Developers on Games

Ok, I know I’m in the minority for being a PC gamer, but I wanted to throw out some of my opinions on “On-demand games.” I’m comparing Steam to Direct2Drive, as both have their pros and cons, but one is an obvious winner in my eyes now.

Is an extension of Gamespy where you can purchase Movies and Games online, download them, and watch/play them as you please. I feel that out of the non-steam “on-demand games” this is probably the best website to purchase games from. Direct2Drive always has a reliable connection and bandwidth when you are anxiously waiting for the download to finish, as well as speedy purchasing system. Some, in my experience, have lagged for a few hours.

This is Valve’s brainchild of a program that allows users to purchase the latest/greatest of any game Valve happens to let in, and if the developers/publishers put the effort in getting them a Steam-safe version. Steam has a fast purchasing system, since it is it’s own application, but I’ve had experienced an issue where the purchase server was down for a day, Steam has a decent connection too. About a year ago Steam finally delivered a key feature, the friends list feature, which happens to be one of the best features they put in.

Comparison:

Direct2Drive has been my trusty reliable source for on-demand games for about 3 years now. For the past 3 years Steam really didn’t do it for me. Steam was not feature complete when it first came out, very few games were on it, and it was slow as balls, and a resource hog to boot. Actually still is a resource hog, looking at my Task Manager now, it’s taking up 15mb of Ram, and 74mb of Virtual Memory, and the application is completely minimized to the system tray. When I open up the Friends list and main Steam Window it eats up 20mb of Ram, Virtual Memory holds at 74mb. All this when we can just have a shortcut on the desktop?

However, now that Steam has matured and gotten more “feature complete” it is a better application in general. With the Friends List and now Achievement point system (a la Xbox Live), I believe this is going to pave the way for Gaming on the PC. It’s always good when you log into Steam and notice your friend is playing a game, which you can join on the spot. And the issue of “not many games supported” seems to be going away as time goes on. I guess it pays to have a complete package.

Something to compare against, I recently bought a game on both Steam and Direct2Drive, just for the heck of it and do a little comparison. The game was, “Grid” by THQ. Now, Direct2Drive seemed to have downloaded the game quicker, but it also did not run due to some issue, wouldn’t even get into the Front End… So after a day of frustration I decided to try the Steam route. After it was done downloading, I loaded it up, which it did, unlike the Direct2Drive version, but would not get passed the “Loading” portion after the initial Front End. So, after researching, I found out that Grid is not setup to work on 8 Cores. Found a little mod (xml editing) someone did for the Demo version and did it to my version, which worked like a charm. (The issue was that the configuration for 8 cores, apparently it supports it but the configuration is incorrect). So now I got into the game… Something else I noticed, but have yet to really experience, is that Grid has Achievement support for Steam! Unlike the Direct2Drive version (0 points). As time permits, more and more developers/publishers are putting in the effort to make Steam-Safe games, which in the end make all of us (not many) still have a enjoyable PC experience…

I think it was this experience that converted me to try using Steam first, and then go to Direct2Drive, as before, it was always Direct2Drive first then try out Steam…

Conclusion:

My preference is:

I really enjoy using Steam and with the Friends list and Achievement System (POINTZ!) I think this iswhere PC gaming is at, even though it’s kind of a hog. However, it all comes down to how much you really want a certain game. You will find situations, as I have, that Steam may not have a game you want but Direct2Drive will. Then you get to make the decision as to what you want, maybe Steam will get it in a little while?

PS. There is 1 HUGE issue with On-Demand Games. That is, most on-demand games are geared as a specific sku for that particular on-demand site, ie Direct2Drive/Steam. However, the PATCHES too have to be geared for those skus… So when a patch comes out for the actual “store bought” version, it does not necessarily mean it will apply to your on-demand version. I think Steam will be able to out-beat the supply and demand for patches than Direct2Drive will. I’ve noticed that some games on Steam have been patched, but the patches are not available for the Direct2Drive version, WTF!?