Curmudgeon Gamer
03 August 2007
Stay out of the virtual rare book room. Buy DOOM on CD.
So now id Software has their games on Valve's virtual rare book roomSteam service. Yuck.
The prices of individual games are pretty bad. I'd rather track down a physical CD that I can keep forever and, where applicable, use one of the enhanced clients made from the GPLed source code. The big package of all of id Software's games is a deal, however, if you're cozy with Steam's tentacles.
Which brings me to my big concern: no more GPLed id Software games. Now that DOOM 3 is on Steam and theoretically available for sale forever, perpetually priced at $20, we probably won't see any source release as we've seen for everything since DOOM.
My naive understanding of Steam is that the General Cache Files (GCFs) encapsulate game data and present an extra layer between the user and the data. So Steam users might have to do some extra work to use a GPLed client with the data they've bought through Steam. Moreover, it's possible that id Software has now, or will someday, make it impossible for GPLed clients to play against the client distributed through Steam. I'm still unclear on how mods like Counter-strike and Red Orchestra work through Steam, but I'm guessing that they are close enough to commercial to get special status. (How do lesser mods integrate with Steam?)
Oh well. It was a nice run. Thanks for the games, John Carmack and id Software. Hope this venture works out for you.
Update: From Dustin over at LinuxGames:
Update 2: Be sure to check out Ryan's comments here and here which suggest I'm even more wrong.
The prices of individual games are pretty bad. I'd rather track down a physical CD that I can keep forever and, where applicable, use one of the enhanced clients made from the GPLed source code. The big package of all of id Software's games is a deal, however, if you're cozy with Steam's tentacles.
Which brings me to my big concern: no more GPLed id Software games. Now that DOOM 3 is on Steam and theoretically available for sale forever, perpetually priced at $20, we probably won't see any source release as we've seen for everything since DOOM.
My naive understanding of Steam is that the General Cache Files (GCFs) encapsulate game data and present an extra layer between the user and the data. So Steam users might have to do some extra work to use a GPLed client with the data they've bought through Steam. Moreover, it's possible that id Software has now, or will someday, make it impossible for GPLed clients to play against the client distributed through Steam. I'm still unclear on how mods like Counter-strike and Red Orchestra work through Steam, but I'm guessing that they are close enough to commercial to get special status. (How do lesser mods integrate with Steam?)
Oh well. It was a nice run. Thanks for the games, John Carmack and id Software. Hope this venture works out for you.
Update: From Dustin over at LinuxGames:
Someone beat me to the question about Linux and open source gaming! Carmack is proud of the code he's released, and he will open source the DOOM III engine in the future, and years and years from now, id Tech 5. He also says that knowledge informs their decisions while developing new engine technology. This response got the biggest applause of the session so far, which kind of (pleasantly!) surprised me. :]There you go, Carmack's on record and I'm on track to be wrong. I hope he follows through.
Update 2: Be sure to check out Ryan's comments here and here which suggest I'm even more wrong.
Labels: gnu, id, online distribution, quake, steam
--jvm at 20:47
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[ 6 ]
18 June 2007
Tomb Raider Anniversary sets distribution record
Not for the number of copies of Tomb Raider Anniversary sold (we'll know more about that next month) but for the number of distribution methods in the first three months on the market. A new one was just announced today. Let's count them:
- Retail box (Windows and PS2 now, PSP in a week or so, Wii and Xbox 360 late this year)
- Steam (Windows now)
- GameTap (Windows now, but GameTap will have a MacOS version late this summer. From GameTap's point of view, I can't think of a better way to introduce Mac gamers than to offer Tomb Raider Anniversary for MacOS X...)
- Episodic game for owners of Tomb Raider: Legend on Xbox 360 in September
Labels: business, gametap, online distribution, steam, tomb raider
--jvm at 11:12
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[ 1 ]
06 June 2007
Chopping a game into pieces (or Tomb Raider Anniversary on Xbox 360)
Via this post at NeoGAF, you can now find Tomb Raider: Anniversary rated for the Xbox 360. Try this link to see for yourself.What's interesting about this is that the game comes in five separate pieces. It appears that the game has been chopped into episodes and will arrive on the Xbox 360 via Xbox Live Marketplace.
This will be interesting to watch and raises some interesting questions:
- Will the pieces cost more than the $30 for the physical product on Windows, PlayStation 2, PSP, or Wii? My guess is that they'll cost more for the whole thing, justified by offering improved graphics and online achievements.
- Will there be a disc-based version for Xbox 360? Probably not.
- Why wasn't this done for the Windows version which is available as a download from GameTap and Steam? I really don't understand, given that GameTap is already doing episodic games.
- Does this signal how the the story started in Tomb Raider: Legend will be finished -- through downloadable episodes on the platforms that can handle it? I sure hope not. I enjoyed TR:L and would hate to have a virtual product as the only path to seeing its story finished.
- Will the Wii version be handled in the same way? Probably not. The Wii just isnt' designed to handle a full-size game like that (yet).
Labels: gametap, online distribution, steam, tomb raider, xbox360, xboxlive
--jvm at 15:40
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[ 3 ]
11 May 2007
On game preservation and GameTap
Simon of GameSetWatch has posted excerpts from a recent email conversation he and I had regarding GameTap and similar services, especially with an eye toward game preservation. You can go read it yourself.
I'll only add here that I meant to get in a mention of Save the Whales, a game which was reportedly distributed online-only and was almost lost to the digital abyss. Did I mention it was an Atari 2600 game? That's right, a game distributed through a modem to an Atari 2600 over 20 years ago. Anyway, it apparently wasn't a great game, but it didn't have to be fun to be important.
Ok, I'll add one more thing. That is not a picture of me in Simon's post. Honestly.
I'll only add here that I meant to get in a mention of Save the Whales, a game which was reportedly distributed online-only and was almost lost to the digital abyss. Did I mention it was an Atari 2600 game? That's right, a game distributed through a modem to an Atari 2600 over 20 years ago. Anyway, it apparently wasn't a great game, but it didn't have to be fun to be important.
Ok, I'll add one more thing. That is not a picture of me in Simon's post. Honestly.
Labels: atari, business, copyright, emulation, gametap, history, online distribution, steam, virtual console, xbla
--jvm at 00:50
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[ 0 ]
22 February 2007
Ritual irony: Do Not Play With Valve
Years ago I wrote a review of SiN for LinuxGames. (I haven't read it in years, so no snickering if it's awful.) One of my favorite screenshots was this one in which Ritual, developer of SiN, sniped at Valve, developer of Half-life:
The story is that both SiN and Half-life were releasing almost simultaneously at the end of 1998. To beat Half-life to market Activision shipped an unfinished, buggy version of SiN. This naturally explains the 20Mb patch that I had to download over dialup in January 1999 and it gives context to the sign in the screenshot:
So it is amusing to note the irony that all these many years later the original SiN and an episodic sequel utilizing Valve's Source engine were both released on Valve's online delivery system, Steam. How'd that work out for Ritual? They're now going to make casual games and the SiN episodic game experiment appears to be shelved, if not outright dead.
One wonders if Ritual ought to have taken its own advice.
The story is that both SiN and Half-life were releasing almost simultaneously at the end of 1998. To beat Half-life to market Activision shipped an unfinished, buggy version of SiN. This naturally explains the 20Mb patch that I had to download over dialup in January 1999 and it gives context to the sign in the screenshot:DANGER: DO NOT PLAY WITH VALVE.
So it is amusing to note the irony that all these many years later the original SiN and an episodic sequel utilizing Valve's Source engine were both released on Valve's online delivery system, Steam. How'd that work out for Ritual? They're now going to make casual games and the SiN episodic game experiment appears to be shelved, if not outright dead.
One wonders if Ritual ought to have taken its own advice.
--jvm at 15:25
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