Starting to Get Steamy In Here

Those who know me know that I've always been a fervent supporter of Steam. Mostly, as I think is understood, my support comes from a desire to see such alternative publishing methods grow into their own as they may be the great salvation that indie game development will need to continue contributing to our industry in a meaningful way.

Of course, Steam has its share of faults and drawbacks. I can perfectly understand what people dislike about Steam, and indeed it still has a long way to go before I'll consider it a full-featured games (and games media) delivery/exploration system.

Nonetheless, I must say that Valve seems to be doing a bang-up job with Steam thus far, especially in the last 6-8 months. Rag Doll Kung Fu and Darwinia showed the breadth of game types that can be offered via Steam, and Darwinia's presence on Steam even encouraged its makers (Introversion Software) to not leave the industry and in fact continue on to make another new and interesting game, DefCon. Sin Episodes has made a fairly good debut on Steam as well this month.

In less than a week's time, Valve will release their first episodic expansion to Half-Life 2. To generate hype and motivate purchases, they've started to release (at this point, daily) a series of short teaser videos for the game that show off the new scripting, animation, and facial modeling technologies the game features. These videos arrive directly via Steam and they've added a "My Media" section to everyone's Steam account so that you can keep track of the videos you've downloaded.

And now, as though all that wasn't enough, apparently Atari-branded PC games (like, all of them, save Dungeons & Dragons Online) are going to be sold via Steam for $20 a pop. Wow.

Things are looking up for Steam, and with it, in my opinion, all of the games industry.