Steam As Platform & Social Network

Despite how I generally feel about DRM (generally speaking, and dependent on the type), I find myself a rather large fan of Steam. As someone who travels and moves a bit, having easy access to my games (and their save files through DropBox!) makes life simpler, and I look forward to see which games work with SteamCloud more and more. As someone who's been using it a lot since he's still settling in, the past month, since December 6th, has been curious to watch.

The theme around the Thanksgiving sales seems to be to offer Steam users a chance to win games--particularly through setting up a wishlist. As this is a relatively new feature, it's an intriguing way to guarantee people use it. During the U.S. Thanksgiving holidays, every day they selected some users to receive the top five games in their wishlist, albeit only if they followed instructions (off the top of my head, this included having friends and at least ten items on the wishlist).

Since December 6th, this has increased to having four objectives to complete every two days. This was anything from having played a certain number of demos and games on their service, to trying out specific games and demos. Since Steam also offers achievements, each day also featured at least two games and achievements you could get in them--typically accompanied by a sale on those particular games. All of these actions give you a raffle ticket, essentially, to be selected to be a winner.

Furthermore, this gave incentives to explore the rest of Steam. Personally, outside of the store and my games library, I don't use the service's full range of options horribly much. Perhaps every so often I'll IM with someone, but considering the time spent on the service, that's relatively negligible. Yet suddenly I was watching tons of people watch trailers through the service (and it would inform me of such), write recommendations for games, post comments on each others' walls, and various other activities--because they might win something.

While it's very carrot-on-a-stick in its mentality, it is amazing to watch how Valve is teaching us to use its own service. While it took a while to learn from its counterparts in XBL, and to some extent PSN, as regards creating a user-friendly community service, I do wonder if Valve might start pushing a bit further than even they (though they have the unfair advantage of actually being on a computer). Achievements were one thing, but interacting more frequently with our friends list beyond just playing games is particularly devious.

Many of these also seem to constantly be tied to sales. As I'm sure we'll be seeing many more sales in the coming weeks, rather than report every one (maybe if it's a really good one), I'll just recommend keeping your eye out. Right now they have a sale on 100 or so games that are mostly smaller and quite intriguing for the price of a coffee. Those 100 games I saw? A pre-cursor. Since publishing this post, they have put up their winter holiday sales--might as well check! This keeps adding to my ever-growing backlog of games I buy on sale but wonder if I'll ever actually play.

What of your own habits on Steam? Furthermore, what would you like to see that you feel is missing? I know not everyone is comfortable with the DRM I mentioned above, so what other services do you use? Personally, I'm trying to eschew boxed copies of PC games where I can, so I'm always game to hear of great services.

Also, if you're ever looking for another Steam friend (currently seeking people to play Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light), feel free to add me, or join the Gayming community.