One of the more interesting features of Steam are the global statistics for achievements. Namely it shows what percentage of players reach those achievements.  There are achievements for all sorts of things done in games, though not all games in Steam use the achievement system.

Only 49.8% of people completed Portal. So over half never got that far. I think we all knew many people don’t get around to finishing all their games. Most gamers have quite a few we have never completed even if we may have enjoyed them.

But there’s a more interesting story hidden under the numbers.

Take Fallout New Vegas for example. The most basic quest involving the absolute start of the game mostly about character creation and leaving the very first house of the game is “Ain’t That a Kick in the Head”. This is before even the tutorial-like beginning town of Goodsprings is completed.

94.5% of people who paid good hard money for Fallout New Vegas on Steam completed this quest and achievement. But that means that 5.5% didn’t even get that far.

Looking further only 59.8% of people reached level 10.

In Civilization V, 90.4% of people have found an ancient ruin so then 9.6% haven’t and this is also a very simple early thing to do in game, usually within the first few moves.

In Portal, only 74.7% got the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device which is the actual portal device required early in the game. So 25.3% of people didn’t get that far.

For Defense Grid: The Awakening 95.1% of people killed an alien and for a game about killing swarms of aliens that’s a very basic thing to do. So 4.9% of people didn’t get that far. Those who completed the “boot camp” achievement of completing the first three easy tutorial-like missions was only 76.2%. So 23.8% had thrown in the towel already by then.

The picture is of a substantial number of people who buy games but don’t actually play them. I really wonder why. One reason might be quite basic. Bugs and other gameplay stopping issues. I suspect though the greater number are simply turned off at the early look or play of the game. If that was so though I’d expect the game quality to be more telling.

I hope it’s not the same reason some buy books they have no intention of actually reading.

I’m Still Alive

Release Date: 9^th October 2007

Developer: Valve Corporation

Genre: First Person Puzzle-Platform

Mode: Single Player

Portal 2 has just been released two days ago and by most accounts is likely to be an excellent positive game, if in a little bit of a darker setting. I thought I’d finish up the original Portal game review.

You begin as protagonist Chell a woman who is trapped in the Enrichment Center for Aperture Laboratories. It becomes clear pretty quickly this pristine environment is deserted except for a talkative but off-screen Artificial Intelligence (AI) GLaDOS (genetic lifeform and disk operating system).

The key to the entire game is the portal gun or the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device. This device allows you to open two way portals in each testing environment which are crucial to getting through each challenge. The portals are the key of the game and an interesting idea not well adopted before. It is quite disconcerting at first but you get used to it and can even play with the idea.

Along with the portal gun are the various challenges which include energy dispensers, moving objects, toxic liquid and weighted activators. You need to imaginatively use the portal gun to solve the puzzle in order to make it to the next level accessed via a lift.

During all this GLaDOS is your only companion. It’s quite clear the GLaDOS was originally a helpful guide to the facility but has since been corrupted, possibly internally, into a rather dry witted being. The deadpan humour and interesting commentary greatly lift the game beyond the puzzle elements. I will not say more, so that the story is not spoiled for people who haven’t played the game yet.

I will say though that the game is rather short. So keep that in mind.

The innovative distortion of the physical laws of nature, as well as the puzzle elements and GLaDOS provide good positive entertainment.

The graphics of Portal are very good and are put in an interesting style which definitely gives a laboratory feel to the game.

Music in Portal is one of the greatest things about it. The end credits include a little song which I have embedded in this article. The sound effects are also well done.

Portal can be slightly difficult at the latter stages only because those strong on platform elements might have trouble with the logical elements and vice versa. This is a logical challenge where timing matters in some cases. Having said that it’s not too difficult to get through the challenges.

One of the reasons Portal grabbed attention so quickly, aside from being a good game, was that it was part of the Orange Box bundle which included various Half-life games.

Portal runs on Windows, Mac, Playstation 3 and Xbox 360. A demo version is available on Steam. Portal is available for $US10 on Steam which is also run by Valve Corporation.

Game: 4½/5    Positive:

The games digital download site Steam has just pushed through their new security feature; Steam Guard

In a nutshell, Steam Guard prohibits your Steam account and therefore your Steam Games from use on computers other than your usual one(s). For many Steam gamers who only use the same systems, this can be a useful security feature so long as your email account is not compromised as well. Steam Guard can be overridden via email or deactivated for those who roam too much for this to be workable.

It does not use Intel’s identity protection.

I looked but haven’t spotted any serious drawbacks to this feature. For most Steam users the feature will work automatically.

If you want to waste time but have fun doing so gaming is a good way to do that. Digital downloads is a distribution method with obvious cost and sales advantages to the companies but they are also advantageous to us as gameplayers too.

• They are much cheaper even at US dollar or Euro rates
• You can browse and buy from the comfort of home without a visit to the store
• No stuffing around with disks, ie non-pirate no-CD functionality.

There’s also some problems;

• I have yet to see a provider of these services deal with the issue of game access once they close, for example. All that money and gaming goodness? Goodbye most probably.
• You have to actually download the games. If your connection is slow this is a very long delay, if you have bandwidth limits this is costing you extra.

There also some interesting developments. Digital Rights Management (DRM) is one of the least exiting of course, but it does show a changing landscape from games being cut and dried products to games being services offered. I expect this to continue until we simply buy game time at a very low rate but we don’t actually own the games. Games as services started long ago thanks to the internet with such simple things as patches and forums. Now these are often automatic or integrated. This is happening more with expansions and mods and extra content of various sorts. In a sense the Massive Multiplayer Online software (MMOs) such as World of Warcraft are miles ahead in this games-as-services development. I expect we will see the same with other software.

Socialised gaming is also a development which shouldn’t be ignored and this includes the ‘achievement’ systems, twitter-like info feeds, chats and voice services.

More exciting are the new blood of Indy developers getting their hands on exposure and thus money as well as the revival via smaller devices such as mobiles, iPads and netbooks. These can’t run the usual new games. That new game market has ossified into the same old FPS or other cookie cutter genre offering and so a lot of clever, interesting and dare I say fun ideas have been coming into such non standard games on those platforms.

Anyway back to the topic at hand. There are several digital download games providers of note;

Steam is probably the most popular. To use steam you have to run extra software which is essentially a games browser, social and download tool. I can’t say I like that. Games on steam are well presented and quite numerous. There appears to be a younger focus. As I have reported before steam support is very slow. The real Steam killer for me though is it installs games a bit differently and so many mods will not work with games from Steam.

Gamersgate is not as well known. It also has a very large range of software which is very simple to download and install. It’s often cheaper than the competition too. Gamersgate support is even worse though. One game bought had a payment issue due to their credit processor where funds left my account but no game was delivered. Gamersgate, while fast responding, did nothing to help and I had to go through the bother of a charge reversal to solve the problem.

Direct2Drive is the one I probably use most. This is more because it rarely seems to have problems with it. Simple to use, decent range and no issues.

Good old games known as GOG are a specialist one who have, as their name suggests, a bunch of old games available. In the context of old games GOG has the best range. I do think GOG are a bit overpriced.

The last major competitor Impulse, requires software to be installed to use and frankly I haven’t given it a go nor seen reason to.

There are many other digital providers. Specific companies such as EA or MMO ones have their own digital download services. There is certainly a lot of competition which is good for prices and improvements too.

If anyone knows a reliable Australian one let me know.

Recently I tried a demo of a game via a game trial from my friend. This game used Steam. Steam is a moderately popular game company that sells games as downloads so your don’t need to go out and buy a box. They also update the game and provide multiplayer servers integration.

Because of the unusual delivery system and the dependence on Steam I know that Steam needs good customer support because there’s no other real option to get around problems with those games.

So I tested them. Sent a simple question to technical support to see how long they would take to resolve the problem. It took them 3 days to bother responding.

That’s far too long so no Steam for me I think.