Steam On Mac Performance... Improved!

I've got Portal back on track!

While my Portal on Mac experience was a little off the on the night of launch, I quickly found a work around on the Steam forums. I guess there's a problem with Portal and my version of the Mac OS X software.

Having squared that away, I thought I'd post this little ditty and remind everyone that Portal is free for Windows and Mac users until the 24th (?) of this month. There's absolutely no reason anyone shouldn't at least download the Steam software and get in on that free-Portal-goodness. Even if I didn't have a system that could run the game, I think I'd still hop on and make sure I got the game for free in case of an impending upgrade to my hardware.

The video embedded above is a great example of why I love Valve. Check it out for yourself and then go download Portal for God's sake! (That means you Jenna!)

Steam out today, Portal broken...

As any PLAY READ WRITE reader will know, I've been greatly anticipating the great leap Steam has made from PC to Mac. In fact, I've kind of been on hiatus from PLAY READ WRITE in order to focus on school and my internship (and whatever else life has thrown at me), while waiting for this release.

Even Valve is in on the celebration, declaring Portal free to anyone and everyone, Windows or Mac user, until May 24th. That is awfully generous of them. As on of the few games I actually want to play on Mac, Portal was a welcome substitution for day 1 Team Fortress 2 support on the Apple platform.

Unfortunately, my Portal is completely broken. My screen is awash with white and I can see nothing, much less properly place a portal. I certainly hope this will be fixed soon, but until then, you can see that I've added my thought on the Game Revolution Daily Manifesto blog(y type thing). Here's a link: http://www.gamerevolution.com/manifesto/view.php?id=1005

If you don't feel like commenting there, please do so here! All quips about my choice of platform are warmly welcomed.

Steam on Mac, May 12

Happy day! Finally a firm(er) release date for Steam's client release for the Mac platform. Upon announcement of Steam for Mac, I promptly uninstalled Windows XP and all of it's components. This cleared up quite a bit of space from my limited hard drive.

Unfortunately, it's made the wait to return to Team Fortress 2 and Counter Strike: Source an unbearably long one. Who knew I could miss two games I thought I wasn't interested in playing anymore this much? Frankly, I can't wait to play several rounds of GunGame and I yearn to return to my roll as the soldier, turning my enemies into a mess of bloody debris.

A short anecdote: I was playing Modern Warfare 2 today with Zach and Nick. We were getting horribly thrashed by a group of youngsters whose foul mouths suggested they were actually a group of older individuals with voice modifiers. Still, the experience begged the question: were we like that when we were their age?

This is all besides the point. My point in bringing up the youths is that they reminded me of chippy and my fierce hatred of the scourge of Bob's Pit. I can't help but miss that old community. Hopefully, upon Steam's Mac launch, I'll regain that sense of community, despite the fact that Bob's Pit has disbanded.

One thing I wondered while I was deleting the windows side of my computer was whether or not my favorite server list would remain in tact. Did that information make it into the Steam cloud and stick to my account?

OnLive Launches in June

GDC '10 was last week, and yet, the news is still rolling full steam (obviously I just haven't covered everything I'd like to write about). OnLive made a big splash last year and returned this year with a release date for the service: June 17th.

Some bare bones pricing has also been announced. The service itself will cost $15 a month. I guess this includes a lot of the community features, including: "instant-play free game demos; multiplayer across PC, Mac and TV platforms; massive spectating; viewing of Brag Clips video capture and posting; and cloud-saving of games you've purchased." This monthly cost does not include the rental or purchasing fees for any given game.

Wait, what? So the user pays $15 a month and then pays extra on top of that subscription for any games they'd like to play? That doesn't sound nearly as enticing as I once thought OnLive might have been. Obviously, even a streaming solution can't outrun the publisher's bottom line.

I just don't understand. If you want to use OnLive on your television, without hooking it up to your computer, you'll need some sort of set-top box. I'm guessing you'll be charged for that. Then the user will have to pay for a connection with the bandwith to even run the service. Afterwhich they'll add on $15 a month to even log on. Then depending on whether you want to play games or watch other people play games, you'll have to pay for those too.

Beyond that, how do you own anything on OnLive? Where does ownership fall in a subscription based model? If I "buy" a game to play over the streaming service, and then I cancel my subscription, how do I continue to play the game?

Thank God for Steam and Valve for bringing that platform to the Mac (hypothetically encouraging more developers to create Mac ports of PC games). That was a lot less concise than I was going for....

Thank God for Steam.

Cross Platform Multiplayer in Valve's Steam Play Option

Obviously opening up the Steam platform to Mac users is an attempt to make Steam a universal gaming platform. Steam Play is a big step towards that business model in a couple different ways.

Obviously the first step towards a universal platform is making one purchase on Windows equal one purchase on Mac. Valve is doing that. The next step is cross-platform multiplayer, universal multiplayer, if you will. Valve will have that too. At launch, Mac gamers will connect to the same servers PC gamers will connect to in order to play Team Fortress 2.

Obviously, many of Valve's titles rely heavily on multiplayer content and the community therein. Splintering that community would be a complete deservice to what has made games like Counter Strike: Source or Team Fortress 2. This is all great news for both Valve as a business and consumers and users of Valve's games and services.

I have a lot of respect for Valve, and that is because I feel like Valve has a lot of respect for me as a gamer and consumer. How does this differ from companies like Activision who have earned the contempt and derision of so many vocal Internet using gamers?

Well, obviously, Valve listens to their consumers, or at least emulates with them. Activision may know what consumers want, but controlling their products is clearly a lot more important to them. Corporations like Activision (and Ubisoft) could certainly learn something from Valve's model of DRM. Does anyone think of Steam as a form of DRM? In the beginning, with the launch of Half-Life 2, which was stolen out of their offices well before launch in the first place, consumers may have griped about the installation of Steam before getting to their new game, but now, Steam allows users to preload games they've preordered on the service so that they can play it the second it is available.

That's the trick, that's the way corporation and consumer can come together in understanding. Make the security, the DRM, a value, a bonus to the consumer, rather than a headache or irritation. Steam isn't exactly celebrated as good DRM, mostly because consumers don't really consider Steam as a form of DRM. Despite that, it is celebrated as a store front for a PC gamer's every need. Steam presents a community site, games store, application manager, DRM, sales tracker, and online profile all-in-one. Steam does so much for the consumer that what it does for the corporation is hardly the focus.

Now all of that is coming to the Mac. Steam Play presents a way for purchases to become universal, and not tied to one platform. Cross platform play will only serve to bolster the multiplayer communities of all games that choose to utilize the service. In a way, Valve alone is doing more for the gaming scene on the Mac than Apple has ever done.

What do I think? You need more? Valve is preparing, posturing for the day streaming game services like OnLive become more of a reality. When there are no hardware limitations, no platform limitations, and a massive revenue stream thanks to a subscription model based business and a ton of licensed games for consumers to try at any given time, Valve will have a hard time maintaining a strong value proposition.

Personally, I think I'll always be more interested in owning games, rather than licensing them, and Valve's consumerist ways are certain to build loyalty in me as a user of their Steam platform.

Someone at Valve must read PLAY READ WRITE!

And just like that, some of my questions are answered! Who's to say there is no audience for PLAY READ WRITE? Valve released more information about Steam's displacement to the Mac platform today, Kotaku's Brian Crecente reported:

"'As we transition from entertainment as a product to entertainment as a service, customers and developers need open, high-quality Internet clients,' said Gabe Newell, President of Valve. 'The Mac is a great platform for entertainment services.'

The Mac version of Steam will include all of the features of its PC counterpart, as well as a new feature called Steam Play, which allows customers who purchase the game on one platform to download and play it for the other at no additional charge."

I have to say, I'm very pleased with this news. When a game I've paid in-full for adds even more value, as many of Valve's titles are known to do, I am a happy consumer. While I still prefer to buy physical copies of games, including Valve's Team Fortress 2 a la The Orange Box, Steam offers a hefty amount of value propositioning in the form of a gaming/store-front client.

Obviously, developers everywhere are struggling with protecting their products from pirates while still making everything accessible to the consumers. With Assassin's Creed II suffering from DDoS attacks and consumers completely unable to connect/play the game, Steam's form of DRM doesn't seem so bad. With OnLive becoming a real threat through it's ability to perform on all platforms, Steam's need to diversify is becoming more and more necessary. Good thing Valve doesn't rest on its laurels.

Portal 2 coming to the Mac?

While I'm about as excited as everyone else for the next Portal, I might be even more now that I've heard it's coming to the Mac platform.

Yes, that's right, if you haven't heard it yet, and you get all of your news from PLAY READ WRITE (who are you?), Portal 2 is coming to the Mac OS. While this is great news for Portal, especially because any extension of the audience for that game is only going to translate to more sales, I think I have bigger questions on what this may mean for Valve games (and PC games) and the way people play them.

My first question is: will I be able to play TF2 and other source titles on the Mac now? That's a big question to jump into I know, but we already know that a version of Steam is going to be available to the Mac platform already. Of course, my next question from there is, will my current library of Steam titles be transferable to the Mac platform, or will I have to purchase Mac versions of all my games?

I may be moving a mile a minute here, but all of these are very valid thoughts. Where is Portal 2 going to lead the rest of the Valve library and the Steam store in general? With soon to be competitor OnLive supposedly allowing cross-platform play of so many titles through streaming, wouldn't Valve and Steam want to expand their reach and value proposition a little bit?