Rock, Paper, Shotgun is at it again, this time with a chat with one of those wacky valve guys:

Quote:
Also, there is cake. Why's that?

Well, there are lots of message games coming out now. Like they've got something really important to get off their chest about the war in Iraq or the player is forced to make some dicey underwater moral choices. Really, just a whole heck of a lot of stuff to think about. With that in mind, at the beginning of the Portal development process, we sat down as a group to decide what philosopher or school of philosophy our game would be based on. That was followed by about fifteen minutes of silence and then someone mentioned that a lot of people like cake.

I was listening to a bit of Dragonforce while reading this, and the tempo of the music makes his frenetic commentary that much more absurd, err appropriate.

Update: RPS also interviewed two of the original folks who made Narbacular Drop and, of course, Portal.