Best of the Decade: Portal
Mon, December 6, 2010 at 11:02 PM 
Portal
Platforms: Windows, Mac, Playstation 3, Xbox 360
Release Date: October 9, 2007 (PC and 360 versions of The Orange Box)
Publisher: Valve Corporation
Developer: Valve Corporation
The phrase “short but sweet” isn’t often applied to video games. Most of the time there’s a perfectly good reason for this. Retail games tend to be expensive investments and most gamers expect a certain amount of length for their money. This doesn’t leave much room for those that wish to experiment with conciseness, but it’s an understandable concern. Spending $60 on a game that lasts two hours is rarely fun.
Portal slightly predates the downloadable game revolution that has made it possible for games such as Limbo and Costume Quest to experiment with providing less length for less money, but perfectly encapsulates the spirit of the movement.
Originally debuting as part of The Orange Box, Valve threw Portal into the mix as an experiment. Valve knew they had something good on their hands but didn’t know what to do with it. Downloadable games certainly existed at the time, but hadn’t quite proven themselves like they have in the last couple of years. They decided to stuff it into a compilation of proven successes as an added bonus and see what happened.
What happened was it turned into a verifiable phenomenon and solidified its place in the hearts of gamers everywhere.