By rendering a virtual Middle East as a frontier inhabited primarily by male terrorists where the American military (and by invitation of the gaming industry, all subjects with a reasonably modern computer) can engage in a cleansing and perpetual war, the world finally begins to resemble the one outlined by George W. Bush shortly after 9/11

it’s pretty much the only thing in a book’s toolbox for creating immersion, and it works in games too

The aim of her technique here is to link the player to mental instability through use of the cube (both in language and game world). Of course, the technique is an obvious failure since the player does not feel any strong personal attachment to the cube to the point of mental instability. It's a hole in the performance, but one I doubt many players realized due to the layers of implementation.

make fun of institutional processes

understating of the possibility of danger are standards of institutional talk, yet the consequences are usually kept behind doors.

the typical, false politeness that one receives in such institutional contexts.

visually portrays itself as an institution

the idea of a front and backstage

All institutions have a backstage that mask their inner workings.

we have a place where we manage the performance and a place where we give that performance

Play is free activity but Portal only offers this in constrained doses.

Portal is an algorithmic exploration of human struggle against algorithmic processes.

It is the tension between the cold, hard certainty of algorithms and the creativity

Portal's art-worthiness is in its exploration of the increasingly algorithmic nature of the world.

In Portal, the gun’s apparent freedom always opens up into the same trap.

test chambers embrace the limitations of level design

This murderous intent brings together multiple narrative elements foreshadowed in the game,

Rattmann’s scribbles, therefore, warn Chell to beware the player. The game is a lie.

Even here, when the Milgram-like nature of the experiment is clear

GLaDOS compels the player to be part of the algorithmic process.

Some players may even assume that they are Chell - akin to Heidegger’s notion of a tool being ready to hand rather than present at hand

sure the voice is a computer

Aperture Science Computer-Aided Enrichment Center. We hope your brief detention in the relaxation vault has been a pleasant one.

there are ways that only games can signify

The key mechanic1 - a gun that shoots portals or tunnels that allow physical movement between unconnected spaces - explores the meaning of freedom when trapped in the algorithmic processes of what we perceive as reality. 

As algorithms are used in and applied to social situations they become forces that shape and persuade.

since the categories are neither narrative nor game-like in themselves: order, speed, frequency, duration, simultaneity, and time of the action.

In simulations, knowledge and experience is created by the player’s actions and strategies, rather than recreated by a writer or moviemaker.

games are not intertextual

Likewise, the dimensions of Lara Croft’s body, already analyzed to death by film theorists, are irrelevant to me as a player, because a different-looking body would not make me play differently

So why should not games also be a type of story?