I know there are a few gamers in our course - so I thought I'd post a link to the latest gaming-based "social network" around.
I'm sure most of you, if not all have heard of "Steam". Basically steam is a "content delivery system", or at least it was originally. What this means is that you download "steam", and then through steam you download your games, and then play them. This eliminates the need for a publisher ( as no boxes need to be manufactured ), and also increases the security and anti-piracy elements of the software as it is trickier to pirate a steam game ( though not impossible ).
Valve ( Creator of Half-Life/Steam ) Announced today the release of the "Steam Community". Which is basically a community for steam. They've improved the friends system, and now support groups, group chat, voice chat, profile systems, statistics ( ie, amount of time spent in a particular game, a list of aliases ). It's currently in beta, but for those who have steam get it!
Install instructions are quite simple, load up steam, go to your settings page, and down the bottom there's a "Beta Participation" section, just select the beta there.
I live at http://steamcommunity.com/id/tomgupper
Just thought you'd all like to know.
Tuesday, August 7, 2007
Steam Community
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8 comments:
Steam is a nice idea, and its fairly well implemented. HOWEVER, Steam is also one of the most aggravating pieces of software Ive used. Its nice to see they are actually doing something with it (and now that iD are on board its even better), Im suprised they have the friends thing running again (I think its been down more than its ever been up). Also steam doesn't work through the UQ proxy :(.
Does anyone know if they have fixed the archive feature of steam? 2 or 3 times Ive archived before formatting to find afterwards that the archive has been corrupted and Ive had to download 3 gig worth of crap again!.
oh while I'm there, some old steam GIFs
http://xs53.xs.to/pics/05444/steam.gif
http://www.asd-online.de/images/site/steam.gif
http://img181.imageshack.us/img181/1914/imagezm9.gif
Yeah, they fixed that ages ago, The archives wern't corrupt, you had to delete some clientregistry.blob file or something.
I can't remember the exact process, but it basically involved copying the archives across, then deleting some file, you restart steam, and voila, files are a-waitin'
Steam is getting better, when it first arrived ( and when most of those gifs were made ) it was *shocking*. But it's slowely gotten better and less buggy over time. Most of the time I don't mind it these days - I just had the horrible download speeds. look at that 3 gig game download at 25kb/sec, it's flying.
those GIF's are crazy! o_O
Since your on the gaming topic, you could also look at how people play socially within the well known game World of Warcraft.
The biggest difference is probably that people 'play' socially with a virtual character within the game, rather then with a piece of separate software (steam), or on a website. Thus they can't always be connected with a person in the 'real' world :P
ewww
WoW
Get it out !
GET IT OUT !
WoW, Eve:Online, Guild Wars, City of Heroes, All these MMORPGS have a limited stream of social interaction. I personally have not found a single MMORPG that I can stand for more than a week. Guild wars was the longest, and that's because there's no stupid monthly fee.
Developers need to figure out NEW MMO concepts, because the old ones are tired and boring IMHO. I've got a few ideas . . . but I'll save them for when I've got my own development team behind me ;)
But to get back on topic, there are lots of 'virtual worlds' I guess like that. Secondlife is prolly the biggest and most popular one. Playstation3 "home" is another ( not really that big yet ). Basically I just severly dislike a game as boring as WoW. But I wont deny that playing online games are anti social, I've met a whole host of _Internet_ friends from my Natural Selection days.
I couldn't get into WoW personally, but I know a lot of people who are totally addicted to it still. Its interesting from a social aspect as when I ask them about it all they talk about is the other people playing, not the game itself (too much at least). Evercrack type of effect though. They need a Wii MMORPG where interactions are done through the Wiimote, now there is a killer app!
Second Life is interesting, there is a good article around about people protesting online because all the companies have come into it, but I think Second Life is going to have a web bust type effect, and after that a proper one will build up. PS3 home looks quite interesting but I am a bit worried about the amount of social interaction that can come from it, and anything where Sony has is trying to make a standard is bad (DRM, BETAMAX, MINIDISC, BLURAY etc).
WOW was ok I definitely agree with Anthony about paying the monthly fee. But the game play didn't seem overly exciting.
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