Choice Awards were announced this morning.

BioShock and Portal lead the pack, each with five nominations, including Game of the Year.

I'm very pleased to see Mass Effect (Game Design, Writing, Audio, Innovation) and Everyday Shooter (Best Debut, Best Downloadable), two of my favourites of 2007, getting some recognition.

Notable titles missing from this list? Surprisingly, not much. Maybe Heavenly Sword (pictured here) for Visual Art. Maybe Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction for Game Design. Looks like Uncharted: Drake's Fortune claimed the Sony Computer Entertainment quota.

And Vampire Rain. Kidding. I kid.

Mass Effect deserved a Game of the Year nomination, though. Certainly over Super Mario Galaxy, which was fine for what it was: a rehash of the franchise.

Anyone out there note any other glaring omissions?

Here's the complete list of categories and nominees, which will be handed out at GDC 2008 in San Francisco on Wednesday, February 20:

Best Game Design
BioShock
Call of Duty 4
Mass Effect
Portal
Super Mario Galaxy

Best Visual Art
Assassin's Creed
Team Fortress 2
Crysis
BioShock
Uncharted: Drake's Fortune

Best Technology
Halo 3
Crysis
Call of Duty 4
Portal
Assassin's Creed

Best Writing
Portal
God of War II
Mass Effect
Half-Life 2: Episode 2
BioShock

Best Audio
Call of Duty 4
Everyday Shooter
BioShock
God of War II
Mass Effect

Best Debut
Crackdown (Realtime Worlds)
flOw (ThatGameCompany)
The Witcher (CD Projekt)
Everyday Shooter (Queasy Games)
Aquaria (Bit Blot)

Innovation
Rock Band
Portal
flOw
Peggle
Mass Effect

Best Handheld Game
Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords
The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass
Phase
Contra 4
Peggle (for iPod)

Best Downloadable Game
Pac-Man Championship Edition
Everyday Shooter
Peggle
Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords (XBLA version)
Flow

Game of the Year
BioShock
Call of Duty 4
Portal
Rock Band
Super Mario Galaxy

Inside the making of Portal

News from Gamasutra that the January 2008 issue of Game Developer magazine includes a post-mortem on the creation of Portal, one of my favourite games of last year.

The clever game is simple, but deceivingly so. It takes a bit of practice to wrap your head around the mechanic of creating portals through time and space in an effort to negotiate the obstacle courses.

The article, written by a few of the game's creators, talks about how they found the narrative voice of Portal in GLaDOS.

You can read a short excerpt at Gamasutra, or pick up the magazine at your local newsstand.

Anyone else have fun playing Portal over the holiday?