When thinking about gaming, many people automatically think of a person sitting in their living room staring at a big screen playing the most recent installment of Call of Duty. Both Microsoft and Sony, the makers of Xbox 360 and PS3 respectively, have been the frontrunners in gaming in the recent years and are preparing to release their next consoles by the end of the year. But that is for another post.
A few months ago, I have recently joined a different group of gamers. This group is the PC gamers. This past November, I ponied up some of the cash I had saved and, with a little help from my birthday, I was able to build my own computer. Although it was an incredible learning experience to actually build the computer, the true reward were the benefits I gained from playing games on a computer. Here are a few.
1. Steam– Steam is by far the best game distributer in the industry. To describe it simply, Steam allows you to buy almost all of the triple A games online and then download it onto your computer. Once you buy a game on your account, you can use it on every computer that has steam where you are logged into your account.
2. Discounts– If you buy most of your games off Steam, you will find that they have discounts fairly often. Recently, they had a End of the Year discount. Along with that, they will have games that are on sale over the weekend. To put it simply, my $60 dollars that I used to pay for one game can now be spent on 3-5 games if I buy at the right time. Along with that, other sites offer bundles that allow you to get 5 indie games for under $10. To put it simply, even though the overhead of building the computer is a lot, the games are A LOT cheaper.
3. Mouse-Keyboard combo– Playing a first person shooter, along with other types of games, is a lot easier to do on a mouse and keyboard. Playing these games on a PC lends it a lot easier to play. That being said, other games like Assassins Creed and Batman are geared towards controllers and consoles. With a PC, you can buy a $20 adapter that will allow you to use your Xbox or PS3 controller to play these games on your computer.
There are other pros to buying on a computer, graphics being one of them. But one of the main setbacks to the PC is that it lacks the casual gaming found in consoles. You cannot simply sit down on your couch, pick up a controller, and start to play. Valve, a game making company who also owns Steam, is trying to fix that.
Recently at the Consumer Electronics Show, Valve had a private booth set up to meet with hardware manufactures about creating their proposed gaming system called a SteamBox. I am not going to go in depth about the SteamBox, only describe its effects, but theVerge.com has a great feature article about it.
So in a nutshell, Steam is looking to bring their medium and the benefits of PC gaming to the living room. One of the setbacks faced by many who want to play games on their computer is that they do not know what parts to pick. Sure they can buy a pre-made computer from retailers like alienware, but those will cost north of $2,000 and still only get you a mid-range computer for performance. What Valve aims to do is create 3 tiers of Boxes. A good, better, and best. The good they hope to be around $100 dollars and will be able to play and stream your web games. A better box will cost around the same as a console and perform about the same. The best category is preserved for people like myself who built their own high end rig. SteamBox software will not be only available on SteamBoxes but rather any computer running Linux or Windows that has the Steam application. In fact, Valve has already launched their “Big Picture” feature in Steam which gives you the console experience.
What does this mean for the consumer? There are many benefits of gaming on a PC and the SteamBox will bring them to the living room. The SteamBox will also eliminate some of the downsides to PC gaming like the confusion of which parts to buy and the expense of building a PC. Valve is also going to make their own controller which will eliminate the fact that playing games with a keyboard and mouse on your couch is cumbersome and not realistic. If this idea is successful, the effects will be huge for console and PC gaming.
First off, it will eliminate the need for CDs while still protecting the producers well-being. Steam has a DRM included in it but it is very nonintrusive. You only need internet to start the game for the first time and from then on, no internet connection is required. The games that you bought to play on your computer will be transferable as you upgrade your SteamBox.
Because SteamBox will essentially be a computer running linux, it will be able to do everything a computer can do. That means it can run Hulu, Netflix, and other media apps that you might want to use. Both the Xbox and PS3 have recently become devices for the home theater along with gaming devices. For the SteamBox to be successful, it will need to compete with Sony and Microsoft in the multimedia.
Third, the community already in place in Steam. Steam, along with serving as a game distributer, also serves as a community for your friends. You can see what games your friend have recently bought, chat with them, and gift games to them. Steam makes it easy to team up with your friends to play a multiplayer game. It is also free. But, what I think is even more interesting, is the Steam Workshop. The Steam Workshop allows for everyone to share their mods to a game. Mods are different modifications to the game. Because of the closed system of a console, mods are very hard to do. It is a different story on Steam. With the Steam Workshop, gamers can pick in choose which mods they want to play with in their game. All users can access and publish their mods easily.
Overall, the SteamBox combines the best of the console; its controller, ease of play, and cost efficiency, with the best of the PC; cheaper games, graphics, and online market of games. If implemented and adapted correctly, it can revolutionize how we play, share, and create games for the living room.
