The cake is not a lie!!

Portal is a parody on gaming, the developer is GlaDOS the player is Chell. It’s a struggle of freedom versus control. As the bugs (in GlaDOS) creep in thoughout the game it becomes clear that the ending for Chell will not be a satisfactory one. She’s been told by other players along the way. For Chell and her game with GlaDOS, there is certainly no cake. The cake represents whether a game has a satisfactory ending for the player or not.

She escapes the confines of the game and destroys GlaDOS, if a player could break free of the confines of a buggy murderous game, they might do the same to it’s developers. A commentary on tension in the relationship between gamers and game developers.

It’s also a commentary on the tension between the players desire for freedom in their gameplay, and the developers need for control and constraint (to make it practical), the player wins this round, but the joke is on them. Portal, while it is an excellent example of a game that doesn’t throw a narrative down the players throat, it’s also the perfect example of why linearity and constraints in a game can be excellent. In the end even the flight for freedom part of the game is also linear, but the player doesn’t care.

Additionally GlaDOS is attempting to program and train Chell to play the game, just as games do to us. GlaDOS is perhaps too successful, but that’s why she is pleased at the end of the game. This completely mirrors the actual gameplay of portal, for which we are slowly trained and programmed. The learning curve is so perfectly tuned, Valve has every reason to be pleased with themselves.

The story mirrors our experiences with gaming. It’s an affectionate in joke on gaming that gamers relate to (knowingly or not), yet non gamers still enjoy. That is Portal’s cake, that the ending is so satisfactory.

Portal isn’t just a well made and clever game, it isn’t just art… It’s science.

…and that is it’s triumph.