Kim Swift and Erik Wolpaw, the lead designer and lead writer of Portal talk about their whirlwind journey from being students to developing an innovative award winning game for Valve as the lead designer and lead writer of Portal. Encouraging players to use their intelligence and rewarding them for it earned that little game some big awards. These including three major Game Developers Choice Awards; Best Game Design, Innovation, and Game Of The Year.

In an interview with Gamasutra, these two newcomers to the industry talk about developing the design linked dialog that drew players in to the backstory of Portal. They relied on Valve’s mantra of “Playtest, playtest, playtest” to see where the dialog with GLaDOS was grabbing attention, and when less was more. They additionally discuss the reasoning behind keep the protagonist

silent. Swift and Wolpaw talk about the uses of the RPG Gamers’ nemesis; the crate in the anatomy of cubes. In Portal, destroying your Weighted Companion Cube is nearly regrettable.

The interview plus has some revealing tidbits about current and future projects from Valve. Read the full commentary on Gamasutra.

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