“Good day, sir. Say, that’s a fine hat you’re wearing.”
“Indeed.”
“Would you mind if I tried it on?”
“Beg your pardon, I daresay you’re a madman, sir. You? Try on my hat? What would the lawman think?!”
“By my best estimation, good sir, the lawman would hum a gay tune, tip his own headpiece, and go about his business. Why, didn’t you hear? Today’s the day the proposed law of Wearing Another Gentleman’s Hat has graduated into canon law!”
“Gadzooks!”
Here at Tap-Repeatedly we partake in our fair share of worship at the Altar of Valve. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. As video game developers, when they indulge in the rare tradition of actually developing a video game, it’s usually pretty great. Half-Life gave us death-by-crowbar and the now-obligatory part of a first person shooter where you don’t have a gun; Half-Life 2 gave us that part at the end of the game where the gravity gun lets you shoot combine soldier corpses at other, less deceased, combine soldiers, which sort of created a blissful cycle of infinite corpse-ammunition. That was ecstasy.
Then of course there was an epoch: Portal. It was like that moment in 1991 when Nirvana’s Nevermind unleashed itself upon largely unsuspecting audiences. Each critically acclaimed, though approached modestly by their creators, no one could have foreseen how much general douchebaggery would follow in the wake of these respective, seminal moments. Enough alterna-rock/nu-metal bands and cake memes to make even the most intrepid alien explorer abandon his mission of seeking other lifeforms in the galaxy, instead turning to a life of prostitution just to buy those spare parts and get his ship the hell out of our solar system. [If anyone from the Internet Preservation Society for Posterity read that last sentence, please note that I’d like to submit it to be known as what was potentially the most scathing sentence ever uttered versus the War Crimes Against Humanity known as “Alterna-Rock,” “Nu-metal,” and “cake memes.” Thank you. -X]
And not to forget those other games they made, probably all on one Tuesday lunch break in April. (See: Team Fortress 2, Half-Life 2: Episode 2, Left 4 Dead, Left 4 Dead 2, Portal 2, and the upcoming DotA 2). If there’s a pattern to Valve’s all-too-infrequent game development, it’s that the numbers “four” and “two” hold some unknown, sinister quality.
In addition, there’s that other thing Valve did when they were bored some Friday afternoon: Steam. Also known as the savior of PC gaming. It used to be a bit shit, as my pal Gregg would say, but if you simply pretend that 2004-2007 didn’t really exist, then yeah, Steam is pretty much perfect too. Fuck.
The problem with being an immaculate bunch of blowhards (I jest!), however, is that the moment you do anything less than awe-inspiring, you’re going to hear about it from all those clamoring gas-bags who fund your swanky office’s foosball tables and tanning beds.
Well, STRIKE-TWO, folks. First they come into my perfectly balanced match of TF2 and foul it up by endowing everyone with top hats and Groucho masks, turning the once-pristine character models into a bowl of scrambled eggs. Next, this evening upon entering Steam, I’m greeted by the wonderful news that not only is the nonsense world of hat-fetishism thriving and jolly, I can now trade my hats and other useless virtual bloat with like-minded internet denizens!!! Oh joy of joys! Valve, you devils, this is just what Steam needed! The ability for person A to transmit his or her digital rubbish to person B!!
I for one welcome this robust enhancement, all whilst scoffing at hypothetically useful, wished-for features such as trading actual games (with fair-to-all, rational limitations, of course). Come on, Valve, you can do better than this meta-game crap. We, the people, demand better!*
*I hereby reserve the right to recant the preceding sarcastic rant if this trading business turns into something.
Email the author of this post at xtal@tap-repeatedly.com.
Well… This is actually a test trade system that they are developing. Gabe when interviewed recently discussed the prospect of trading games with each other not just for hats.
That has to be a good thing, right?
I’m not sure what exactly they need to test, but if it leads to trading games, yes, that would be quite welcome.
How would trading games work, in terms of value?
“I’ve got a copy of Atom Zombie Smasher to trade for Deus Ex, Skyrim or Rage..”
So here’s my vision of it, Mat: it doesn’t necessarily have to be a 1-for-1 trading tool. I see something more along the lines of gifting your old games on Steam to friends, not necessarily receiving anything in return. There could be reasonable prerequisites in place; say, a person may gift X number of games per month or year, and the games they gift would have to have been owned for, say, 6 months. And if the recipient wanted to gift it again, let’s say the wait period on that becomes double, essentially curbing any sort of “legal piracy.”
But still reasonable to users who want to gift games for whatever reasons. What does Valve lose, for example, if I had played 80 hours of Left 4 Dead 2, and then gave it to my friend, which introduced him to the series. If anything it’s a potential sales pitch for Valve’s future L4D games.
Rational. Reasonable. No?
Agreed. A few things to work out – can you do circular trades, receiving back a game you traded? Can you do temporary trades as a way to let your friends know how sweet a game is so they buy it? that sort of thing – and the system outlined by xtal makes all the sense in the world. We’ll have to see if that’s what it is, but if it does come to fruition I think it’ll do even more great things for PC gaming. Unless, of course, the publishers become convinced they’re losing revenue and institute some… thing.
That sounds very reasonable Max. My question was a genuine query as this is the first I’ve really read of the whole system and legitimately didn’t know how it would work, but what you outlined seems more than fair. As Matt says though, lets see how publishers respond in the long term.
I got asked to trade in Team Fortress the other day. Up pops a menu to exchange stuff with another player and off we go. I had no idea what was happening, panicked and I’m sure i gave him all my cool stuff. Though i did get a sword out of it. Whoop!
Finally got round to reading this and my thoughts exactly Max.
A digital games trading system would be very welcome. I suspect it would seriously shake up the industry though, perhaps hammering the final nail in retail’s coffin. Pre-owned games are the only things really keeping the brick and mortar shops going and if they were to lose their convenience and exclusivity then game shops might evolve into places where only enthusiasts go for boxed editions and/or rarities. But then again GOG seems to have that based covered these days.
Oh! Oh! And I spotted the Zep reference straight away 😉
Sometimes I just can’t help it, Gregg 🙂
Well… okay, all the time. I aim to please!
My sister and I have both been friend-added by desperate europeans with adorable internet-accents, begging us to trade our unique hats from years of casual TF2. It’s all getting very strange. I then went and crafted myself six brand new weapons out of junk I had sitting in my backpack. Very strange indeed.
I will admit I still enjoy TF2 in a light-hearted way, but I lose patience with it swiftly every time I remember how good the teamwork was on the rare community servers in the old days… Compared to now, where I haven’t even seen a medic for three days.
Valve have never impressed me, to be frank. They didn’t make a truly memorable game until Episode 2, and hiring in external talent to make the very enjoyable Portal struck me more as ‘good business’ than any kind of laudable creativity.
Valve have ceased to be a developer. Now they’re merely a digital business entity, and I can’t really bring myself to feel anything about them except a degree of appreciation for their systems and a great deal of frustration when their security systems lock away all my games. They’re like a better Microsoft – a dangerous, childish computer-deity inflicting sunshine upon my crops and/or raining upon my parade.
As a Valve-related side-note, playing the later chapter of Metro 2033 on ‘Ranger Hardcore’ difficulty mode last night I realised Metro was a better game in every way than anything Valve had ever made, and felt.. Sad. Sad for them. For this great big famous studio that never mustered the slightest fraction of the detail, the emotion or the freedom presented to me by this obscure, Russian rough diamond. Explore any station in the Metro and tell me Valve have anything like that kind of skill. Then go wander around Red Faction: Armageddon, examining the astounding level of detail implemented into every little shack in Bastion and the beautiful world design knowing “Fuck. They made all of this knowing 95% of players, minimum, would destroy it all before they even got within 20 feet of it.”.. Oh Valve, you are businessmen but you are not -artists-..