ThinkingWithPortals‘ Summer Mapping Initiative competition began back in May. It ended on the 6th of June, and since then, the 13 judges have been busy evaluating all 280 submitted maps. They’ve poured a collective 140 hours into judging all of the levels involved, but they’ve recently announced the winners.
Portal 2 – ThinkingWithPortals’ Summer Mapping Initiative Completed
News & Rumors
In this news post, the three grand prize winners were revealed by msleeper: “Patent Pending” by ebola; “Infinifling” by MrTwoVideoCards and “Edifice” by Omnicoder. There’s also 23 runner-ups, leading all the way to 26th place. The ThinkingWithPortals team is still working on a way to have all of the full results in an easy-to-read format, but in the meantime, they’ve placed the top 26 levels in this Contest Edition of their Community Roundup.
Of course, bragging rights aren’t all the 3 champions will be getting. They’ll be getting Portal gear from J!NX, Portal gear from ThinkGeek, Portal gear from GlitchGear, and Portal gear from the Valve Store. Their homes will presumably be reduced to gigantic piles of Portal gear. The lucky winners will also be getting two yet-unreleased pieces of swag – a glow in the dark Wheatley Laboratories T-shirt, and the brilliant 70’s style Portal 2 movie poster, signed by the entire Portal 2 team.
But what if they somehow decide to sell all this stuff, and then put all the resulting money together? Then they might just be able to literally buy out Valve, and turn it into… Wheatley Software, or something. Hey, it’s a possibility. I’ll just call up some of my serious analyst friends and ask them just how possible they think it is.
In any case, be sure to check out all of these maps. Consider it a sort of unofficial DLC package put together by the Portal community. There’s even some Coop maps in here, so you might want to wake up your co-op partner, and tell him it’s time to play Portal 2 again. Resume testing, in a manner of speaking.
But what if you missed the contest? Or what if you just don’t have mapping talents, and are perhaps more skilled in the art of cinematography? Well, don’t forget about the Music Video Contest, which is still going on. The swag will be even more substantial – a guitar! Signed by the National! And more gear from Valve and their partners. As well as “other stuff we’ll be grabbing off co-workers desks when they’re not looking”. Do you realize what that means? You could win Erik Wolpaw’s pink cookie. Or perhaps one of Gabe Newell’s knives! Okay, not those two, but still – Valve swag! They’re practically giving this stuff away, so get editing.
Thank god for modders.
On a side note http://steamcommunity.com/groups/anti_p2_exclusive_content