The features PC gamers want – A response

PC games thrive on options, because they need to fit a wider variety of usage scenarios—in terms of input and output devices, hardware capabilities and desired level of technical involvement on part of the player—than on any other platform. This is what makes the PC great. Providing most of these options isn’t too much work, and PC developers should take them into account from the beginning—but gamers also need to realize that some options, like variable framerates, will be difficult to implement in ports of console games.

http://www.pcgamer.com/the-features-pc-gamers-wantan-open-letter-to-developers-and-gamers/

All around PC good guy Durante recently put together an article for pcgamer.com. If you don’t know Durante, he is the guy who made Dark Souls on PC “good”. He has also done some other great work such as making Deadly Premonition….well slightly less shit.

But basically the guy knows his stuff, so I’m not going to say anything he wrote is wrong. In fact, I’ll pretty much agree with it all and you should read the article. PC gaming is about options and that is really all we ask for.

So what am I writing about? Well it is the simple response a PC developer might give. And that response is:

“Sure you want all that stuff, but are you prepared to pay for it?”

Now this isn’t really about piracy, because that is neither here nor there. What I’m talking about is the culture of steam sales and russian key trading which is becoming a growing blight on PC gaming. Want 4k downsampling? Fair enough. Want to also pay $2 for the game from “some guy” or through an automated trading site? Well that is where you are going to have a conflict.

It just doesn’t add up. Why would developers put in the effort when the sales returns are going to be less? People like to point at statistics suggesting a game sold a million on steam and much less on consoles. While it is important to have people play your game, those million paying $1 each for it doesn’t get your next game funded and it certainly doesn’t get you enthusiast features.

It goes beyond sales too. Is Valve giving Ubisoft millions of dollars to market the shit out of the latest Assassin’s Creed rubbish? Nope, but they get that on console, so it is those sales they are going to protect and invest in and care about.

So next time you think about complaining about a bad console version or are begging for a port? Think about how much you are willing to pay for that game and how your peers will react too. The fact is, there are plenty of quality PC ports and they are all treated the same way. If you want the good stuff, it needs to make sense for publishers too.

It isn’t greed it is just common sense. Plenty of people dismiss it or put their head in the sand or claim games are too expensive as they accumulate 2000 steam games. The reality is it is a growing problem, the internet will automate it and the only way to stop PC games being stuffed up is to not be part of it.

If you can buy a good port at the asked price? Do it. If somebody is selling cheap keys? Be strong and tell them to stop doing that too. Remember piracy was mostly a bullshit reason too, but that didn’t stop it almost killing the platform.

Steam Discovery Update

So finally Valve have done… well “something” to the store and rolled out a massive update. Does it add tabs? Well no. The ability to hide games you own? Nope. So it seems that Valve are still resisting the blatantly obvious.

However they have added one interesting feature, which is “Curators”. Basically you can recommend games to people on the store and gain a following. Of course, on day 1 the immediate problem with the system is obvious. You don’t gain a following by curating, you curate because you have a following.

Total Biscuit is straight to number 1 and this is where you can already see where it is all going to go. Want to get on Total Biscuit’s list? Well you would have to ask very nicely as a developer. There might even be other methods to get featured down the track…. Even if people don’t stoop to that, it is certainly a nice way to appear on every game page…complete with a link to your youtube video.

Once people are making money from it? You can bet larger groups will get together to start gaming the system. Want a couple of thousand fake followers? Sure that can be arranged to push you onto the front page. From there you can sit back and pick and choose games according to their “relative merits”.

Then of course you have the problem of “real groups” like NeoGAF that have recommendations from officers. While I will not call the selection of games particularly crap, you have to wonder how useful it is. Metal Gear Rising alongside Table Top Simulator? Well of course because… they are two games.

Why Valve can’t just hire somebody to curate the store themselves is beyond me. They could even add proper tags and categories! It doesn’t cut out the potential for hi-jinks, but at least it is controlled by Valve themselves and they own the store after all. As it stands, you just know this is going to be abused.

Oh and you can’t avoid it either…because if somebody has followers their opinion matters.

It would be easy to improve too. Letting you “not recommend” a game for a start, to say it is crap. But of course we couldn’t have youtube celebrities doing that, so it will never happen. How about categorising games ourselves as curators? Apparently not, even though it would make the feature useful.

I guess the blue colour is ok though.

But hey, I might as well join the fun right? Check out my new Curated list “Boring as Batshit” games. From Skyrim to Borderlands to Borderlands 2, this is a carefully curated list of games you should never, ever, bother playing.

http://store.steampowered.com/curator/6858803/

Quick Random Steam Game Thoughts

The eternal quest to play all my steam games continues. Here is a small selection of titles that I have tried recently:

Worth a look

Unturned: F2P DayZ/Rust/Every other game lately clone. So why is it worth a look? Well it is free for a start but I don’t know, it just charmed me a little. Small download too, so why not?
Cloudbuilt: I really bought into the atmosphere and I think the story is simple but well done. The gameplay? It is really hard as in, “expect to spend hours mastering the controls and you have to hold the controller kind of funny”, type of hard. But this isn’t necessarily a bad thing and in fact is a rather good thing if you know what you are getting into. So now you do and platforming or endless runner fans should check it out.
Outlast Whistleblower: I really liked the original Outlast and the DLC is even better. It does go way over the top at certain points, but that is kind of what you want from horror isn’t it? So check it out.
Marlow Briggs: You might have heard this game described as being better than God of War…in a joking matter. So yes, I can confirm that it is indeed a joke, almost as funny as some of the animations. Still, it has some surprising moments that make you wonder why they put such an effort into this game. Somebody blew a shitload of money on this title, so you might as well have a look at some stage just to be in on it.

Meh

Symphony: After fiddling with the setup, you are inserted into a colourful shoot-em-up based on your own music tracks (or those provided). All nicely done, but I’m not a music game fan generally and the shooting hook wasn’t enough. I’d rather just play a shooter.
Hard Reset: If I had played this a year ago? I’d have liked it better. But as a traditional hardcore shooter? You might be better with Wolfenstein or Shadow Warrior now. Still solid.

Nah
Halo: Spartan Assault: About as bland and unexciting as you might expect, if you expected it to be super bland and unexciting. Guns, missions, graphics? All 5/10 stuff. There is nothing bad as such, just nowhere near worth your time.
Suguri: Anime inspired shooter that isn’t terrible, but it wasn’t my style and the gameplay has very little to recommend beyond that.
Acceleration of Suguri X-Edition: As above, but focused on boss battles this time. Just doesn’t seem very fun at all.

Steam Regional Currency Changes and Australia

If you have been following the Steam news lately you will know that regional currency is coming. But thanks to Enhanced Steam’s JShackles, we now have a few more details. Steam will support the following currencies and exchange rates at some point.

For a tf2 key it will cost:

usd = $2.19
gbp = £1.29
eur = 1,61€
rub = 73,60 py6.
brl = R$ 4,80
jpy = ¥ 222.36
nok = 13,41 kr
idr = Rp 26504.12
myr = RM7.06
php = P96.76
sgd = S$2.71
thb = ฿70.72
vnd = 46,950.28₫
krw = ₩2,224.93
try = 4,69 TL
uah = 26,76₴
mxn = Mex$ 28.61
cad = CDN$ 2.36
aud = AUD$ 2.34 (+1.069)
nzd = NZD$ 2.49

So how good or bad is this? Well it will come down to publishers… So pretty bad. Let’s crunch the numbers by looking at a popular example:

So say I wanted to buy Watch_Dogs on steam. It costs … No sorry, I can’t do this because I’m never buying that… ever.

Ok better example. Here is how it plays out:

The verdict? Pretty much any way you look at it, Australians will be paying more for games. You can also bet that the currency rate will not be adjusted quickly as the AUD$ rises, assuming it ever does (which it already has compared to the reference rates). There is no way publishers like Ubisoft and Namco will accept their games suddenly being cheaper day after day, so expect it to remain more or less static until the currency drops…where it will be adjusted in real time.

Can we do much about it? Well buying outside steam or gifting seems sensible, but that doesn’t seem to be a long term solution. A lot of work is going into this region locking and those loopholes are unlikely to be available for long. This is especially true when considering the growing Russian key market, which will no doubt ruin it for everybody.

So yeah, the Steam sale is on now so buy up. Oh and any Steam funds you have? They will be converted too… So might want to spend that all as well.

Sigh.

Recent Steam Games Roundup

It is that time again to report on various games that I have tried on the Steam platform. While Gabe still seems to have other things on his mind besides HL3 we have to make do with whatever we can get.

So what can you get recently and is it worth playing? Here are some short impressions to help:

Arcane Worlds

Magic carpet meets Black and White meets… well some really early and unfinished game. There is potential here, with some nice graphics, spell effects and umm… it loads to the main menu. Will it ever turn into a proper game? Who knows, but it might be worth adding to the library to encourage them just in case.

Maybe

Diehard Dungeon

Very much Binding of Issac only … well ok it is pretty much exactly the same thing. The graphics lack charm and the collision detection isn’t exactly on point, but everything more or less works.

Solid enough for a quick look

The Walking Dead Season 2 Episode 2

I had several problems with Episode 1 so I didn’t have great expectations going into the second effort. Fortunately, this is a better episode all around, with some slow, but steady pacing and a better focus on what the episode is supposed to be doing. Unfortunately I still don’t care at all about these people…and certain events are like a worst case scenario…

Well… lets just say you better be able to become a bad guy and kill everybody at one stage. Do it Telltale (but fucking test it before you release it please). Two hard crashes! Sigh….

Still a pass

Master Reboot

It starts strange and then gets stranger. You walk around in somebody’s captured memories…and you need to find ducks and it is some really out there stuff. This is very much one of those “I love it because it doesn’t hold your hand” kind of games. If that is your thing, give it a look (for example if you have ever described The Void as amazing rather than the garbage that it is). Otherwise it will just be a bit too strange and confusing.

Sort of…maybe. It looks kind of neat at least

Vanguard Princess

I’m told this is actually a decent fighting game under the hood. But the hood is so ANIME that … well just check out the steam community hub to see what I mean… http://steamcommunity.com/app/262150

Yep.

There isn’t a lot else to it. You get an arcade story mode…controller support out of the box (picked up TE stick straight away etc) and some decently fun fighting mechanics. And panties…lots of panties.

You’ll know the second you see that community hub

Alpha Protocol

A bit of an old game… but why not. It might be on sale after all?

It isn’t that great. It *could* have been great, but it just turns out to be a mess of an experience. If you need help you can picture it as Deus Ex HR. Now that game had a lot of flaws and I didn’t much care for it. But it was well done for what it was trying to actually do (which wasn’t enough for me).

Alpha Protocol attempts to do more, but it is just all wrapped up in a clunky and poorly thought out package. It’ll take you several hours at least to scratch the surface and even then I don’t think it is worth the effort.

There is a game here, but you’ll need to work way too hard for it.

But it if you have a whole lot of time to waste.

Major Mayhem

Luckily Thief was released right after this game appeared, taking the crown as the … well the worst game to be released recently. Major Mayhem is a limited “touch shooter” your little sister might knock up in flash for a school project…if she was happy to just get a “pass”.

Nope.

Beatbuddy: Tale of the Guardians

I can’t say it held my attention for too long…but it is decently well put together. It almost reminds me of Ecco the dolphin in some ways. Just Ecco ripped of all charm and nostalgia but with better graphics and some nice sound based ideas.

It isn’t great, but you could do worse.

So there it is, a few more steam games to sink your teeth into. What have you been playing recently?

Steam In-Home Streaming

Valve have just expanded their in-home streaming beta, so chances are if you are in the streaming group you got an email and can now join in the fun.

What is it? Basically this is a feature that allows you to log in on a secondary computer and stream games installed on your primary machine. So if you have Metal Gear Rising available on your beastly rig? You can now stream and play it on a tiny laptop or other device.

This all sounds amazing in theory, but how does it work? The answer is very well…if you have a decent network. Straight away over wireless you’ll see that games are more than playable, but lag spikes will frequently interrupt your enjoyment. If you can get an ethernet cable connecting your machines (problematic obviously for tablets and phones down the track) then you should be more than capable of having a good time.

To get it working:

1. Get into the steam in-home streaming beta (join http://steamcommunity.com/groups/homestream)
2. Update both steam versions to the “beta” on each computer
3. Log in as the same user
4. Wait five minutes or so (this is the crucial step, it doesn’t seem to activate straight away)
5. All your installed games on your main computer will now appear as playable on the second device.
6. Run what you want to play

You will need “steam” on the streaming device of your choice, so there are not too many options available just yet. But I’m sure it wont take long for this to be a very cheap way of getting games onto another screen.

Top 5 Enhanced Steam features Valve needs to implement

Enhanced Steam is a must have browser plugin for any steam user (technically also the stand-alone client, but we’ll let that one mature a bit first). If you are not using it yet, then you should be because the default store is lacking in a number of areas.

Check out the great work from JShackles at:
http://www.enhancedsteam.com/index.php
and alternatively contribute:
https://github.com/jshackles/Enhanced_Steam

The plugin itself contains a number of great features such as store price comparisons, regional price information and warnings about DRM. However while these are great for consumers, you can see why Valve would never make them official features because of the conflict of interest they create (or they could remove the terrible practices like regional price gouging…but that is another story).

There are however a few features that Valve should steal today and make part of the official store. Without further ado, here are my top 5 Enhanced Steam features Valve should implement:

• Highlight the content on steam you already own
  
  A real no brainer given how big the store now is and how big our libraries are getting. 500 games are on sale? Great. But you really have no idea which ones you own or which ones are on your wishlist in the default steam interface. The simple green and blue highlighting (for wishlist) adds so much for so little effort and even might encourage people to buy more and fill in the blanks.
• Enhance the wishlist
  
  Let’s face it, the default wishlist sucks. Not only does it have limited functionality, but games don’t even drop off it half the time when you buy them. Enhanced steam incorporates such features as a direct add to cart and even functionality to remove games you already own. Once again the whole point of a wishlist is to encourage purchases, so Valve would only benefit from putting some effort into it the interface.
• Transaction summary on the steam marketplace
  
  While this may not be the most stable of features, to my mind it could be one of the most important ones moving forward. Market transactions might be small, but even little amounts add up fast and I believe Valve will one day get into trouble with people spending too much in what could be considered forms of gambling. It’ll only take one person spending their savings opening e-crates for the media to blow up about the features. Hence it wouldn’t hurt them to get ahead of any potential harm, by highlighting how much people have spent and even adding voluntary pre-commitment levels.
• Badge filtering options
  
  Cards and badges are pretty great for gamers. Even if you don’t care about collecting them, it gives you something to sell to those who do to offset the cost of some games. However like a lot of Valve ideas the screens just sort of “appeared” and little thought seems to have been given to integrating them naturally into the interface. Simply things like sorting options, showing drop availability and so on, are simple ideas that Enhanced Steam does so much better.
• howlongtobeat integration
  
  A bit more of a personal choice here, but I always like to know how much “game” there is before a purchase. While this is only one example, in general Valve could do a lot better integrating with sites in the wider Steam ecosystem. Obviously isthereanydeal is a stretch too far, but letting us know how many hours are ahead of us isn’t too much to ask.

So there are just a few of the features that Valve should be adding today. What features of Enhanced Steam would you like to see realistically ported over?

Bonus from @0mikr0n

• Add all DLC to cart
  
  DLC on steam is a bit of a mess. Do you have the content in the complete set or just the season pass? Often you have no way to tell, but Enhanced Steam can at least make this a bit easier to deal with. Especially when a game has a million pieces of DLC (Agarest I’m looking at you) the add all to cart button is a must have.

La-Mulana – Mini Review

$3 on sale http://store.steampowered.com/app/230700/

So La-Mulana. I haven’t quite finished it yet, but I’m getting close enough that I thought I would drop a few thoughts for the sale period:

Pros
– It is really addictive and provides that “just one more room” feeling because you want to see what comes next.
– The boss fights are (relative to the rest of the game) often quite amazing. Whilst they are difficult, you will often win “on the last strike” as you are
about to die which suggests great balance.
– The game is certainly lengthy, with good variety in the environments and lots of hidden treasures to find.
– Extra systems like the software, fairies and numerous sub-weapons keeps things fresh.

Cons
– I don’t know how you are supposed to play it without the aid of a walkthrough. Seriously, it is nuts trying to work out where to go. You’ll often throw a switch in one room which will open up a gateway in another area just because “reasons”.
– To go with this, if you head out without the right items, or spend money on the wrong thing you can seriously screw yourself over…unless you get the help of a walkthrough.
– The combat is ok, but the platforming itself feels stiff and unresponsive especially compared to a more fluid game like Spelunky.
– Whilst the sub-weapons have variety, there doesn’t seem to be a great reason not to use the axe for most of the game.

This quote from the walkthrough (http://www.gamefaqs.com/wii/972053-la-mulana/faqs/65127) pretty well sums it all up:

DO NOT place a weight on the dais up top. If you do, the path to the Grail
Point will be permanently blocked off and you will be unable to complete the
game.

That is about halfway through. There are plenty more examples of things like that.

Overall? I think it is an amazing game because of the depth and the amount of ideas and content. However I don’t feel that it is necessarily a good game, if that makes sense. Since that probably wouldn’t, I’ll just
say that it is well worth a play, just be prepared to be reading along as you go and accept that even then it will not be understandable. Whilst the action is a mixture of good and bad points, there is still enough there to keep you engaged.

A buy at the price.

Steam, Valve, Gambling and Regulations

The final kill is made, the score is tallied, the counter-terrorists have won the day. Ordinarily you would be happy with this outcome, except today you were a terrorist and you failed to bomb your targets. For many years gamers have been killing each other in what can only be described as “good clean fun”. But now? Things are a little different.

Today, after your match of Counter Strike:Go a little indicator flashes up that you have received a weapon case in your inventory. It is a random drop, most of the time you’ll get nothing, sometimes you’ll get something pretty to use in game. The real value is that you can sell these items on the steam marketplace for steam wallet cash.

Further, with your weapon case? You can also choose to buy a key to unlock it. If you do so, you are presented with the chance of winning an extra rare gun or perhaps something more common. Inevitably, curiosity will get to you. You buy a key, you select the “open” option and the graphics spin like a slot machine. It cost you around $3 for the chance, but what is that small amount when you could win something potentially worth a hundred?

The wheel stops, you win something like this:

Which is worth all of $0.05. You gambled, you lost, life goes on and it is all just part of the game.

But wait, “you gambled”? Suddenly it may not be just part of the game at all.

Every country has different laws about online gambling. Some allow it, some restrict it to serious degrees and others, like Australia, are inconsistent. Sports betting for example is fine, but not if an event is live. The Interactive Gambling Act further suggests that online lotteries are legal, as long as they are not the ‘instant-win’ style scratch cards.

Does this apply to Valve? You are certainly paying money for the “chance” to earn more. You are of course, under no compulsion to sell it and you can’t really get your money back as that income stays on your account (less a cut of course). So does that make all the difference? It is worth asking the question, but I would suggest there is unlikely to be a clear cut answer. Certainly it would seem to in the worst case fall under the cloud of “provisions for emerging technologies” where you would suggest lawmakers have never even heard of it.

In general terms, you could expect Valve have this all covered off in the legal world, so it serves perhaps as more of a curiosity. It does however further raise the issue of what potential problems these schemes could raise socially. It is certainly no curiosity that gambling is addictive. What are the actual chances of getting an “extremely rare item?” it is currently impossible to tell.

I would suggest a proactive approach would be welcome to protect people who may be susceptible to the negative implications of these services. Namely:

• Display the odds of winning each item before a key is purchased to open a case.
• Implement proper parental controls so that stored credit cards cannot be continuously used to feed that “one more case” feeling.
• Actively monitor spending habits and provide hard limits or pre commitments for actions that could be conceived to be based on chance.
• Actively seek out and refer gamers who are spending a lot of money to services such as gambling helplines.

Overly dramatic? Maybe. Putting roadblocks or disincentives in to stop people opening cases for potential profit? Yes. It could be perceived as not being in Valve’s best interest to highlight the chances of success in these ways, but in the long term I think they will have to. It might only be $3 to open a case, but slot machines can accept small denominations too and it can quickly add up. To me this is especially a problem given the videogame demographics or people who may not be mature enough to deal with potential addiction.

I see the whole setup as a quickly evolving system that will have issues one way or another as it grows. What I would like to see is the services growing in a socially responsible way from as close to the start as possible. We already have weapon cases and esports cases and chances for “foil drops” from booster cards. Many other games are also offering real world investments with outcomes later dictated by the random gods above. Will there be a day soon when the line is crossed without adequate protections in place?

If these type of issues are not addressed and discussed before real problems emerge? We may just be having much more difficult conversations down the track.

How do you feel about these services being offered by game publishers? Do you think there is the potential for problems or will it always be manageable? If not, how would you propose to get ahead of the issue?

Betrayer – Steam early access

Every now and then a game jumps up and grabs your attention by being a little bit different. FPS survival type horror? Plenty of those. Games that go for a really different black and white asthetic? Well we have some of those too.

But all of that combined? Well it has probably been done at some stage. But it has been done again with Betrayer and the result is looking darn good.

Check it out on Steam early access: http://store.steampowered.com/app/243120/

To give you an idea of what it is? Here are some really well put together impressions from Grief.exe care of NeoGAF. He takes us through the early sections and demonstrates some of the mechanics and combat situations available:

There seems to be a long way to go, but the journey the game is on seems to be heading somewhere interesting. One to keep an eye on.