@sterling013 cincinnati, the place of my birth.

@ThePowerOfHAT

Well, the Portal custom map/mod making community is really just a splinter off the entire Source/Hammer community. For years, before the Portal 2 map maker was released, for either Portal, Left 4 Dead, or Half-Life, or Counter Strike, the modding community (we hesitate to distinguish mapping from modding) basically did all of this with the Hammer editor.

Want to make a portal map? Use hammer. Want to make a Half-life campaign? Use hammer. Left 4 dead, etc.

So, I think what you see is that because knowledge of how to use hammer was a prerequisite for modding any Valve game, one who knew how to use it would not choose to use it for Portal if they wanted to make a story-based campaign. If you know how to do animations, and have some voice actors, might as well put the experience with Valve's program to use in Half-Life modding.

Portal is seen by alot of modders as fun to map for, because you can focus so exclusively on just making a puzzle, and nothing else. So there's no need to coordinate with a team of specialists. Even Left 4 Dead campaigns can't really focus entirely on gameplay, and must have a consistent theme to the setting to get a high rating by the community.

I was about to tear my hair out of frustration after having to deal with the complexities of Left 4 Dead's AI director when making a custom campaign. Portal maps don't have those frustrations, because there is no enemy AI, no story, or anything extra expected apart from a fun puzzle :)

@gideonkain I've been wondering this too... When I watch this I'm careful only to see enough to know that the test looks cool or fun and not find out the answer. You're right, seeing the answer kinda defeats the purpose. They should just show us some basics of the puzzle.

@mboettcher The Beast ACTUALLY, is a wooden roller coaster located in Vaughn,ON.CA.