Once again, I’ve asked Brandon Robbins to speak from his position of greater expertise than mine on some aspects of gaming—in this case, Steam. I have an account, I’ve gotten games from there and played, but he’s far more knowledgable and experienced. I’m happy to have him as a guest here once again! —Liz
M. Brandon Robbins is the Young Adult Services Coordinator for Wayne County Public Library in Goldsboro, NC, one of the winners of the 2009 ALA/Verizon Gaming, Learning, and Literacy Grant. A gamer since he had the necessary motor skills, Robbins enjoys first-person shooters, role-playing games, and puzzle games. He also has a love of tabletop gaming, with Stratego and Magic: the Gathering being his favorites. Follow him on Twitter or friend him on Xbox Live: level250geek.
If you’ve read anything about video games since the release of Half-Life 2 (that would be 2004), then you’ve likely run across the mention of Steam. Steam is an online service that allows you to purchase, download, and install games all through use of a client application. No need to get in your car and drive to the store, no need to be beaten over the head by sales people trying to get you to take advantage of amazing deals and fabulous offers, no need to do anything but click, click, click, and play.
But is it a good thing? More so, is it a good thing for libraries?
“iTUNES FOR GAMES”
That’s how I usually describe Steam. Why? Simple: if you’ve used iTunes, you’re already familiar with how Steam works. You start up the Steam application (a free download from http://www.steampowered.com), browse the store, find the game you want, and add it to your cart. When you’re done shopping, you go to your cart, enter your credit card information, and then install your game. It’s as simple as that. No taxes, no shipping charges, no hassle. For gamers who tire of having to put with retailers who either “don’t get it,” (True story: I once called a major retailer asking for the price of a PC graphics card. They asked “Is that for Playstation or Nintendo 64?” in response.) or are pushy and only concerned with making the sale, it’s a true blessing. From within the Steam app, one can see a game’s Metacritic score (when available), watch trailers, and download demos for games that offer them. What’s more, any game available through Steam is yours forever once you purchase it, and you can download it to any number of computers you wish (simply download the client to another computer, pull up your Library of games, and choose which ones to install). Some games even have a feature called “Steam Cloud” that allow you to access your saved games from anywhere—start playing Torchlight at home, continue playing it when you visit your parents for Thanksgiving—without having to start over.
Steam was initially a PC-only application, but just this year Valve released a client for Mac. Many games support the “Steam Play” feature: if you buy a game for one platform, you can download it again for the other at no additional costs.
Steam, however, is not just an online marketplace. It’s also a social network and full-fledged online community. Steam users can friend each other. When you log-on, you can see what your friends are playing, what they have recently purchased, and can chat with them—even if you’re playing two different games. You can gift games to your friends; just purchase them as usual, and then choose the friend to whom you want to give the game. Users can create and join groups and post to community forums.
All in all, Steam is an excellent platform for buying games digitally and interacting with other gamers. It’s one of the many reasons (if not the main reason) retailers are running scared, as it represents the fast-approaching future of the gaming industry.
WELL, THIS BURNS
Steam isn’t a perfect system, however. It’s far from it. There’s a lot about Steam that this gamer doesn’t like.
Any game you purchase from Steam is permanently tied to your Steam account, as previously mentioned. This is great if you’re the kind of gamer that holds onto games forever, or games on several different computers. You’ll especially love it when your PC crashes, as you won’t have to re-purchase any games that are linked to your Steam account.
The problem comes in when you start thinking about the secondary market. What if you grow bored with a game, or decide you don’t like it, or you’ve just loved it way more than any one gamer should and want to pass it along and let somebody else experience the joy? Well, too bad. You can gift games to your friend at the time of purchase, but there’s no way to relinquish the license to a game once it’s yours and there’s no way to get even a fraction of the purchase cost back. Of course, one can expect this from digital sales, but if you buy a game that is available through Steam at retail, you’ll have to enter the game’s serial number at the time of installation to link it to your Steam account—reducing that disc and box to nothing more than a fancy paper weight, because it will be useless to all other gamers but you.
image by Neubie
Speaking of buying games at retail, there’s no financial disadvantage to doing so, because Steam charges the same price for a digital purchase as any brick-and-mortar store will charge for the physical product. Sure, there’s no sales tax or shipping charge, and if the game is linked to your Steam account you won’t be able to re-sell or trade it anyway. Steam does have a good number of sales every weekend and around major holidays, and gamers can often pick up new titles for a substantial discount, if they stay abreast of what’s on sale and act quickly. That being said, however, it does seem that one wouldn’t have to pay the same amount of money for a data packet as they would pay for physical media.
Another interesting criticism of Steam actually comes from within the gaming industry. Steam is owned and operated by Valve, one of the most successful and critically-applauded game developers in history (the Half-Life series, Portal, the Left 4 Dead series, Team Fortress 2, and Counter-Strike are among their works). Randy Pitchford, president of Gearbox (developers of last year’s sleeper hit Borderlands) has accused Valve of holding a conflict of interest in both being a game developer and a digital retailer, and even went so far as to accuse them of taking too big of a share from outside developers in distributing through Steam. Many developers came to Steam’s defense, but it’s certainly an argument on which to keep one’s eye.
For the privacy conscious, Steam may be a bit too open. If you tell your friends that you can’t play Team Fortress 2 tonight because, well, you just don’t want to play that game with them—but you do want to play it—then you might not want them to know that you are playing it without them, but they’ll see it none-the-less. Or, if you’re trying to keep your game-buying habits hidden from your girlfriend’s view, it may not do for her to log-on to her Steam account and see that you’ve recently bought ten games, all at full price. Good thing there’s that gifting option you can use to send a few games her way—and that, presumably, one’s girlfriend would be a gamer if she has Steam on her computer, and thus would understand—to make up for that!
STEAMING UP LIBRARIES
So, now that we all know about Steam, it’s time to look at what all of this means for libraries. How can we adapt this amazing, if flawed, service for our patrons?
image by Computjeramey
The quickest and easiest way would be to use Steam to help set-up some PC gaming stations, with no additional shelf-space or hardware needed. If you have public access computers, consider installing Steam on some or all of them. Create a library Steam account, buy some games, and install them all on your computers. Make them available for patrons to come in and play. If you want to avoid any conflicts of patrons wanting to play the same game at the same time, you might want to establish several Steam accounts and purchase a copy of each game for each separate account (keep in mind that this will drive costs up).
As a librarian doing gaming, Steam should be one of the resources in which you invest a good deal of personal time and money. It’s a great way to discover some independent games that may otherwise go unnoticed. It’s also a great way to meet other gamers.
TAKING YOUR GAME ELSEWHERE
If you’re not impressed with Steam, but want to integrate digital purchases into your library to set up gaming stations, want to take advantage of good sales, and want to have better access and exposure to indie games, then maybe you’ll want to check out sites such as Direct2Drive and Impulse. They also offer games for digital purchase.
Regardless of how you approach it, Steam, and the digital market it represents, is a big part of gaming; and if gaming is a big part of libraries, it stands to reason that anything that’s a big part of gaming will also be a big part of libraries as well.
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