I Have Seen The Future, And it is Annoying
- Thread starter Shamus Young
- Start date
You know, I've only read a few of Shamus Young's articles on the escapist but the immense amount of common sense he commands makes me think I should read the rest.
IMO if we HAVE to go with a digital system, for the love of fuck, please let it be steam. Impulse doesn't have the pull, EA's store sucks ass in that you can only download your purchases for a fixed amount of time, and it's short too, like 6 months or something. You can of course PAY THEM to extend this, fuck that.
Steam remembers my shit, has great deals, has a very impressive uptime, a good UI and built in community features: Store saves, config options, chatrooms, groups, profiles, friends, achievements and they also host servers now.
And stop putting securom and install limits on games, no one likes that shit. Steam IS DRM and I don't know why upper management doesn't understand that.
Anyways, I'm a gamer. I've been gaming on PC and consoles since I've been 4, but the PC seems to have grown up with me, always there, always providing me with new stuff. As such it is by and far my favorite gaming platform. It really makes me sad to see what it's all come down to.
IMO if we HAVE to go with a digital system, for the love of fuck, please let it be steam. Impulse doesn't have the pull, EA's store sucks ass in that you can only download your purchases for a fixed amount of time, and it's short too, like 6 months or something. You can of course PAY THEM to extend this, fuck that.
Steam remembers my shit, has great deals, has a very impressive uptime, a good UI and built in community features: Store saves, config options, chatrooms, groups, profiles, friends, achievements and they also host servers now.
And stop putting securom and install limits on games, no one likes that shit. Steam IS DRM and I don't know why upper management doesn't understand that.
Anyways, I'm a gamer. I've been gaming on PC and consoles since I've been 4, but the PC seems to have grown up with me, always there, always providing me with new stuff. As such it is by and far my favorite gaming platform. It really makes me sad to see what it's all come down to.
It`s just a trend. Shitware like this will pile up for the next couple of years and then the developers will draw the conclusion that Shamus wrote here. After that they will merge their stores into bigger and better ones and the mountain of shait will collapse under it`s own weight.
This was why Final Fantasy XI Online was such a piece of crap - signing up for two completely different services and installing from like six discs was pure torture.
Of services, GFWL and Steam are about the only ones worth stomaching.
Actually, DoWII was surprisingly laid-back. GFWL isn't that big of a hassle and is used to track Achievements and friends lists, and Steam is incredibly nice. Shamus' problem with GTA4 is that it didn't use any of the GFWL features, which rendered even having it utterly pointless.CD-R said:
Of services, GFWL and Steam are about the only ones worth stomaching.
Agreed. Steam is nice, and GFWL... well, it could definitely be better, but it's not too annoying when you don't want it around.TheMirai said:
I bought Sins of a Solar Empire and ended up with Impulse running as well.
I only played Sins of a Solar Empire on the day I got it. Steam got to my PC first, so any other run on start-up store would have to hand out free (good) games every week for me to even consider it.
They understand it they just don't want to surrender to Valve. This is of course why I favor the content providers getting together and coming up with a single OS not under the control of one company and building games for that. Not having to concern myself with a Windows upgrade every three or four years just to make sure I will be able to play the latest games when all I use windows for on my home machine is gaming would be nice.AC10 said:
The article makes references that you have to have a client running into order to play a given game. While this is true for some, in regards to Impulse it is not required to be open or in the background to play a game. You can simply purchase a game, install it via Impulse and play without having it running.
Impulse does have Impulse Now, a tray client, which can be run in the background for access to community features, checking for updates, etc. However, it is not required and can be easily disabled if the user does not want access to those features.
-Spencer (Stardock)
Impulse does have Impulse Now, a tray client, which can be run in the background for access to community features, checking for updates, etc. However, it is not required and can be easily disabled if the user does not want access to those features.
-Spencer (Stardock)
Thanks for clearing that up.Island Dog said:The article makes references that you have to have a client running into order to play a given game. While this is true for some, in regards to Impulse it is not required to be open or in the background to play a game. You can simply purchase a game, install it via Impulse and play without having it running.
Impulse does have Impulse Now, a tray client, which can be run in the background for access to community features, checking for updates, etc. However, it is not required and can be easily disabled if the user does not want access to those features.
-Spencer (Stardock)
I really need to give Impulse a second look. I haven't seen it since it was brand new and it only had a few titles and some rough edges.
Yeah this is all really goddamn annoying.
I hate having background programs eating up my computing power-and it's ridiculous when you have games that need multiple versions of background programs to run at all.
I hate having background programs eating up my computing power-and it's ridiculous when you have games that need multiple versions of background programs to run at all.
Yeah, I guess I have that problem with any games I get from GameTap, BigFish, or TellTale, but to a much smaller degree.
Steam acts as though it was written by Apple. It thinks it knows better than me what I REALLY want. As a good example, it persists in auto updating my games without even asking first. The offline/online thing is a pain in the butt too, there is little real reason that Online mode needs to exist as far as I can see. If Valve got a good dose of humility and improved Steam to be a silent helper that did what I wanted, when I wanted it, then it might be alright. Until then it is flawed.
I've used Impulse about the same as Steam (which is to say not all that much, maybe half a dozen games) and it seems much better with less annoying auto-screw-me-up crap. It also seems to be much more flexible with the fact that I have multiple computers.
Makes it a no-brainer for me when there is a game I want that is available on both Steam and Impulse...
I've used Impulse about the same as Steam (which is to say not all that much, maybe half a dozen games) and it seems much better with less annoying auto-screw-me-up crap. It also seems to be much more flexible with the fact that I have multiple computers.
Makes it a no-brainer for me when there is a game I want that is available on both Steam and Impulse...
You're usually downloading the last bit of the game that they didn't put on the disc. One of the biggest sources of pirate game releases are the companies that manufacture the discs. By removing a few, small critical bits and having you download them after you install the game, they can usually eliminate a lot of the pre-launch piracy (and counterfeiting). It's not a great solution, but I can't think of a better way around that problem.xyrafhoan said:
That's because the Xbox360 controller is also Microsoft's official gamepad for Windows. They sell a version with different packaging and a driver disc in the PC section of many stores.shadow skill said:
Before the 360 controller, gamepads for PCs were terrible quality, had an inconsistent feature set, and were a giant pain in the ass to get working correctly. Standardizing on the 360 controller for Windows was one of the best things that could have been done to make non-Mouse/KB games reasonable on the PC.
As far as the social connectivity issues go... I long for the early days of battle.net. Blizzard created an elegant little system that ran from inside the game. No crappy program running constantly in the background. Gamespy Comrade? Where the hell did you come from? You're def not my comrade.
