The Frugal Gamer

I was unaware of any particular change, but at some point it appears that I have become a very frugal person. I will freeze and shiver under heavy blankets all night long rather than turn my heat on too early in the season. Why buy a ton of stuff to fill your apartment, if you've got everything you need in a box full of good books and your computer? And why would I pay full price for a brand new game, (not to mention the hardware necessary to run new games,) when I can wait for a year or two and get AAA titles at bargain bin prices?!

Don't even get me started about Steam sales... it is unbelievable how I've been able to buy literally thousands of dollars worth of games over the past few years, while actually ponying up only a few hundred bucks. We're talking across years here, I rarely spend more during a Steam sale than I pay for a single steak dinner.

Of course, this has created one small problem for me. I tend to snag a lot of great looking games for cheap, which is great, except that I literally never finish all the games I own. Don't misunderstand me; I'm plugging along, beating games as I can... no, what I mean is that the massive virtual pile of unplayed games continues to grow far faster than the meager pile of games I beat.

Then again, even putting things into two discrete camps like that isn't really accurate. My two favorite genres are RPGs and sandbox games... so beating a sandbox game generally means you've just barely scratched the surface, and RPGs usually have at least two different stories based on choices the player made during the play-through. So even if I've beaten a game, that doesn't necessarily mean I'm done playing it.

Only if I won the lottery would I hope to ever have enough time to catch up on my gaming. Until then, I suppose you could more accurately classify me as a video game collector. Coincidentally, I do (upon rare occasion) enjoy various parts of my immense collection.

Full disclosure: I actually only own about 230 games, with fifteen or so of those being Humble Bundles that I still haven't bothered to redeem. (I hope those don't expire!) Although this feels like a mountain of games to me, especially considering how many of them are 4x sandbox games that literally can take several days of playing to complete a single play-through, I can naturally understand that there are some titans out there whose collection likely dwarfs my own.

So how many games do you own, and how many of those have you never played?

Convalescent

I've had a fairly unexpected turn of events this Turkey Day: an old friend drove 7 hours (one way) to pick me up in order to deliver me to my parents. In particular, this gesture of kindness was because this will be the last holiday season I'll enjoy in the States for a year or two at least.

Thank you, Matt, for your 14 hour donation towards the reunification of parents and son!

As if to add a few more levels to the mountain of gratitude I felt, I was then invited to his home on Friday for an after-Thanksgiving feast worthy of Turkey Day itself! Followed by an evening of board games with friends, I can safely say that this Thanksgiving as a whole has been an outstanding success.

Of course, Saturday I woke up feeling like I was fighting off a cold, and Sunday I woke up feeling like death warmed over. I spent the better part of the week asleep, awakening only for a few hours at a time before succumbing to a fevered dreamworld once more.

I am so thankful to have been visiting my parents' home when this illness struck, as it is infinitely more comfortable than my glorified indoor campground of an apartment. (Everything's in boxes and I'm ready to go just as soon as I can get a sublease signed!)

I'm on the mend now and about to return to Virginia for another few weeks, then holidaying with my folks and off to the Japans in early 2013! Life is good.
I did happen to log into Steam to check out the Autumn Sale. Although I did make a few purchases here and there, overall I felt the offerings weren't that robust compared to previous years. Then again, perhaps this was just to warm us up for the Christmas extravaganza? One can hope.

A funny thing I noticed once again (as this has been a previous thorn in my consumerist side) is how terrible  Steam's UI is for the purchase of DLC. If you're looking at a particular DLC, it conveniently notifies you of which friends already own it, but doesn't actually tell you if you do. A lot of games have a ton of DLC, and it is a huge pain in the ass to go through and figure out which ones you already own. Meanwhile, once you do add a DLC to your shopping cart, the "continue shopping" option takes you back to the store's homepage... very inconvenient if you're purchasing a bunch of DLCs.

I suppose Steam has gotten big enough that a bureaucracy now exists which prevents some common sense upgrades from being implemented quickly and effectively. I'm such a bargain hunter that I slogged through the 50+ clicks necessary to figure out which I didn't already own and make the purchase, but I easily could have said "forget it" and walked away. It is never a good idea to build an obstacle course between your customers and products. Hopefully they'll rework it in time for the Christmas sale?

On Pre-order Bonuses

Ah, yes, the pre-order bonus. There was a time when you'd get something tangible when you pre-ordered AAA titles. I still wear my Quake 4 t-shirt when I'm just going to be gaming at home, despite how raggedy it has become. I still have some old school video game maps that I pin on the wall decoration. Yessir, those relics are from the good ol' days.

That time has now passed. Instead, generally speaking, we get some sort of in-game advantage when we pre-order. It might be platform/vendor dependent, or it might be left up to our choice. The thing that remains consistent is that we no longer are offered any costly tangibles.

Why produce something physically, when you can just add some extra digital content to your game? And so we have a new era of pre-order bonuses, almost exclusively digital in nature. Companies have come up with various strategies to drive up pre-release sales, so let's examine some:

Going the item route really irritates me; too often it feels like it pollutes the intended experience of starting a new character, and these items tend to be decently powerful. Nothing quite like a game where it takes a quarter of a play-through before you find an upgrade to your starting weapon.

A slightly different bonus is to include extra content. Bonus missions, bonus maps, additional characters (or civilizations, in the case of Civ 5), maybe a different color for everyone's default armor. It ranges from "do people really pay extra for this?" when it is merely graphical skins, to a sort of slow-burning anger that I have to jump through hoops to make sure I get the "complete" game.

And of course, these "exclusive" preorder bonuses are never exclusive. They're just ready-made DLC, all they need is to be aged; wait six months and then presto, you have extra profit-flow.

I understand where it all comes from, at least in a vague sense. I know that the projections for overall demand (and profits) are all based on pre-orders, so they do whatever they can to hype the game and lure people in to an early commitment.

That said, I really think that the smartest way to do that is one I often see utilized by Steam; namely, to offer a 10% discount if you pay in full before the game is released. A slightly risky move, you might say, but then again you're free to wait until the game comes out and first impressions are generated. Meanwhile, someone who is a diehard fan and will buy the game regardless of its reviews can get a slight reward for their loyalty, and none of us have to deal with bullshit DLC.

Portal 2's Pre-Release ARG

So initially I was really pumped for Portal 2's ARG.
The set-up was intriguing to begin with; trying to figure out wtf regarding the Potato Sack games, then realizing the connection and finding new Portal related levels in some of my games. All of that was masterfully done.

The puzzle solutions of the ARGs were fun to read about, which is generally how I participate in those sorts of events. (I'm strictly a wiki "the events so far" kinda guy.)

Once the potential for an early release was announced (as foretold by some clever soul), I became very committed to doing what I could to aid the cause. I tried recruiting my friends as well, but of the five who could participate, only one was dedicated.

Another two were spotty with their help and refused to leave the computer running overnight. (They are obviously traitors to the cause, and in fact were likely sent by the Combine to keep tabs on what's happening.) The other two didn't even pretend to participate. Needless to say, I was disappointed.

As of 10:45 on Monday morning, current projections show that we're only shaving a handful of hours off the release.

Now that I'm a working stiff, I'm no longer in a position to stay up until 4AM for a new release; especially on a weeknight!

In other words, it would appear that this "early release" event has turned out to be a spectacular failure. True to their word, the developers put the game's release into our collective hands... Turns out that most people didn't want it bad enough, I suppose.

Now, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that I don't think this is what the developers were wanting when they envisioned this cooperative event. What started out fun ended up transforming into frustration and disappointment. Were I a game designer, that's not what I'd want my core fan-base to be associating with my new sequel.

All I know is that this weekend ended up having a pall cast over it by mid-Saturday, and I'm left feeling quite despondent going into my very busy work week. It is doubtful I'll get more than a few hours of play-time a day until the weekend, which is exactly why I was so excited that Portal 2 could have been released over the weekend.

Do you think the event back-fired? Perhaps it is still too early to say. Some miracle might still cause the game's early release at a reasonable time, like say 5:30 this evening?

One can still dream...

Civ 5 exlusively on Steam!

Short post today. I'm actually really quite busy; been applying to tons of jobs and trying to clean up my wreck of a room before I have to go house-sit for a week. (Nintendo Wii here I come!)

Anyways, I hadn't been staying up to date on Civ 5 and when I recently checked it out, I was surprised to see that it is apparently a Steamworks exclusive! That is a tremendous marketing slam-dunk for Steamworks, and as I'm already an avid user of Steam I don't mind one bit. I'll be interested if others aren't quite pissed off, though. I understood when Valve was making us go through their digital delivery service to play their games, but Civ 5 is in no way connected prior to this dark partnership.

If you want to read about it, here's an FAQ they posted.

In case you have a decent memory, let me just say I'm still planning on finishing my RPG post... someday.

The shrieking of indignant internet users

I saw this post over at Kotaku about how Valve's gonna implement a totally optional software survey in the future.

Wait. Do you... do you hear that?

Listen.

It is the shrill sound of nerd rage.

Most responses to this news are from Kotaku readers indignant of the fact that Steam would dare to request permission to scan their Windows generated program list.

There's a lot of very impassioned claims that people would never let a friend snoop around their computer, let alone a corporation. Kinda makes ya wonder what these people are hiding, no?

I understand the desire for privacy, and I hate invasive snooping as much as the next guy. And don't get me wrong, I'm no fanboi. But I do possess a reasonable level of trust for Valve and have no problems letting them grab my installed programs list.

I figure they'll either try to sell me relevant products that I want to use and will gladly buy, and/or figure out what programs cause compatibility issues with various Steam games and hopefully patch a fix.

I mean, really, what's the worst that could happen?

The Perils of Summer? The only danger was to my wallet.

Steam's sale is coming to a close here in a few hours. The end result is that I spent $95 on various games, buying 24 different titles. There were maybe 15 more that I was on the fence with, but I had to keep telling myself that even though I could save $2 here and $3 there, it would ultimately be better for me to just play through the games I already own but haven't beat. Speaking of beat, there's a really fun game you should check out if you like music. And who doesn't like music?

I wonder if other gamers had an equally hard time of resisting Steam's wicked temptations? I suppose I'm safe until next year's Christmas season, at least... which happens to be less than six months away! Is it too early to start preparing for the Yuletide celebrations?

Oh, the weather outside is broiling...

Perils of Summer!

I was feeling ill last night and had a hard time going to bed in spite of how exhausted I felt.

In the middle of the night, I woke up soaked in sweat and shivering, with stomach cramps. I had felt feverish before so I'm thinking the fever must have broke and long story short, I had a rough night and feel pretty sluggish today. My reflexes are slow and I'm feeling like a zombie.

Just in case anyone's interested, Steamworks is having a huge summer sale (like as big as their Xmas sale) from now until the 4th of July. There are daily specials as well as a ton of games with a reduced price for the whole duration of the sale. Check it out every day and you're bound to see a great deal on a game or two that you'd enjoy.

Video Games and Mom

Although this is over a week late, I thought that in honor of Mother's Day I might share the tale of my lifelong efforts to get my mother involved in video games.

At a tender age, I got Dr. Mario for Christmas (at my excited and persistent request.) Of course, I just thought it was another Mario game... not realizing this was more akin to Tetris. It turned out to be far more more fun for my mother than it ever was for me, and she began enjoying the occasional use of video games.

Flash forward to a summer during my college years, where I was having one last hoorah with Civilization 3 before Civ 4 was released. She expressed the tiniest glimmer of interest in what I was playing, and without wasting any time at all I promptly installed it onto her laptop and showed her how to access the tutorial.

Needless to say, the jump from simple-puzzle game to complex-turn-based-strategy wasn't an easy transition. She had me sit and help her play through a few maps, and she took copious notes. I discovered these notes tucked away in the Civ 3 instruction manual the other day, as I was sorting through some old stuff in the attic. I fondly remembered my mother's brief foray into the world of gaming, and thought "it is a shame she gave up."

Then, a thought popped into my head: "Isn't Portal free for the month, to celebrate Steamwork's Mac release? And doesn't my mother have a nice Mac?" So I told her if she wanted, I could download a free game for her and she expressed interest. Thus began my mother's journey into the realm of nausea and motion sickness that prevents her from playing more than 90 minutes at a time. Haha, but to her credit, she's doing extremely well for someone unused to the WASD/Mouselook movement schema.

I have to say, I'm proud of my mother's propensity to give my favorite hobby a try, and hope that this time I can entice her with enough easy puzzle games that her new hobby sticks.

I think I'll save Civ V for after she masters the basics, though.

Some complaints about water vapor

As I've recently said, I enjoy Steam and think it is fairly innovative and is the template that most digital delivery systems will someday follow.

At one point, I was talking about how convenient it was to respond to my friends via an integrated Instant Messenger. I could chat without tabbing out of the game, one of my favorite features.


The only problem is that it isn't truly built into the game's interface, but rather is through the Steam UI overlay. This usually isn't an issue, but occasionally I do have problems with the hardcoded nature of the Steam UI. I think it would be infinitely more useful if I could remap the commands and otherwise have more control over the UI in regards to specific games.


For example, in Mount & Blade, if you hit tab in a town or city, it takes your character away from the area and you have to start over from the outskirts if you go back in. Since Steam's UI is hardcoded to activate from Shift + Tab, this can be annoying.

Another point of contention: when you get a chat message from a friend, it appears unobtrusively in the corner of the screen. Not a big deal in most games, but some of them have important information right behind where my friend is spamming me with penis jokes. I need to see ammo, health, time remaining, whatever... so if I could choose where the chat mini-window showed up, that would be so much better.

Yet another annoyance is the fact that some games auto-pause when you open the STEAM UI, and others do not. Often times I'll be at a boring point in a game and I'll want to chat with a friend while I'm waiting. Many games, this works like a charm. In others however, it annoyingly makes certain that the game's paused and therefore I'm not whiling away the boring parts through social interaction.

None of these are major issues, to be sure. Minor annoyances that add up, yet I tend to be forgiving considering that Steam is a "first generation" community-based digital delivery service.

Recently, they started an open beta regarding an overhaul of the Steam UI. I've begun participating in it, and definitely feel like there are some improvements. Overall I'm not entirely pleased, but it is a beta so I'll reserve judgment for when it is officially "done".

It will be interesting to see what the end results are... hopefully some of my complaints will be addressed.

Portal Update: Ending has changed!

Some of you may already be aware of the recent update to Portal that added an extra puzzle to each level, and the achievement that goes with it.

Well, I was on Steam about an hour ago and just exited a game when I got a little notice that Portal had finished updating. I checked the update log and it says "Added valuable asset retrieval" ... sound familiar to anyone?

I played through it from the last level real quick and beat it, and found out that they updated the ending of the game!

You can see it here.

Certainly seems like Portal 2 and/or Halflife 2: Episode 3 are right around the corner!

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!