The Steam engine rolls on

Brian Ambrozy 14 Sep, 2007 at 12:00am ET Article published in Gaming

Has anyone noticed? Valve released a little update during the night that turned Steam into a gaming platform on par with Xbox Live.

I’ve mentioned before that I believe that the Xbox Live system is the pinnacle of online gaming. The whole system is perfect, from finding friends, challenging them, and finding games, to comparing achievements.

Other entertainment companies are paying attention. Sony is soon to unleash their “PlayStation Home” software, which takes the concepts of Xbox Live and wraps them up in a 3D third person interface that is similar to “Second Life”. Another company that took note of Xbox Live’s concepts is Valve.

Microsoft recently released Games for Windows Live, which ties Windows Vista gamers in with their Xbox Live community. Eventually, Microsoft must hope to control the PC gaming online experience as well as they currently do with the console online experience.

You can’t say that Valve wasn’t the first out of the gate, however. Steam came out in 2002 (it was horrible) and was revitalized in 2004 with the release of Half Life 2. From 2004 until mid 2007, the platform as a “content delivery system” just worked. You could buy your games, download them, and play them with a minimum of fuss.

The new release changes Steam from a content delivery system into a social gaming tool. The big new feature is called the Steam Community. This is the part that emulates Xbox Live. Let’s take a look at what’s new:

The first thing to note is that you need to create a SteamID—this is not the same as your Steam Account Name! The first time you try any of the community activities, you will be prompted to create a SteamID. This is similar to your Xbox Live Gamertag. Once you have that created, you can log in and see the control panel:

The control panel is where you can see at-a-glance whether your friends are online and what they are playing. You can also edit your own profile, give yourself an avatar, and join groups as well as see if you have any invitations or events coming up.

On the right there is a box showing your stats. This includes how long you’ve been a Steam member, what your “steam rating” is (along with a snarky assessment of your skills if they’re not uber-leet) and your total playing time.

You can also create and join Groups. Groups are a way to collect your friends in a single place and have a sort of “home page” for your clan, right within Steam. Future updates have promised to add CSS editing to the group panel so that you can skin your group site.

This is all cool, but it’s mostly fluff—we know that what you really want to do is play games and find people.

Within any Steam game, you can hit shift-tab to bring up your friends list. This brings up an overlay that allows you to chat, invite friends, and visit your control panel without having to minimize or otherwise interrupt the game you’re currently playing. This is a big improvement over the previous versions. You can hit up a friend, invite them to a game, and jump in without ever leaving the game you’re in.

Valve’s new Steam platform puts them in a very good position with PC gamers. More and more publishers are signing on, and now that the social aspect is so vastly improved, I have a feeling we’ll be seeing more AAA titles on the platform. Microsoft’s insistence on making Games for Windows run only on Vista is going to alienate all the gamers on Windows 2000 and XP who are currently enjoying Steam even more.

What a great time to be a gamer!

Comments

14 Sep 2007 ~ 9:52am GHoosdum I noticed the update also included the ability to use Steam as an app-launcher for non-Steam games as well.

I'm interested in checking out these features, but it seems that their servers were slammed yesterday and my Orange Box preorder hasn't been verified yet.
29 Mar 2012 ~ 3:28pm primesuspect This is fascinating. This article is five years old, and it makes me realize that almost nothing has changed in Steam, at all. With all the news lately about GoG, and with new competitors like Origin, does Valve need to do anything with Steam? Or does it just work so well that nothing needs to change...?
29 Mar 2012 ~ 3:32pm pigflipper @Primesuspect: agreed, I see (and use) a lot of parts of Steam that could use some overhauls; time for an Icrontic Steam Fix Wishlist?
29 Mar 2012 ~ 3:43pm Grimnir Everything else needs to catch up to Steam before it needs to improve in any reasonable manner. For the past 5 years it's simply been the best platform for buying and playing games.

Origin is backed by EA and they're starting to pick up third-party publishers (instead of just buying them outright as EA is apt to do), but from what I hear it's still no where near as robust as Steam, and people don't want multiple social gaming platforms.

It'll be some time before anyone really pushes into their territory, I'm pretty sure.
29 Mar 2012 ~ 3:50pm midga I'd actually have to disagree; they've made quite a few improvements, they're just not as major as the one for this article. Take the Workshop, for instance (which, admittedly, is kinda crap currently), or the Summer and Winter events they did last year? They've also added daily deals, changed the way they present their weekend deals (adding midweek deals to it), and have made all sorts of other little updates. Steam is not stagnant at all.

I am still a bit put off that you can't change text size in Steam chat. I need to bug them about that again. Anyone feel like helping me push them on that a bit? I'm tired of having to break out the Windows Magnifying Glass...
29 Mar 2012 ~ 4:06pm PirateNinja Items and item trading .. massive API changes to implement item systems in to games, events, item workshop, screenshot/video capture api, facebook integration, blotter, wishlists --- so much has improved and changed.