Digital Delivery: The Future of Gaming?

I remember when I first purchased Halflife 2. I was so pissed that it came with some arbitrary chunk of software that I had to install with it. "What the heck is Steam? I don't need it! This is insulting!" Et cetera, et cetera.

However, after the initial birthing pains, I now recognize Steam as one of the greatest things that happened to gaming. Now, bare in mind, I'm not a Valve fan boy. I'm definitely not saying Steam is the best of the digital delivery services. But I will claim that it took the concept and made it mainstream.

Prior to having Steam shoved down my throat, I was fairly old fashioned and conservative when it came to online buying. I certainly never quite felt comfortable with the idea of digital-only purchases. After playing through Halflife 2, I uninstalled Steam, but ended up coming back when Episode 1 was released. Then it stayed on my system and slowly I purchased a few more titles, usually directly from Valve.

I was vaguely aware that other games were offered on Steam, but the catalog selection was never very robust the few times I had checked on it. That all changed by the time Portal came out, and I started noticing their twice-a-week sales promotions. Slowly, my game collection started to build up, until Christmas of 2010 hit and I was sitting on a small chunk of cash. The skies opened up and angels began to sing as I spent only $150ish and got $500 worth of gaming goodness. It was beautiful.

At this point, I'm afraid I don't know much about Impulse. I purchased GalCiv II and one of its expansions on it, but other than that I haven't felt the need to use it for any gaming purchases. Partly this is due to Steam getting its nefarious intoxicants into me first, and partly because the last time I used Impulse, it was just a digital delivery service.

Steam, on the other hand, is a social experience. Their in-game instant messenger is by far my favorite feature. It can transform a single player experience into something much more akin to multiplayer.

One thing I love about MMOs is playing with friends. One thing I hate about MMOs is the random assholes I have to deal with. When the latter began to outweigh the former, my brain switched into a singleplayer mode and I gave up World of Warcraft. I have yet to feel the desire to go back to an MMO now that I've got a reasonable amount of my real-life friends playing on Steam regularly.

Often times, my friends and I will play through the same game at the same time. This results in a very fun experience as we share tips, strategies, funny situations, bugs, complaints, et cetera. This is all done without having to alt-tab out of the game, which can lead to stability issues and is generally a lot more of an effort than simply responding from within the game interface itself.

I once read an article about how single-player gaming was a fluke, an anomaly that was a result of technology limitations. They pointed out board games, card games, and how it wasn't until video games that single player became a popular option. This was years ago, and I never did agree with the premise. Many games simply do not lend themselves to multiplayer style.

However, I do believe that the future of single player games is to include social aspects, such as what we're now seeing in Steam. That much of the "single player an aberration" idea, I can agree with. Gaming, even when you're playing by yourself, is still (ideally) a very social experience. How many times have you played through a single player game and then spent hours discussing it with friends who did likewise?

I hope that more of the digital delivery platforms emulate Steam's example and provide more opportunities to complement my single player games through communicating shared experiences with my friends. Preferably from in-game!