Portal is a first-person puzzle game in which you connect two surfaces with a portal gun to move through test chambers. In this 2008 talk, Valve’s Kim Swift and Erik Wolpaw discuss how they integrated the story with the game’s design.
The useful pairing here is the speakers: you get Swift and Wolpaw presenting the design and narrative work together. Expect discussion of the game’s story, so I’d save this until after playing Portal.
Speakers: Kim Swift and Erik Wolpaw, Valve
Event: Game Developers Conference, 2008
Running time: 1 hour 18 minutes 51 seconds
Topic: narrative and puzzle design
Spoilers: yes
Original session title: Integrating Narrative into Game Design: A Portal Post-Mortem. Hosted by the official GDC channel. Session details and running time checked on 16 October 2026. Thumbnail credit: GDC.
