Steam (iOS) Impressions

So I got beta access into the Steam iOS app. This is a weird situation: the app is quite good, very functional, and introduces no new functionality, so I really have no idea why this is in beta. Anyways.

Update (1:14PM): According to Joystiq, the app is out of beta. That was fast.

Functionality

The app is highly functional. It does pretty much everything I wanted from Steam on iOS. It lets you chat with friends on Steam, browse their extensive catalog, make purchases, update your wish list, check the specials … the store even includes the warnings that you already own the game and lets you buy DLC. You can see who is online and what they’re playing, and even read the Steam Newsfeed (which is basically a list of daily deals) and some syndicated newsfeeds, such as the TF2 blog and Eurogamer.

Frankly, the only thing you can do on desktop Steam that you can’t do here is launch games.

The app is fast and responsive, but it does seem oddly slow for loading images. Thankfully, rather than loading all the screenshots for the game, it hides them behind a “Screenshots” button. For my test game (Sonic Generations) it took over 20 seconds for the first screenshot to appear, with the rest filing in at about one per five seconds after that.

But really, functionally speaking, there’s not much else to say. It works really well and does what you’d expect. It’s actually notably more responsive than their website and desktop apps, save for image loading (which is sort of a non-issue).

Interface Design

Overall, the app feels and works very much like Steam, ported to iOS. Visually, it’s absolutely unmistakable from Steam, with the dark greys and light blues you’ve come to love and expect. But I have to get really, really nerdy for a minute. Sorry.

The Steam app is absolutely inspired by the iOS version of Facebook in terms of it’s design. The overall layout is fairly standard and easy to learn, but if you’ve used the Facebook app, you’ll be oddly at home. Take a look:

For those who aren’t iOS nerds, look at the top of the first two images. Note that button with three horizontal lines. That pulls up the side menu, featured in the bottom two pictures. Note how in each case you can see a small sliver of the first screen on the right; when you do this in the app, the screen “slides” to the right to reveal the menu, as if it’s been sitting here the whole time. It’s a nice effect. So from this screen, we know that the box with three lines means ‘bring up the side menu’.

Then, Steam iOS pulls something crazy:

That’s the shop. Where’d the box with the lines go? It’s been replaced with a back arrow labelled ‘Friends’. In terms of iOS interface design, this is relatively egregious. Arrows that look like this are used all across iOS, in Mail, the iTunes Store, the App Store, the Music app … pretty much anywhere you’re likely to go backwards. The label indicates where you were previously, so if I take a look at Dustforce, the back button should be labelled ‘Catalog’. Tapping that arrow slides the screen to the right, revealing the previous screen on the left, as if it had always been there. Unfortunately, Steam breaks this convention in a number of ways:

• The menu is “on the left”. This is previously established in the Friends screen. This breaks the user’s mental “map” of how the application is laid out.
• The back button is supposed to bring you back. Always. That’s the point. There’s even an arrow pointing backwards. But we came from the menu. (And it always brings you back to Friends; there’s no way to go from the Wishlist to Catalog to get Wishlist up there. Steam always thinks that ‘Friends’ is the last screen you were on after using the side menu).
• Weirdly, to get back to the menu, you do have to tap through Friends first. So if you mis-tap Wishlist instead of Catalog, you have to go through Friends to get back to the menu.
• So your mental map is that you have the Menu, then Friends to the right of that, then Catalog to the right of that, and whenever you use the menu, you sort of pretend Friends isn’t there as the Catalog slides in from the right. Awkward. (The animation actually shows the Friends screen zooming by on your way to Catalog, but that’s tough to see unless you’re looking for it)

This back arrow gets broken all the time: if this sort of analysis interests you, check out Neven Mrgan’s post on the back button. But I never thought I’d say this: Facebook gets it right. The box with the horizontal lines is on every major section in Facebook, with profile pages and messages “to the right” of it, presenting you with the back arrow when you’re there. But the major sections don’t have the back arrow, they have the menu button.

Let me be clear: this isn’t a major issue. It doesn’t make Steam unusable, or even difficult to use, at all. But as a nerd who appreciates small details and likes analyzing design decisions, this seems like a weird oversight by Valve’s iOS team. Basically, Valve should change it so major sections (Catalog, Wishlist, Groups, etc) should present you with a menu button instead of a back arrow labelled ‘Friends’. Very simple fix.

Another weird interface issue, although I feel that this is a bug. The app lets you set your date of birth in the settings to skip the DOB warning for mature games (YES), but if you use your iPhone in landscape mode, it ignores how you’re holding it while you set your date of birth. Yep, I have this on video. I’m fairly sure this is a bug, and I did ping the @Steam_Games Twitter account about it.

I have another minor gripe, but this is so minor I almost didn’t mention it: Steam shouldn’t use different search method on different screens. In the Friends list, scrolling ‘above’ your friends brings up a search menu (just like in iOS Mail, Contacts, etc). In the Catalog, there’s a dedicated Search button (the magnifying glass) in the corner. I think it’s a good habit to pick one.

Beta Access

One final note. Gaining beta access is … weird. You have to attempt to login to the Steam iOS app (including Steam Guard authentication, if you have it). Then it informs you that you have to wait for Steam beta access.

When you get beta access, you don’t get an email or an iOS push notification. In your Steam desktop app, it appears as a message near the top, and it appears in your ‘Steam inventory’. I’m not sure why they structured it this way. I’m honestly not sure how long I’ve had access for, if I’ve had it since the first day or just now. I don’t log into Steam daily.

Overall

Overall, it is a really solid app. I’ve spent the better part of 1200+ words whining about a minor interface issue, but it’s highly functional, responsive, and nice looking. I’m really happy with it, and honestly, I would’ve been happy with just a chat client. Nice to see that we got much more than that. Thanks, Valve!

2011 Earnings

Welcome to the LvlofDetail 2nd Annual ‘Earnings’ post, where I analyze my gaming using trophies & achievements as a guide. This isn’t meant to create some sort of console jihad; I write this mostly to guilt myself over unfinished games.

One thing to note: I will be referring to achievements & trophies with the general term ‘earnings’. So if I wrote ‘trophy’, I specifically mean a PS3 trophy. Without further ado, here we go:

January

January was a huge month for me, with a total of 82 earnings. Assassin’s Creed & LittleBigPlanet 2 dominate the month, but as usual around the holidays there’s a spattering of other games: Dead Space 2, Magicka, Dance Central, and Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit. Really fun month. Sadly, I never did get around to finishing LittleBigPlanet 2. It feels too floaty, too imprecise, and the single-player campaign isn’t that fun in multiplayer. It’s too much of a hassle, waiting for lifts while Sackboys fall through the floor.

February

Egads, what a drop: I only unlocked 35 items in February, mostly thanks to predominantly Marvel vs. Capcom 3 (total of 13 trophies). It was a huge downloadable game month, with small chunks of for Spare Parts, Raskulls, Magicka, Deadliest Warrior, Tetris, and Explodemon as well. Sorry, disc-based games. This is clearly their death knell.

I wrote a big piece about recommending board games for video gamers, which remains current. I also wrote a relatively huge post about streamlining games.

March

Another quiet month, only 20 unlocks. This could be due to me playing the recently released 3DS, but I’d argue it’s mostly due to Dragon Age 2, which I wrote about (I finished it in April, but I started it now). Alas, it’s earnings aren’t tracked. I’m inexplicably still earning lots of trophies from Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood, but I finished it this month, so that should be enough of Ezio. Note that while I thought March was quiet, I had no idea what was in store for me.

I wrote an initial set of impressions about the Nintendo 3DS, as well as my guess that Nintendo was doing their best to get it out the door.

April

Huge jump up to 38 earnings, almost two times as much as March. But 30 of them were from Portal 2. Dungeon Hunter: Alliance (ergh) takes second place for the month with 5 trophies. I actually have a really tragic story: it’s a 4-player co-op hack n’ slash, but me and my buddies couldn’t stomach finishing it, even for the gold trophy. I actually called the game average, which grossly overestimated how much fun I had with the game. Co-op makes everything more enjoyable, I suppose.

Here on LvlofDetail, I repeatedly bitched about Sony’s PSN shutdown, wrote a review of the Razer Onza, and wrote some other stuff too.

May

I didn’t earn a single trophy in May until my birthday, when my great girlfriend hooked me up with L.A. Noire & Castlevania Lords of Shadow. Between those I got 14 trophies. I also went away for a few weeks, so it was quiet on the gaming and writing front. Here’s a huge run of Linked List articles I scheduled during my absence, which is still a series of great reads if you’re bored.

June

This month continues the L.A. Noire trophy run, but the majority of my 13 earnings are from a rental of Alice: Madness Returns. A fun game, but once I returned the game, I never thought about it again until now. I wrote a piece about how I keep buying stuff unnecessarily, but I keep buying stuff that I don’t need, so I clearly didn’t learn anything.

July

My quietest month of the entire year: July had a total of 9 earnings. This is mostly because I had a horrible job at the time, and just felt like watching TV and lying comatose at night, rather than gaming. I did keep plugging at L.A. Noire, probably because the best parts of the game are a lot like TV (I mean that in a good way!). It was my quietest writing month here at LvlofDetail, with the only notable post being me bitching about League of Legends.

August

Wow, this month shot up. August had a total of 31 earnings. This is mostly due to the excellent Deus Ex Human Revolution, resulting in 17 trophies earned. Go Adam Jensen!

It was a quiet month for writing: I mostly kept whining about League of Legends, although I do enjoy the tiny piece I wrote about a dog in Deus Ex.

September

September slowed down significantly, mostly because I started a new program at University and I focused on that. I did earn a few of Civilization 5 achievements (so much for focusing!) and a few Splinter Cell HD trophies, but it was mostly a quiet month.

October

The ramp up to Christmas! October saw 37 earnings, most of which were Batman Arkham City, which was awesome. I also beat Burnout Crash in this month, which was really awesome, if a weird Burnout successor. The best thing on LvlofDetail was my BattleLog examination, which I post below for your enjoyment.

November

So much for the “ramp up” to Christmas; I earned 18 unlocks in November, a quiet month by any estimation. I finished Arkham City, but the best gaming-related event in that month was me buying PAX East 2012 tickets. I did spend a lot of time playing Battlefield 3, but I’m not shooting for any trophies and I don’t care for the single-player or co-op, so none of that was counted.

The real reason for my ‘quiet month’ is due to a school-related co-op position where I worked for full-time hours every day, plus school activities & assignments, and it was the sort of position where I needed a good night’s sleep for the next day. No gaming until 3 AM nights for me!

I did write about the Battlefield Moment Recorder, which I still feel would be a great addition to the series.

December

Holy smokes! December was by far my craziest month, with a total of 66 earnings; almost 20% of my entire year’s tracked unlocks!

I admit, Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow HD skewed the numbers with 29 trophies. Huge chart booster.

Ezio also returns to crush my trophy count, earning 9 trophies for Assassin’s Creed Revelations, and I have a feeling this January will be dominated by that game too. Skyrim also shows for it’s first 5 trophies; despite the inordinate amount of time spent in Skyrim, a lot of the trophies are related to quest-chains & guilds my villainous mage is not investigating. Alas.

Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit & Halo Reach make a surprising comeback. One of my best friends visited for a little over a week, and we spent most of the week playing some of his favourite games that I own and he doesn’t. This also resulted in a fantastic 2 trophies for Altered Beast (!).

I also spent a lot of time playing Star Wars The Old Republic. I have a 3 month subscription, but I’m not sure it’ll last.

Total Stats

I’m glad I was able to track trophies (last year, it was only Achievements). If I was still unable to track trophies, I would have missed 275 out of my 377 earnings. This was definitely a year-long win for the PS3. Take a look:

I no longer have my total achievements earned last year, but if you compare to last year’s chart, my Xbox gaming was pitiful. The majority of Xbox 360 trophies were from Halo Reach; it was a third of my tracked Xbox gaming all year. Sort of sad, to see such a dramatic drop from last year.

More Stats, Because I Love Stats

I used playfire.com to track my earnings (here’s my Playfire profile), and in addition to my 2011 earnings, it presented me with mostly depressing statistics about myself.

I somehow spent 209 gameplay hours in Steam games, which I have difficulty believing.

My rarest earning of all time is ‘From Hell’s Heart’ in Halo Reach, but that’s specifically an Anniversary map-pack achievement, excluding a large percentage of Reach gamers. My second rarest achievement is ‘Survived 1,000,000’ in Geometry Wars Evolved, which I was proud of: Geometry Wars is an amazing game. My third rarest earning is ‘Feared’, for the Xbox 360 version of F.E.A.R., and it’s got something about Instant Action maps being completed. Sort of depressing. Most of my earnings classified as ‘Ultra-rare” are DLC achievements.

My favourite achievement is this:

That achievement sounds pretty badass, doesn’t it? I don’t remember the details, but I know I didn’t really earn it; I think I set up a private timed match and just let it start and end 50 times for the achievement. I’m so pathetic.

Predictions for 2012

I imagine the PS3 dominance will continue well into 2012. I simply prefer the console, and more of my friends own it, so I use it for almost all of my multi-platform releases. Also, most of my Christmas gift games are for the PS3, so it’ll have a big spike in January & February.

That said, I’m absolutely certain next year will be a bigger year for the 360 than this year was. A week go, I beat Gears of War 3, which was 24 achievements, and I earned at least 5 more in Resonance of Fate, so at a bare minimum I already beat 2011!

Methodology

As noted, I used playfire.com to track my achievements & trophies, as they listed achievements & trophies earned by date. It was a bit laborious, but I managed to generate a huge spreadsheet showing my gaming by month. There are a few things I should note.

• This doesn’t track non-trophy related gameplay. So my time on Star Wars: The Old Republic isn’t tracked. Donkey Kong Country Returns isn’t tracked. My Halo Reach games aren’t tracked, unless I won a trophy. And a huge time-killer, Starcraft 2, isn’t represented.
• I intentionally didn’t represent individual games not on wider game networks just so I don’t go insane. Otherwise, I’d have to track Starcraft 2 & World of Warcraft trophies, and I earned many of those. I know I could go fetch those trophies, but then I’d have to get Dragon Age 2 ones, and yadda yadda …

Conclusion

Again, this is pretty much self-posturing, and I know it’s a bit late for an annual summary. Skyrim sort of got in the way. This data is probably meaningless, and I certainly don’t expect anybody to care. But I love stats, and I love seeing my own gaming trends. I figured I may as well make my work public. If you have any questions, drop ‘em in a comment or email.

Wish I Had A DotA 2 Beta Key

I just read that DotA 2 doesn't have any out-of-game bounses; i.e. everybody begins on the same footing at the start of the game.

Now all I need is about five beta keys so I can get my LoL addicted friends to try it with me . . .

Stuff

When I heard the PlayStation Store was back up, I immediately dropped my preparations for a BBQ to go check it out. Maybe stuff was on sale!

Upon arriving at the store, I was right. Some stuff was on sale, and there were some new-to-me games there. I was just about to pull the trigger on the L.A. Noire Rockstar pass when I took a step back from what I was doing, and thought to myself: do I need this?

I’m still working the Traffic beat. For those unaccustomed to the ways of a L.A. detective, I’m a total newbie. Yet here I was, about to sign up for extra missions to play, when the majority of the game still stretches ahead of me!

Will I buy the Rockstar Pass? Probably. I can’t say for sure; after all, I might stop liking the game; it’s happened before. I still might buy it early, as it’s on sale and I’m a sucker for sales. But I certainly don’t need it now, so I turned off the PS3 and went about the rest of my day.

It’s easy to start accumulating stuff. Steam, in particular, is brutal. The constant barrage of sales and delightful games with painless purchasing and installation is literally addictive. And when I say painless, I mean it: from the Steam storefront, it takes literally five clicks to pre-order Deus Ex: Human Revolution.

I’ve bought several games on Steam that I haven’t played for more than three hours: Terraria, Capsized, Just Cause 2, Magicka: Vietnam, EVE Online, Counter-Strike: Source, Zombie Driver, Dogfighter, King’s Bounty, Company of Heroes … these are all games I’ve purchased on Steam for dirt cheap, because at the time I thought I might want them. I still do, and I like to think I’ll play some of them (King’s Bounty & Capsized in particular).

But today I dutifully checked the Steam store and saw Red Faction: Guerrilla for five dollars. Five dollars! How can I not buy it at that price? I rented Guerrilla, it was great. This would be cheaper than what I paid to rent it. Just five dollars to buy a game I want.

Sometimes, we buy stuff we want, but don’t need. That’s cool, I like doing that. My money won’t go with me when I die, so I may as well enjoy it. But how much is too much? DLC for a game I haven’t finished yet? Level packs for a multiplayer game I’m not good at? New characters for a fighting game I’ve stopped playing? Digital costumes for my Sackboy or Avatar? Games I won’t play, but I’d like to? Where do I draw the line, and say: “I don’t need this”?

Thankfully, I didn’t buy Guerrilla, nor the Rockstar Pass. Hopefully I can stop accumulating stuff I want, and start saving space on my hard drive (and my bank account) for things I need.

Linked List: The Boy Who Stole Half-Life 2

Simon Parkin writes over at Eurogamer:

At 6am on 7th May 2004, Axel Gembe awoke in the small German town of Schönau im Schwarzwald to find his bed surrounded by police officers. Automatic weapons were pointing at his head and the words “Get out of bed. Do not touch the keyboard” were ringing in his ears.

I’ll start your weekend with a fantastic article that I’m incredibly surprised I didn’t add to my Linked List at the time, about the kid who hacked into Valve to check out Half-Life 2.