So How 'bout That Steam OS?

It looks like the long rumored Steambox may finally come to fruition with Valve’s announcement this week of a Steam OS. Apparently it’s going to be a full, Linux based operating system that’s optimized for game performance and media sharing. According to the official website, this operating system is being designed from the ground up to be a living room operating system with streaming options, developer support, and more. No hardware partnership has been announced yet, but this seems like a natural first step toward a first party Valve box.

The Steam OS is a somewhat unique product, as there isn't really any competition for “living room TV” computers. There are consoles, sure, but consoles are closed systems, designed to play specific games. You can’t just install the Xbox operating system on a PC and hook it up to your TV. There are also smart TVs, which offer video and music streaming options, but those are bare-bones systems that are basically just apps for your TV. The Steam OS is going to be a full operating system, which will presumable have all the features of base Linux available underneath the Steam shell, so the system will be as complex or customizable as you want it to be. That leaves room for a lot of flexibility and space for upgrades in the future.

It isn’t unheard of for people to have gaming computers hooked up to their TVs. Steam launched their Big Picture feature at Christmas time last year to target those people specifically. This OS could be a step in the right direction for those people, since presumable the entire OS could be controlled with a gamepad, similar to how Big Picture works, but it will be interesting to see how many people are willing to buy or build computers for that purpose when the OS launches. Luckily the OS will be 100% free, which eliminates the large cost of buying an operating system for a living room PC, but even with that benefit it seems unlikely that average consumers will be willing to build or buy their own living room PCs just for gaming.

I’m one of those people that has a living room PC, and thanks to a 30ft HDMI cable I can play all my Steam games on the glorious big screen. When Steam OS launches I’ll probably look into setting up a dual boot to at least try it out, but whether or not it becomes a permanent part of my setup will depend on how good the streaming capabilities are. If a Steam OS PC with minimal running hardware can act as a streaming box, and stream games in real time from my main PC I’ll buy one for every room in the house.

Versus!

Competitive gaming is an interesting subject. It has existed since the first days of head to head play and high score competition in arcades, but in the grand scheme of things that’s been a relatively short period of time, about 40 years or so. In that time competitive gaming has grown by leaps and bounds, and not just in a professional sense. Sure, there are gaming tournaments now that offer millions of dollars in prizes, and games that support millions of players in competitive environments, but video games as a medium of competition still have a long way to go.

Competition in numerous forms has existed longer than human society has. It can be used to settle conflicts, to entertain, or to communicate, but all forms of human competition have been bound by one thing; arbitrary rules. Rules are important, they are the only things that keep society from collapsing into roaming gangs of murderers, and by extension competition needs rules as well. These rules are generally a good thing, as they establish a fair and balanced metric for use in determining victory, but that does not mean that they aren’t still totally arbitrary. The only reason a quarterback doesn’t punch and kick his way through the defensive line is because there are rules against it, just like how the only thing stopping a particularly jealous ex-boyfriend from kidnapping his former girlfriend are the laws that call that act illegal and the police force who enforce those laws. These rules create important boundaries in both games and in life, for the safety and fairness of everyone.

As a result of these rules, human beings become very adjusted to limiting and controlling themselves on a daily basis. Learning what the rules of life are, why they are important, and how to avoid breaking them is one of the most important parts of becoming a member of a society. In a way, all of the bad things that happen in society are the result of someone breaking the rules. Unfortunately, this leads to a fundamental problem when it comes to competition in video games, because video games have their own rules, and don’t need the players to enforce them.

This is very weird if you aren't prepared for it. Even other games, like board or card games, have established rules that you can break if you know what you’re doing. You can’t cheat a computer program, it literally cannot do things it wasn't programmed to do. You can exploit glitches, sure, but those are things that are very specific, and achieve a specific result, in a way they are just as much a part of the program as the non-glitch parts are. This results in a whole lot of new rules and problems that don’t exist anywhere else. Because the physics of the universe are set in stone from a gameplay perspective, it’s up to balance testers and programmers to fix problems that arise in the rules. You’ll see that in online or ongoing games, where routine patches are commonplace. It takes a lot of creativity to create a network of rules that result in a balanced competitive environment. Imagine if the referees and officials could manipulate physics for the duration of sports games, and how much work would have to go in to maintaining a system like that.

Additionally, people are bound to find this type of game difficult, seeing as there has never been anything like it in human history. Video games exist in a world where all the rules of the game a built right in, and there are no "honor rules". Anything that isn't allowed by the rules of the game is simply impossible to do. This is why you get lots of cases of people enacting their own honor rules in video games. Things like no rushing in real time strategy games, or no spamming in fighting games. Humans are used to having to live by arbitrary rules, and the lack of them can be startling to some people.

Just a random thought I had.

Travelogue - Dragon-con

Dragon-con is a convention that takes place every year in Atlanta, GA, and claims to be the “The world's largest fantasy/Sci-fi convention”. The convention certainly seemed huge, but that was due largely to the fact that it takes place across six hotels instead of one large convention center like most other cons. This leads to a lot of walking, both indoors and outdoors, and very congested hallways, since people have to do a great deal more walking than they would if this were held in a convention center. I managed to completely wear out my shoes over the course of the weekend, but it was well worth it.

This convention is run by fans, for fans, which of course has both positive and negative elements. On the positive side it doesn’t feature any of the strict regulations that sometimes plague larger cons. The autograph area is simply a room, where you can walk around, see people, and line up for whoever you want to meet. The celebrities get to make their own schedules for when they want to be there, and you don’t have to line up hours in advance or get lucky in a ticket drawing in order to meet them. Security was also a lot more lax then at other big conventions, with several vendors selling live steel weaponry on site and several outfits that would be impossible at other conventions for one reason or another. Also there were bars, lots of bars. Literally at least two or three per hotel, and open all day and night, so the entire convention was one big drunken four day party.

The flip side of this of course was the lack of organization. It’s very apparent that Dragon Con doesn’t have any sort of singular event coordinator to make sure everything is running smoothly. Each event or panel basically has to govern itself when it comes to tech support and organization. This results in several events clearly being run by people who are not prepared to do so, and the show suffers as a result. The lack of organization also makes navigating a colossal pain. Because the convention takes place across multiple hotels, there are more than fifty different event rooms, floor names, and venues to navigate, and each hotel has their own method of naming and organizing them. Instead of a single unified map and room layout, patrons have to navigate from building to building using sky-bridges, which leads to clogged hallways and lost con-goers. It doesn’t help either that the hotel staff will know the names and locations of areas in their hotel only, so getting help is a pain. It took us two days to finally figure out the most efficient way to navigate the area.

If you like massive parties and exceptional costumes, Dragon Con is the con for you. The events run all night every night, so there no shortage of things to do. If you don’t like large crowds, complex navigation, or lots of walking however, this one may not be worth it. Even if you don’t attend the event proper, Dragon Con takes over several square blocks of downtown Atlanta, and even has a parade that’s open to the public, so if you’re in the area you can still come by and experience the festivities.

I’m back everybody. Next week my post will be about my new place and all the fun things it contains. After that I can go back to posting about how Microsoft has their collective heads so far up their collective asses they look like that inside out pig monster from Galaxy Quest

I forgot Alan Rickman was in this movie...