When Anna Sweet contacted me for the first time, I assumed that it was a bad troll. She asked me to call a phone number as she was from Valve. I told her that if she was really from Valve then she could e-mail me as my e-mail address was almost completely private. When the e-mail arrived only a minute later, I said, "I'm so very sorry."

This story was repeated much later when I met the nine other members. I guess when you're an adult in the high-tech world, you tend to be skeptic al and not very gullible.

Many people have asked me what it was like after we were told that we would be part of the ARG and the private invitation to Valve. They basically said that I was going to get to go to Valve if I wanted, and that I could be part of the ARG where I would "disappear". There weren't very many details, and in the end they said that we were supposed to post to the IRC channels and other media, the sentence: "There's a hole in the sky... through which I can fly." Then we were to change our profiles to a simple paragraph. That was basically it. We were not supposed to talk to anybody or post anything after we vanished, and we were supposed to stay offline.

The special banner by our names (the plain banner with two portals) was from one of my suggestions. I asked Valve if they could put something by our names so it would be easy for people to identify who was and wasn't part of the ARG. Valve agreed to this, although they said that some trolling was to be expected and part of the fun. In the end, people pretending to have "disappeared" without any banners still managed to fool a number of people and confuse many ARG players.

Beyond this, there wasn't much contact with me and Valve. I didn't ask many questions because I wasn't sure if any of this was real, and if the private invitation to Valve was legitimate. I figured that at any time, they could have said that I could just sit at home with the millions of other Portal 2 gamers. My contribution to the ARG was solving some of the early puzzles of Defense Grid quickly and I began showing up on the leaderboards. I also opened a thread on the general Steam User Forums on April 1 that said that it wasn't an April Fool's Joke and it was probably a very large ARG. This was during the time when the potatoes were not believed to be any thing significant, and everybody (even professional bloggers) were convinced that it was nothing but a joke or a promotion to sell Team Fortress 2 hats. The thread that I opened eventually got several hundred posts and thousands of views.

On Monday, April 18, I had trouble sleeping and because there was a time change, I woke up exceptionally early. I decided to wander the city in the early morning hours just to get out of my hotel room and maybe explore the city.

Bellevue is certainly eclectic. Roughly across the street from the hotel was an obviously otaku-oriented store named Anime Raku. Further down the street was a Vietnamese restaurant named What The Pho. The name is amusing in-joke for those that know Vietnamese, as pho is correctly pronounced "fuh". As a result, the restaurant title would be "What the Fu--" if you said out loud.

More importantly, Bellevue has a wide variety of businesses. Microsoft is the largest employer and they have something like four buildings in town. Their presence is so dominant that the closest mall to the Hyatt has a Microsoft Store and not an Apple one. From what I can tell, a Microsoft Store looks a lot like an Apple Store but they have slightly crappier products. Bellevue has one of the very few physical Lego stores in America as well. Seattle's Space Needle celebrated its 50th Anniversary almost on the exact day that I arrived, and Lego does sell a brick version of the Space Needle. When I looked on the shelf, there was nothing but a large empty space where the boxes would be. An employee told me that they had sold out only minutes earlier, and those models were hard to keep in stock. There were plenty of White Houses and Sears Towers available, however. The Gamestop inside one of the malls made no mention of Portal 2, possibly showing their rebellion and not wanting to promote Steam.

There's more software companies that you would expect here in Bellevue. Along with Valve, the city is the headquarters of ArenaNet (the makers of Guild Wars), Bungie, and Hidden Path Entertainment.

As the city is mostly a business district, if you were to look up the highest rated attraction in a AAA TripAdvisor guide book, then the city only has one "gem" entry. Believe it or not, it's the Rosalie Whyel Museum of Doll Art. The museum is said to be one of the largest doll collections in the world, and hardcore collectors supposedly visit it all the time. On the website, the pricing for dolls can be thousands of dollars each. Many of the locals had never heard of it, despite that it's listed right in guide books.

I decided to walk to Valve although I had hours to go before the arranged meeting time. I was hoping to just wait in the lobby rather than walk around aimlessly in the city. The mornings in the Pacific northwest are brisk, and I was starting to shiver from walking around for over an hour. I guess being from Texas makes it hard to handle cold weather for long. As I walked toward the office, a city bus featuring a Portal 2 advertisement drove past me.

Valve is located in an office building downtown and it is very discreet. Valve surprisingly doesn't have a sign out front. The building is shared by a number of businesses, although Valve clearly has a massive amount of office space. Anybody can come to the ground floor of Valve which is the fifth floor. The other two floors that Valve owns are electronically locked, including the elevators and stairwells so people cannot move from floor to floor--Valve's more private offices--very easily.

Probably the first thing that anybody sees when entering the Valve offices is probably the large black plaque that covers almost the entire back wall. The anodized aluminum is covered with cutouts; the cutouts being thousands of symbols from Valve's most iconic games prior to Portal 2. The uncut metal parts form a negative image of the Valve company logo. Because the logos are stacked on top of each other and are of different sizes, it's definitely a work of art.

Of course, Valve wouldn't be the same without its namesake. Gabe Newell got a giant red valve from his brother as a gift for the launch of Half-Life 1, and the massive industrial equipment was transferred from their old office. It still sits in the middle of the floor, and it doesn't need to be anchored as it weighs so much. Interestingly, the red flywheel on the valve is free-spinning and you can twirl it to your heart's content.

The rest of the room is a mix of objects that would make a Hammer Legion Member squeal in delight. There's a life-sized barnacle alien from Half-Life by the receptionist desk. Several custom-made Falcon computer cases by the television monitor near the couches in the waiting area. The monitor plays Valve videos and commercials in an endless loop. As an aside, since I was sitting in the lobby for several hours, it becomes less annoying than you'd expect and you tune it out.

Of course, the object that seems to attract fans the most is the life-sized sentry gun. The gun is a replica of a level 1 sentry in Team Fortress 2, and it was made by the WETA Workshop. From what I can tell, it attracts a lot of attention among everybody that isn't a Valve employee. The gun doesn't actually move or make sounds unless somebody walks past it, and it only activates once every minute or so, probably on purpose to prevent it from becoming overly annoying. It will not activate if you stand next to it and wave your hand in front of it. When it activates, it'll beep a few times, turn to face where that person is (or was), and flashes the light in the gun barrel while making the shooting sound.

I sat in the lobby for a while and I figured that I better tell the receptionist at the front desk that I wasn't loitering in their lobby for no reason. I mentioned that I was here for the Portal 2 event today. She asked me if I was a developer, and I smiled and said no. Then she asked, "Oh, you're one of the champions?"

"Is that what they call us?" I said, slightly amused. I've been called a lot of things in my life but champion isn't exactly one of them. But that's what it said right on the guest list in bold letters: Champions. There were nine other names with mine.

Eventually Anna Sweet introduced herself and asked me to sit tight and wait until 10am. I said that it was cool and I just took notes while I was there. Maybe she thought that I was crazy for coming so early.

While I was waiting, I got to see the members of Frictional Games and Dejobaan Games enter the Valve office. I could recognize Ichiro right away because his picture is seen frequently on the website, and you can even see him on some of the videos. They entered the building and I kept to myself.

The first ARG person to actually show up was Irish. He mentioned that he actually lived in the area and he was the person that walked all over Seattle for hours looking at the landmarks in the ARG pictures. He figured out that the locations didn't hold any clues themselves, but the simple map locations did. By drawing all the points on the map, it spelled the word "NELIPOT". If you joined the NELIPOT Steam group to get a potato by your name then you can thank Irish for that.

Others came later. I had met Moomanibe before today and he was with his friend Jake_R. Jake is easily the most memorable of all of the ARG players as he was the person that climbed the light pole in front of the Two Tribes office. Jake insists that it wasn't a big deal and he likes to climb poles. Regardless, it didn't matter who we met during the day, everybody knew exactly who Jake was. Years from now, the only thing that anybody will remember from all of this will be the guy that climbed the light pole.

It was a strange experience seeing all nine of us in the Valve lobby. I don't need to go into details on everybody as I'm sure that you could talk to each person individually if you wanted for a short biography.

At 10am, Anna Sweet welcomed us all and we were allowed inside the Valve offices.

As we were walking down the hallways, I noticed that the walls were covered with white sheets of paper, a rather blatant attempt to cover up concept artwork. At this point, I could infer that the official tone of the trip was for us to see Portal 2 early and we weren't supposed to see other things. The hallways were cleanly labeled with paper signs marking "Portal 2 Test Chamber", clearly designed to help us find where we needed to go. We were allowed to drop off our bags and jackets in a room filled with high-end Lian Li brand computers and some of the largest monitors that I've seen. We were told that the Razer products--the keyboard, mouse, and headphones-- would be ours to keep at the end of the day.

Then we were offered was coffee and pastries outside the room, and I was so hungry at this point. All of the independent developers had gathered there also and we introduced ourselves to each other. I didn't get a chance to meet everybody, partly because there were so many people there and partly because I was trying to stuff as many donuts in my mouth as possible.

Before long, other Valve staff appeared and said that we could go on a tour. At first I thought that it would just be the nine ARG players, but the other independent developers all came along also. Judging from how the other developers followed us, I can only assume that they had never gotten a tour of Valve's offices either. Keep in mind that all of the developers had to have been invited to Valve's offices in the past to discuss the ARG, so it was a little surprising to me.

The tour was short and simple, and it was a bit hard to hear in the back where I was. It sounded like they were discussing various things like the plaster models used to come up with Team Fortress 2 faces, and apparently the offices weren't totally complete as they want to install more display cases to show off fan-submitted work. At least, that's what I think they were saying.

The high point of the tour seemed to be Gabe Newell's collection of knives. It is true that he does have many knives and they line numerous shelves. There are switchblades, folding knives, and daggers of all shapes and sizes. The collection also changes over time because he gives some of the knives away to friends and such. My guess is that Newell only allows so much shelf space to his collection and he trades out pieces if he wants to collect more. I've seen pictures previously of his collection so I found it interesting but I didn't photograph it. However, the other ARG members seemed quite excited by it.

Valve then asked if there were any questions and everybody seemed to stand quietly but I mumbled about Dota 2. Erik Johnson asked if somebody asked something about Dota 2. I asked if we would be allowed to see it. He noticed that I had my notepad out and a pencil in my hand and asked if I was press. I smiled and said that I wasn't exactly... It was sort of hard to explain that I frequently write trip documentaries when I go somewhere interesting.

We were told that we wouldn't be allowed to see Dota 2 as they weren't ready to show anything to us. However, they did say that many employees went home and played Dota 2 at home on the closed beta servers, sometimes all night. The point was that people liked playing the game even outside of their jobs, and it was likely to be a very powerful hit. While no official release date has been announced, most Internet rumors expect to see the game launch in late 2011.

Then we were allowed to play Portal 2. Ironically enough, the Steam Guard system actually prevented me from playing the game. We used our own accounts when we played. My e-mail server is also located in Japan, sitting on the infamous kirameki.edu server. Most people probably won't get the joke, so you can lookup the whois information for kirameki.edu, and then Google "Kirameki High School" and see what you get. Yes, I used to be the biggest anime nerd when anime was considered really cool in America.

It took some time to get everything working, but we finally had everybody playing. At the time, Valve updated GLaDOS@home's webpage to read "NINE" to show nine players were playing. It was also the first time we were allowed to login as ourselves. I changed my profile to update that I was in Valve. It was also very hard to play the game because I kept getting friend invites and requests to chat. I'm also an older gamer so I play very slowly and sometimes it would take several minutes to figure out some of the puzzles. Since everybody that wants to play the game has probably played the game already, then I don't need to go into first impressions and the like. But I really liked the game.

To be honest, I would have been happy to just keep playing quietly all day while I just ran on nothing but adrenaline, but Valve stopped us and said that we had to stop playing and go to lunch. Others also seemed to not want to stop playing, and I think this shows that people really liked the game.

We walked to a restaurant which I hadn't seen earlier when I was wandering around town. They had a glass wine cellar in the front with hundreds of bottles in it, showing that this wasn't your typical dine-and-dash restaurant. A burger and fries costs $16 here. They took us in the back and everybody was asked to spread out. I sat next to a man with an Australian accent and I heard somebody call him Robin.

"Are you Robin Walker?" I asked. His expression briefly changed to amusement, as if I asked a really strange question, and he said yes. I shook his hand and introduced myself. I forgot to tell him that I had written to him last month about the Team Fortress 2 Japan charity hats, and he wrote back to me about them. Nevertheless, this was very exciting to me. Some people may not get it, so I'll explain a little. One of Valve's most successful games is Team Fortress 2. While it is obvious that many people work on the game, the most recognizable figure is Robin Walker. His name seems to get mentioned any time somebody talks about any of the most controversial subjects, such as hats, weapon balance, trading, and the in-game store. Here I was, sitting next to him, asking him for meal suggestions. I wonder if the TF2 fans would be jealous. If it makes anybody feel better, Robin mentioned that my nickname, Ariel Faith Plate, was not as funny as I had hoped.

We all introduced ourselves and we were just here with Valve employees, and I found out that we were sitting with the developers of Portal 2 and the ARG. Marc Laidlaw, Jeep Barnett, and Eric Wolpaw were here with us. After we all introduced each other and I said something stupid, they allowed us to ask them questions:

Q: How did Valve come up with the ARG?
A: For the most part, Valve didn't do much of the work. They had the basic framework and they asked that specific ARG content be added into their games (for the overall "collaboration" portion) but they didn't actually ask the developers to do things. So any new content was developed by the indie developers and Valve only supplied a little help, like the Portal models and such. In fact, sometimes the partners had so much content that they would have to reschedule to meet later as there was too much to review. Jeep took the photographs of the locations in Seattle.

Q: Was the ARG really planned around December and it was delayed to April?
A: Well, Valve denied that there was a delay. I think that there was some debate about how they wanted to launch the ARG and April 1 was a great way to release an ARG and have it discovered slowly. They were mostly afraid that people would solve it too quickly so they wanted it spread out over a few weeks. It's been moving on track for the most part. For the most part, the fans solved the puzzles on track if not slightly faster.

As an aside, many people got stuck on some of the very hard puzzles, so keep in mind that several developers helped us. The Defense Grid "Lego puzzle" was so hard that Hidden Path Entertainment developers basically offered help. In the end, however, the puzzle was solved almost entirely by Ninjai, who is one of The Nine. Frictional Games also provided hints and Tripwire Entertainment began to remove red herrings from their puzzles because people weren't solving them fast enough.

Q: When people begin to follow red herrings or go down the wrong path, do you do anything to stop them?
A: Valve said that the best response was to do nothing in most cases. Official staff commentary tends to be picked apart and analyzed as if it was also part of the ARG, and so any help often just muddies the water even more. From what I can tell, this seems true. If you want to see some grand moments in stupidity, when Double Oh Ess became the administrator of the NELIPOT Steam group, hundreds of people hounded him as they assumed that he was an "insider". He was never part of the ARG, but some refused to believe it until the bitter end.

Q: Did Ellen McLain really do all the voices in all of the games?
A: Yes she did. It took two days to do all the voice recording. In fact, she had to voice more lines than all of Portal 1 for the different games. Valve did review all of the dialogue to ensure that GLaDOS's lines would fit the character as seen in Portal 2.

Q: What's the deal with Episode 3?
A: Valve said the usual answer, which is that they weren't ready to discuss anything. When we asked if they actually work on the story in advance, they quickly said that it is carefully planned years in advance. Robin said that the previous week they had another story to talk about the Half-Life. From what I can tell, Episode 3 is one of Valve's most prized secrets.

Nobody is allowed to talk about it and the concept art is carefully guard ed. I've never seen any project kept so secure as Episode 3.

Q: Are you worried that Gamestop bought out Impulse?
A: Valve gave a standard answer saying that they weren't worried because their goal was to focus on working with developers and giving them what they need to become successful. I believe that the gist was to say that they would continue trying to make Steam better for both developers and users, so there's a good reason to stay with it and not worry about the competition. I know that Spitfire from The Steamcast asked this question, and one of his shows mentioned that he was somewhat disappointed with this answer.

I personally wasn't surprised by the answer because if you ask a loaded question then you're going to get a biased answer.

Q: So what's the deal with lime green and pink paint in Team Fortress 2 (blah blah blah, weird hats, ruined art style, etc.)?
A: This is where I will supply my interpretation. Team Fortress 2 seems to be a test bed for Valve for new ideas. For example, the introduction of an online store, backpack trading, the Valve wallet system, etc. I think that TF2 is kind of unique in that it's not Valve's most popular FPS game, yet it's one of the most iconic. Because the game doesn't have a very serious theme, it gives the company flexibility to basically do whatever they want with the game.

When we walked back to Valve, I saw that they were also having other guests for a different event. Somebody had pulled all the white paper off of the walls however, and you could see that it was concept art for a fantasy based game. Several of the Valve staff didn't seem happy about this and they asked us not to photograph the walls.

I stared at the walls and asked, "Is this Dota 2?" They were so different and there were so many pictures.

"Come on, don't look at it," said Leveraged. He was more mature about it, and he pulled my arm to get me away from the somewhat secret artwork. But I could not stop myself and kept on looking behind me as I was being dragged away.

We kept on grinding away on Portal 2 for a number of hours. To be honest, I was hooked into the game like you wouldn't believe.

Suddenly, one of the developers mentioned that they were going to play Dota 2, and he asked Spitfire if he wanted to go see it. I heard it and said, "Can I come too?" Within seconds the entire "Portal 2 Test Chamber" was completely empty and we were ushered down to the development area.

It blew my mind when somebody asked me if I wanted to play it. However, I am terrible at most games without much practice so I declined because I just wanted to see it played by somebody that knew what they were doing. They had a small couch outside of the play area and they started up a game, and it was a mix of ARG members and indie developers all staring at the screen. The game was still in beta, so it was amusing when we were told that, "If an icon looks like it was drawn in Microsoft Paint, then it was." It's true that some icons that were literally nothing but stick drawings, but it didn't matter... The game itself looks slick and exciting.

I think that Valve doesn't want me to talk about what I saw. But I will say that the game was one of the few real-time strategy games where I found it somewhat exciting to just watch. I would expect that this game is going to be a hit when it releases. I'm fairly sure that Valve will present this game very soon to the media.

Sometime afterwards, they asked me to get in front of a camera and answer questions about what I thought about the ARG. I am not a particularly witty person, so I'm sure that I looked like a fool in front of the camera. At the end they asked if I had any questions.

"Well, not really, unless you can show me the Meet The Medic video," I responded.

"I think we can arrange that," replied Jeep.