The Steam Review

A visit to the NeoEdge website make it clear that NeoEdge Networks’ grand plans have been scaled back. The advertisement-driven distribution model is still in place, but the site is now speaking exclusively in terms of casual games on Network’s MostFun.com portal.

MostFun is “powered by NeoEdge”, so it’s possible that there will be other ventures from the group in the future, but until that happens I won’t be actively following anything that happens. Which is a shame — if the P2P and advert system ever does go ahead in the core industry it could have a fascinating impact.

SiN Episodes: Emergence paid for its own development, but not much more.

I haven’t been covering the progress of episodic games, mainly because they are only loosely related to Steam itself. The purchase of Ritual Entertainment by casual games developer MumboJumbo however, and the subsequent shelving of the SiN Episodes series, comes amid increasingly noticeable industry whispers that Valve’s episodic efforts are returning only lukewarm sales figures. The episodic debate has been very much re-opened as a result, widened further by yet another Half-Life 2: Episode Two delay. What’s gone — and going — wrong?

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AWOMO’s logo and ‘virtual island’.

Virgin Games’ upcoming rent-based digital distribution service has been officially announced and named as A World Of My Own. According to Richard Branson, Virgin’s chairman and a well known character in England, the curiously-named system “gives us the opportunity to do for PC games what iTunes has done for music”.

Given what we already know about the system Branson’s remark might not be as exaggerated as it first seems: we were told last June about a rental system that “negates the need for broadband” by “stripping games down to their core components” and streaming them ephemerally.

There’s a very good reason why Valve abandoned the ephemeral model early on in Steam’s development, but the “enthusiasm” of publishers, including the named Koch Media, who are fairly low-profile but nevertheless publish AAA games, suggests that developer Game Domain International‘s technicians may just have cracked it with their “AI-based content loading”.

Unfortunately they and Virgin may have cracked in a different way too, if their long-term plans for AWOMO are anything to go by:

Concepts for the virtual island’s locales.

In the second phase AWOMO will live up to its name and fully develop into ‘A World Of My Own’. The island will open its doors and invite anyone and everyone to visit. A truly global community will be welcomed to meet their friends or make new ones. There will be shops, clubs, restaurants, apartments to rent and beach houses for sale. Cinemas, music venues, sports and even a motor racing circuit are there for the asking.

Your look alike avatar can dress in designer brands, after all — anything is possible in A World Of My Own.

It’s like the nineties all over again. The good news is that AWOMO’s initial launch will be without any such virtual reality gimmicks, strongly suggesting that we’ll be able to use the service without having to wander through Second Life lite when — and if — it is eventually added.

AWOMO’s other goals are more down-to-earth: “Multiplayer communities”, “large cash rewards” at tournaments, “invisible patching”, “unique opportunities [for] advertisers and sponsors”, and of course streaming rentals. Given Virgin Galactic, even the extravagant boast of a trip to the moon as a top tournament prize is believable.

It’s a powerful collection of ideas, but needless to say the unveiling of the system’s name gives us little idea how it will perform, or what limitations it will introduce. The “stripping down” of games running through it sounds particularly ominous. Conversely, while a virtual reality island might seem like a pipe dream, it’s worth remembering that the ephemeral streaming model, which shows every sign it can at this point of working, seemed an equally unlikely goal last July.

Even without its weirder features AWOMO is well worth keeping an eye on; we’ll find out more about the project nearer to its third-quarter launch.

Computerandvideogames.com have posted a well-rounded Steam interview with Valve’s PR chief, Doug Lombardi, which looks ahead to 2007 (thanks Michael). Points of interest:

More payment methods and “alternative pricing structures” are being developed.

Prepaid cards and subscriptions come to mind, both long-term goals or Valve when we last heard, but needless to say the reality may be more mundane. More

Just as we’ve made some shifts in our development process to move to episodic releases, we think there may be some alternative pricing structures that would appeal to gamers … We’ll also be introducing other payment methods in addition to PayPal, which was just rolled out.

Free Weekends are to be joined by “more unique offers”.

Not much to go on here. We’ve know about Valve’s Peer-to-Peer distribution plans for a very long time now — perhaps the hints dropped by Splash Damage that they’d like to build a P2P system for community Quake Wars content will catalyse things? More

As for what’s next, we’ll be extending our ability to extend more unique offers such as the Free Weekends.

Retailers, not just publishers, are now being won over.

“Retailers have evolved to a new way of thinking about digital distribution”. Valve have even been in (so far non-committal) negotiations with a few, though quite how them “setting up shop” would function I don’t know. More

Initially, I think [retailers] saw [Steam] as a direct threat. Now, as Steam and online distribution have matured, more and more of the myths about online versus retail are falling away.

We’ve had conversations about how [setting up shop] might work with a few retailers, and we’ll continue to pursue those. But we have no announcements to make in this regard just yet.

Discontinued games are about to start arriving.

This has taken a surprisingly long time, in retrospect. Keep some fingers crossed for Sacrifice, Hostile Waters, System Shock 2 and your other cult favourites! More

Many of the developers and publishers using Steam presently have more planned — from bringing new day-and-date titles to re-launching critically acclaimed but out of stock titles to over 10 million active gamers.

Steam on consoles not denied.

The 360 and PS3 already have delivery networks, so what’s behind this no-comment? More

CVG: One question on our mind is whether your forthcoming Half-Life 2 releases on Xbox 360 and PS3 will be tied in with Steam — what’s the score here?

Lombardi: Nothing to report today.

The new interface is based on the third-party Flat Series skin.

Another dry spell of Steam news is coming to an end. Next week will see the release of the “Steam Winter Update”, the first such ‘seasonal’ release and a departure from Valve’s previously iterative release schedule.

There’s plenty going on, with the press release highlighting some key features:

New User Interface

Steam’s got a new coat of paint. We’ve stripped away all the non-essentials and created a new streamlined appearance, available in five different colors.

Favorites

Steam’s catalog of games has grown quite a bit over the past year or so. The new Favorites feature in the My Games tab of Steam allows for quick access to your favorite Steam games and additional functionality for personalizing your Steam library of content.

Background Client Updates

Since the Steam client was first released, it has always kept itself up to date — but now it’ll do so without making you wait during startup. Instead, it will acquire new updates in the background and then (once they’re downloaded) ask if you’d like to restart and apply them. Steam will also let you know what’s new whenever a new update is ready to apply.

Guest Passes

Guest Passes allow owners of certain Steam games (purchased either via Steam or at retail) to let their friends play games for free, for a limited time trial. The first game to take advantage of this new feature will be Day of Defeat: Source.

We’ll be hearing more and seeing screenshots in just a few hours as part of today’s weekly Steam news, and I’ll provide a direct link as soon as one becomes available. Here it is. The new interface is based on the community member-made Flat series – I wonder how much the author has made from Valve’s adoption of his work!

As was mentioned, the fact that all of these new features are being released in one go is unusual–Steam’s updates have in the past been almost entirely iterative. When a new feature was finished and tested, it was generally released there and then, on its own. The best explanation I can find for this apparent change of heart is that there is even more going on than the press release suggests: behind the scenes, this Winter Update may well be the long-awaited one that brings the Steam client’s underlying code to version 3.0.

Zeh Fernando’s Online Gaming Zeitgeist is hosting a partial analysis of Valve’s Free Week/Weekend promotions, using DOD: Source’s player-count statistics as a sample. Results indicate that they are making sizeable impressions–but as Zeh cautions, the extent to which increased popularity has translated into increased sales (as opposed to existing customers returning) isn’t known to anyone but Valve.

» Read the complete analysis and view the player-count graph