#PotatoFoolsDay ARG

[BigBiker05]

I think you might be miss reading it. A lot of people on reddit said that finishing that first game decreased the timer by 6 hours.

Also, here's the thing that makes sense to me. Above the projected launch time (which you are probably looking at) you see a bar that is growing. Right now it is nearly half way filled. When that bar gets completely filled the game is released.

[TheCarpe]

There's no way the original launch time was 5:30 AM on Monday. It was gonna be Tuesday. So it has pushed back. There's a small chance we might be able to get it tomorrow, but I'd bet we'll have it on Monday.

[Boss Llama]

There's no way the original launch time was 5:30 AM on Monday.

I didn't say it was...

Been watching GLaDOS@Home, and despite finishing up two of the games, it doesn't appear to have had any affect on the projected release time - it's still 5:30 AM Pacific Time on Tuesday, same as it's been since the start.

Also, here's the thing that makes sense to me. Above the projected launch time (which you are probably looking at) you see a bar that is growing. Right now it is nearly half way filled. When that bar gets completely filled the game is released.

That does make more sense to me. The countdown timer is steady and unchanging, but if we fill that bar, the game releases. That would suggest not all the games need to have their bars filled, just enough playtime in them all is required to fill the main bar, and certain games stop counting at a given point.

[Masakari]

On the countdown page it shows both the initial launch time and the current expected launch time, and there's about 90 minutes of difference between them...

[Boss Llama]

On the countdown page it shows both the initial launch time and the current expected launch time, and there's about 90 minutes of difference between them...

I'll be darned - so it does.

Hmm, doing some comparisons, it looks like it's exactly 1:31:28 apart right now... not a number that leads itself to an easy conclusion about the formlua.

For the sake of some wild hypothesizing, I'll pretend the number is exactly 90 minutes, and the difference we're seeing is merely some sort of lag in GLaDOS' system.

I think it's fair to guess that we'll earn more than 45 minutes per game completed, as that would only push us back 9h45, to a release at around 10 PM Pacific Sunday night, hardly an ideal time, and which wouldn't be worth all the effort.

There must be a formula that yields an increasing reward for consecutive completions. Possibly a 30, 60, 90, 120... pattern. Carried out to 13 games, that would give a (potential) early release at 9:30 AM Pacific on Sunday... a bit better option.

I ran the numbers for simple doubling... 30, 60, 120, 240... etc, but by the time it reached 7 games, P2 would already be releasing as we speak, and it would have grown exponentially from there - so that's right out.

Among the whiteboards pictured in the ARG were a variety of formulas and graphs, including a couple for what appeared to be decay over time... starting slow, then accelerating, and I believe slowing down again. Knowing Valve, we could be following any number of bizare formulas. The completion of a third game and a new comparison of the time difference will be helpful in identifying trends.

Then again, knowing Valve, they may have picked a release date, and all of the playtime information, countdown, countdown adjustments, etc, could be completely bogus, manafactured in house to give us something to explode our brains about

[One_Medic_Army]

After the first game it was a 50min 19sec reduction, I checked.
So if it's based solely on the games completed, then it's actually be going down.

[TheCarpe]

The community is focusing it's efforts on the least-owned and therefore least weighted games to complete. KF has had several times more players consistently than WEotW, but many more people own it, so it's taking much longer to fill. So perhaps a more weighted game might shave off more time.

[Boss Llama]

Aaaaaaa is now complete, and the total boost improvement in release time is now 2 hours, 29 minutes, and 21 seconds.

WEotW gave 50 minutes, 19 seconds
Kick It gave 41 minutes, 9 seconds
Aaaaaa gave 57 minutes, 53 seconds

[TheCarpe]

I'll just leave this here.

[Will T.]

I'm very curious as to how all these countdown sites get their projected release dates, because different websites seem to give drastically different predictions.

Ex:
1 - "1.06 days ahead of schedule." (Decimal varies slightly at different times; highest I saw was 1.17) This puts their estimate at sometime before 7 AM PDT Monday.
2 - This one hovers around 1:30 PM PDT Monday.
3 (Carpe's link) - Appears to hover between 12:30 and 1:00 PM PDT Monday. Close to #2 above.

Note also that Carpe's link and the first one I posted both estimate the completion time for each individual game, and yet have drastically different estimations for such. HasPortal2LaunchedYet.com predicts Killing Floor having 56 hours to completion at the current rate (less than 3 days overall), while the Gaming Masters page shows 6 days for Killing Floor, and 7 for The Ball.

We're almost halfway there overall. Focusing on one game at a time seems to be working rather well so far.


I did a little bit of my own math. At the current rate, with 50% completed in 38 hours (we should hit 50% by 11:00 PM PDT, we're at 49.5% now), then if we move forward at a roughly equivalent overall rate from now until the end, we will be done in a total of 76 hours, which is 26 less than the 94 hours between 9 AM Friday when this started and 7 AM Tuesday when the game would have otherwise released. So 5 AM Monday. Not bad.

[Boss Llama]

42:49 gained for Rush.

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50:44 gained for Cogs

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Five games complete, total gained release time is 04:02:54. Average time gained per completed game is 48 minutes, 34.8 seconds.

I like the bar-measuring system better. According to that, we're picking up 15 hours instead of 4.

[Will T.]

The completed games so far seem to all confirm that the amount of time taken off the countdown is directly proportional to the # of copies that have been sold, and inversely proportional to the rate of movement for that game's progress bar.

We've surpassed 2/3 now, at around 1:30 PM Pacific. It took roughly 52.5 hours from 9 AM Friday. At that rate, the rough total completion time from the Friday start is 78.75 hours, or 26 hours from right now (~1:45 PM PDT). That puts it at Monday afternoon, 3:45 PM PDT.

The time forecasts fluctuate a lot, but it still looks like Monday for sure. I just hope it's before the evening here, my co-op friend (who is a friend IRL) and I are looking to get together to try it out tomorrow. We'll just have to wait and see...


I'm running Toki Tori right now to help boost it along as it's the "current focus." It feels good to think I'm helping. It's one of only 3 Potato Sack games I own, so ...

Keep getting potatoes if you can. They multiply the speed at which ALL the bars move!

[Boss Llama]

Toki Tori complete, gain of 55:15.

Total gain is now 4:58:09, with a six game average of 49:48.5 each.

Yes, I realize nobody cares about these numbers, but I derive enjoyment from tracking them, so there!

[Will T.]

Toki Tori complete, gain of 55:15.

Total gain is now 4:58:09, with a six game average of 49:48.5 each.

Yes, I realize nobody cares about these numbers, but I derive enjoyment from tracking them, so there!

I care about them - if we get them high enough, we get Portal 2 early enough for it to matter!
I also enjoy tracking them. It's an easy and fun way to participate.

[Boss Llama]

Bit Trip Beat, upon completion, gave us a paltry 32:07 off the launch time, presently 05:30:16 faster than originally scheduled.

Such a minimal boost has dropped out average down to 47:10.86 per game, across seven games.

Critically, the bar-monitoring counter Carpe linked has also slipped backward, now showing unlock nearly 2.5 hours later than it did previously (it's now predicting almost 6pm Pacific on Monday, rather than 3:30 PM)