Steam Punk’d
I’m not really what you might call an “early adapter” of technology. Unlike some of my friends and relatives, I almost never have the latest gadget, I don’t opt in for betas (outside of the occasional MMO, and even that’s extremely rare), and I will resist hopping on board the latest goofy social network (hey, it’s Buzz! and Twitter! and Facebook!) until someone can show me that it’s honestly worth it.
I think there’s a lot to be said about holding onto reservations about progress when it comes to technology, because it’s not always a good thing. Sometimes it sucks beyond the telling of it — Microsoft Bob leads that parade, and it has many, many members. Sometimes I worry that we’re too eager to jump onto whatever new bandwagon rolls down the street that we don’t stop to properly analyze it, to put it to the test, and even to let it continue on without you for a ways until you see how it’s going to end up.
When it comes to media that I’ve paid good money for and yet is not stored in my personal domicile, I have to admit — I’m wary. When I buy something, I’ve always believed I own it, I’m not renting it for a specific number of uses across my computers or TVs. I like to be able to see a physical representation of what I own, with the option of being able to resell it in the future if I so desire.
Up until sort of recently, this was kind of how it always was. Computer games came in “boxes” and we had the discs to prove it. Books were made out of pulped trees, and we’d eventually turn around and sell that $21.99 purchase for 75 cents at a garage sale. Movies were stacked in such a way on my shelves that it would make any visitor exclaim in a slightly worried voice, “Boy… you like movies, or something, eh? Heh? Heh?”
But now, that sort of thing makes me sound like an old man. “Back in my day, we actually had to handle a book instead of pressing a touch-sensitive electronic ink display!” “Boy, grampa, that sounds neat!” “It sure does, Billy.” “It’s Bobby.”
And I am, in fact, adapting to this new technology. Not running quickly into it, mind you, but my life is becoming saturated with convenient media that only asks that I be comfortable with someone else holding on to my stuff. When the apocalypse comes and the power shuts off for good, I’m going to be burned by all this, I can tell.
I wasn’t big on Steam until just recently. First of all, it started out mostly as a Valve game store, and I’m not as rabid about Half-Life 2 as the rest of Earth’s population. Second, I got worried that the company would “oops!” forget I bought something, and there that money goes forever.
But since this past January when Steam started throwing incredible MMO deals, I had to check it out, and I’m pretty glad I did. Sure, there are annoyances with the system, particularly when it’s always asking you to shift-tab to close a message that I obviously want to close every time the game starts, but to be able to install and uninstall games I’ve purchased without worrying about code keys and swapped discs is a bit of a godsend. Not to mention that Steam keeps having these incredible deals, such as Tropico 3 for $7.50, or the recent Magic the Gathering: Duel of the Planeswalkers for $10.
Steam also helps me to be antisocial in a good way, and by that I mean that I’ve long since stopped setting foot in any computer store, from Best Buy to Gamestop to… um… that other place. With the games. Thousand pardons if you are or ever have done this, but video store clerks creep the hell out of me, and they never, ever let me buy something without attempting to draw me into an awkward conversation about the Halos or War Gears or whatnot. And there’s always the pressure to reserve my FAVORITE title coming out NEXT month, which never fails to pop a blood vessel in my eye.
So I guess I’m marching forward with technology, right up to the point where I’m required to staple a computer chip to my soul so that McDonalds, the government and any hacker with intent can hijack my nervous system if I don’t pay up.
- Posted in: General
I think you chose right not to be an early adapter in this case. I am now a huge fan of Steam and I am also a sucker for their weekend special deals but I still remember my first experience with the digital download store and it wasn’t pleasant.
I bought Half Life 2 (retail disk) shortly after release and hurried home to install and play it. Once home I discovered that the game needed Steam to play and in fact the disk didn’t even have the full program on it – many hundreds of megabytes more needing to be downloaded to get up and running. Which was all very well except I was on 56k dial up at the time. It took many hours of downloading before I could play the game I bought. Even worse was the fact that for the next few weeks there was regular patching over Steam which meant a wait of between 30 minutes and a hour before I could get into the game. Steam does have offline mode but it only works if your game is patched fully up to date. I came to loathe the service Steam. How things have changed.
Maybe I’m werid, but a big part of me is still super-duper hesitant about the whole Steam thing. I know it’s probably not rational, but it seems like another system and series of hoops to jump through for no big return.
What does steam offer exactly that a gamer would be concerned over? I can’t think of the last time the thought of my hard drive space even crossed my mind. So, keeping a library of games? Maybe I am getting old, I feel the same way about books in our study. It shows interests and focus.
You walk into someone’s house and see their library and movie/game collection, you see where their tastes lie.
Yep, i love Steam, i’m constantly checking for some crazy $5 deal .
I hope it just gets bigger and bigger so that even Blizzard can wake up and sell their stuff on there.
Meh. I have a crappy internet speed (2megabits per second. BITS being the key part here) so Steam isn’t that great for me since I hate leaving the PC on overnight or during the day.
Also: someone else who isn’t a massive looney over HL2? <3 If you also feel very mediocre about Deus Ex then double <3s
I stopped shopping at all game stores beyond my standard GameStop because of the sales people.
It is unfortunate but they HAVE to offer you a subscription, a reserve and suggest another product. If not they get penalized. I know because I worked for those guys for years.
Once they know and trust you they don’t bother because they know you’re not a secret shopper and they know when you fill out their survey (which is now part of their evaluation too) you’ll give them all 10s.
The sad thing is you can’t get a survey on the system. If you do anything negative on it the company assumes it is the associates fault. There is no box to check for “I would be glad if this employee or no employee ever offered me your discount card again.”
I don’t miss working at GameStop at all =D
i know how you feel, one of my first online purchases of a game was sword of the stars from the fileplanet digital distro whatever it is, its still around, but i will never use it over steam.
Anyways i bought sword of the stars and realized there was a patch for it, this is 3 years ago, the patch allowed me to play the game, without the patch it bombed out and was unplayable. because i bought it through fileplanet though i could not patch it until the company released a specific patch to the direct download version i had.
I fought direct download for 2 weeks to get my money back because nothing when i purchased the game said that i would have a hampered version for an indefinate amount of time. I eventually got my money back and bought a retail copy. I have since lost the retail copy and will probably buy it once it hits steam on a weekend deal.
I have though adopted steam from its inception, mostly because i i could have nearly all my games centralized, and if you move the folder, you never have to reinstall, it keeps the installs. the only retail game i have bought in 3 years has been WoW, AoC, and cheap version of empire total war, which i was able to integrate.
you are still hamperred by the update thing though at times, but generally the steam games just work, and being able to jump into torchlight whenever i want at a whim is quite nice right now, as i am almost exclusiively a console gamer at this point. I still buy classics though on steam when a weekend deal comes up, and am upset i didnt get the DoWII deal a couple weeks back as it was a fun game in spurts. I guess the point of my rambling is that you are not misguded in going with steam, most devs have jumped on board, and the deals you can get are amazing for a permanaant library. not having to find your box/cd case is a worry i am happy to be without.
I’m a fan of Goozex, m’self. I like used games.
The only reason I’ve purchased through Steam is because of the sales… and I try to only buy games that I either don’t mind going “poof” a month or so down the line (since I’ve played them through) or those that I’m happy to support (like the deep Civ3/4 sale). If I want a game without the trouble of maybe losing access to it someday, I find a physical copy.
This looked like an appropriate post to ask you about Netbooks. I’m thinking of buying one for my wife, and you have mentioned your Netbook several times on this blog. Would you mind revealing which kind you have? I need to make sure the wifey can play WoW. Netbooks confuse me.