Midlife Crisis, Part 1

I've been wanting a new PC for a while. In fact, I've wanted one ever since I first played F.E.A.R. back in 2005. The game was fantastic, but the computer I was using at the time was only decent, perhaps good, but not great. Those maximum graphics settings were pretty far out of reach; I think I had to settle for medium. (The horror!) Still, I was an optimist. I simply told myself that, someday, I'd have a computer that could easily run the game on the highest settings.

Of course, that wasn't exactly a promise to spend lots of money. I figured correctly that I wouldn't be getting a new computer for several years, and I knew that even a relatively inexpensive PC in the ambiguously distant future would be far more powerful than what I presently had. Then again, when investing in a new PC, one might as well invest enough to play contemporary games on the highest settings as well. So, whether I knew it or not, I was telling myself that someday I'd blow a bunch of money on an expensive toy.

It wasn't until about a year ago that I started to think more seriously about it. By this time, the personal computer had truly become my video game platform of choice, and the machine I had been using for years was starting to show its age, particularly with some of the more recent games. (I suppose I should be surprised that any of these modern games worked at all on such an old system, which had only been given a few small upgrades over the years). Although I'd only encountered a couple of games that simply refused to work at all, it was clear that it was time to move forward.

After some quick research, I decided that $800 would be a sufficient budget for a replacement. I just didn't know what to buy. My old PC had originally been a family computer not purchased by me, so I didn't know much about how to shop for a computer, let alone parts for a custom build. Of course, figuring this out doesn't really take a whole year. If I'd gotten my act together, I might have been done with the whole process by last Christmas, but I procrastinated. The holidays (and then spring and then summer) came and went before I got around to doing the research, setting aside the money, and making the purchase.

At this point, I could just buy one of the new consoles that are coming out later this year, but I've fallen out of love with consoles in general ever since I started playing shooters with a mouse, namely F.E.A.R. and its expansions. (I don't think I can ever go back to thumb sticks for anything requiring precision. Sure, consoles are still great for any genre that really does play better with a gamepad, but you can play those on a PC with a USB gamepad anyway.) Besides, very few of the games I've wanted to play over the past eight years have actually been console exclusives. Enough of them have been released for Windows that, throughout the lifetime of the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3, I've been content to keep playing on the computer I already owned instead of buying new hardware. Now that I have another opportunity to get on the console bandwagon, I don't think that's going to change.

I can certainly see the appeal in the idea of standardized hardware, though. I've been agonizing for weeks over how best to balance the money I'm spending with the performance I'll get, but console owners don't need to make these tough decisions. I can also see the appeal in the exclusive games if there are enough of them to make a difference. However, I don't want to be stuck on the same hardware for the next eight years with no possibility of upgrading, and I don't really want enough of those upcoming console-exclusive games to justify the purchase of any particular console.

So, a number of weeks ago, I started actively researching PC parts, reading reviews of mid-to-high-end graphics cards and asking for advice in various places. One of those places, for better or for worse, was 4chan. It's worth noting that, on the site's /v/ and /g/ boards, the standard response to any question about PC building is a link to a guide called Logical Increments. I was wary about taking too much advice from a single popular source without going any further down the rabbit hole, but it seems to be a competently written guide, and a good starting place for anyone in my position. As of now, I highly recommend it, but the nature of the site means it changes constantly. I don't know how good it will be any number of months or years from now, if it still exists.

After some further research (which mostly involved lots of careful comparison of benchmarks, reviews, and prices), I did ultimately take quite a bit of advice from Logical Increments, getting a processor and a motherboard presently listed on the site's "Superb" tier and a graphics card which was until recently listed on the "Excellent" tier. Then I added some memory, some storage, a power supply, and a case, as well as an inexpensive optical drive (because I still have plenty of old games on discs), and I was done. Here's the breakdown:

CPU — $194.99
MOBO — $129.99
RAM — $68.46
HDD — $59.99
GPU — $209.99 (before $20.00 rebate)
PSU — $74.99
CD/DVD — $14.99
Case — $59.99

Disregarding sales tax and applying the rebate, this puts my subtotal at $793.39. Most of the components were cheaper than they'd been in previous months, according to their respective price histories, so it looks like I got a decent price overall. Unfortunately, the effect of sales tax (usually a negligible annoyance) was a real bummer.

I made my purchases from three stores — Amazon, Newegg, and NCIX — and while NCIX didn't seem to add any tax to my subtotal, Amazon and Newegg both did. (I think the current rule for New Jersey, though I believe it's going to change soon, is that an online store must charge sales tax if it has a physical presence within the state, so I can only assume that NCIX does not.) After applying the 7% tax to everything but the CPU, RAM, and HDD, my $800 build was suddenly much closer to $850, which I can only bring down to around $830 if I do the mail-in rebate. I'm not sure if I will, though, because I've heard these rebates tend to require that you send in the proof of purchase that is also required to get a replacement under warranty, and I don't want to jump through too many hoops if I need a replacement part. So $850 it is, until further notice. If sales tax had been applied to everything, I'd be looking at $870 (or $850 after the potential rebate), so I guess I should be glad for that.

Did I really get a good deal? I'm sure someone will tell me I didn't. After deciding on my parts, I could have waited months to get the best possible deal on each individual component, but I felt it would be best to buy them all at once. (Keep in mind that I do want to test them all before any of them are too old to return.) I had already considered prices when choosing my components in the first place, and I'd have to do that work again if I waited long enough for prices to start fluctuating away from the low price/performance ratios I'd deliberately sought out, so I just bought the whole list as soon as I was ready. Sometimes prices go down if you wait, but sometimes they go up, and I can't see the future.

Yet, even if I did get a good deal on these parts, I can't help but wonder if it was simply a bad time to buy a PC, given next month's launch of Xbox One and PlayStation 4. The next-generation (and soon-to-be current-generation) consoles are as close as they'll ever be to state-of-the-art. Although this PC will easily crush the outgoing generation in terms of performance, it won't have such a strong lead for very long. It's also worth noting that many games released for Windows are actually ports that were optimized for consoles, so the performance on a PC might be worse even if the console has weaker hardware. Now that consoles are suddenly getting more powerful, I can only hope my PC will be ready for whatever I throw at it.

We also might see further price drops in the AMD graphics card I bought, since a new round of AMD cards have just been released. Everything I bought might be cheaper when Black Friday comes around, as well. Waiting for the holidays might be the best time-for-money trade-off I could have made. However, my experience with Black Friday sales is that the deals aren't as good as people think and everything sells out fast, so I can't even be sure that waiting for late November would have helped.

In any case, there's no sense in worrying about it now. I don't spend money on myself very often, so if the computer works and I enjoy using it, I'll call it a win. I'll admit that $800 plus tax is a pretty hefty price tag, though, especially when I haven't included the peripherals. (For the immediate future, I'll be using the monitor, speakers, keyboard and mouse from the old PC.) I haven't even included a copy of Windows (since I'm still trying to decide between 7 and 8).

To put things in perspective: My brother just got a new laptop for around $1000 (and my computer will play Crysis a lot better than his), but the cost of that laptop probably includes an extended warranty. The cost of mine doesn't. I'm putting my faith — perhaps too much faith — in manufacturer's warranties, which might screw me over if one of my parts dies two years down the line. Buying additional protection plans separately for each important component likely would have pushed my budget over the edge. But at least I'll be able to replace a single part without replacing the whole rig. I'm not sure if my brother, or any console owner, can say the same.

All that really concerns me right now is the Sapphire GPU, since I've heard that Sapphire's customer service is somewhat lackluster. On the other hand, I've heard some good things about the quality of their cards. I guess I'll just have to hope mine isn't defective; if it is, I'll just have to hope I can arrange for a new one without too much trouble. If worst comes to worst, and my new PC explodes after a month, I'll just hope I'm selected for beta testing one of the prototype Steam Machines, preferably the one with a GTX Titan. (Please?)

In times like these, the most comforting thought is that what's done is done; my PC is ordered and will be arriving in many parts shortly. At least, that's what I hope. Thanks to the free shipping from Amazon, I might not get to put this beast together until the weekend before Halloween. In the meantime, I'll keep on playing old games and some indie stuff from Humble Bundle. The Binding of Isaac, by the way, is a fantastic game. I regret that I didn't get around to it sooner.

Family Sharing on Steam

Recently, Valve announced yet another new addition to Steam, called Family Sharing, which is to be launched in limited beta next week.

The new feature will allow you to authorize a "shared computer" on which others can download and play the games on your account. The official announcement doesn't specify whether these other players will need to be on your Steam friends list, but it's safe to assume they'll need to make their own separate Steam accounts if they haven't done so already. In return, they'll get separately logged achievements and saved progress for the games they "borrow" from your library. According to the FAQ shown here, up to ten devices can be authorized for sharing at once, but only one person is allowed to play the games from a single library at any given time.

The idea of sharing games on Steam sounds like a pretty big deal — a game changer, if you'll allow the terrible pun — but is it all it's cracked up to be? While you and some of your friends could, in theory, share the same pool of Steam games, time management would be an issue. Since a friend can only borrow your library when you're not playing, the Family Sharing feature amounts to little more than a safer alternative to the unofficial method of sharing Steam games — that is, letting your friend have your password.

Tighter restrictions might also be implemented later on — it's easy to imagine some kind of time limit on "borrowed" games, for example, or a drastic decrease in the number of shared computers allowed, or a drastic decrease in the number of games available for sharing — so we can only wait and see if the finer details of Family Sharing prove too good to be true after the beta is over. In the meantime, it might help to read those details carefully. There already are some games which can't be shared, according to the Family Sharing FAQ, namely those requiring "an additional third-party key, account, or subscription." While this limitation is technical, it makes me wonder if some developers will make sure their games are exempt from sharing by implementing any of these already-quite-irritating requirements.

So let's say Family Sharing doesn't live up to our expectations. Does this mean Steam's version of sharing is a bad thing? Not really. Any amount of sharing is extremely valuable for those who like to try before they buy (especially when playable demos are such a rarity these days). A lot of players supposedly engage in piracy for this purpose alone, and Family Sharing might present an alternative to some. It all depends on whether getting a friend to share on your computer (and then finding time to play when he or she is offline) is more of a hassle than finding a good torrent. As always, Steam has to treat piracy as a competitor. The problem will never go away, so the only real solution for digital distributors is to make their services so convenient that we don't mind giving them our money.

For many, however, no combination of convenience and competitive pricing can change their view that digital goods mean a loss of consumer rights. Being allowed to resell a thing that you've purchased is often considered a right, but it can't be done with Steam games. There's no thriving second-hand market for downloaded content because customers are rarely allowed to transfer "ownership" of what they've purchased. Even sharing without breaking the law can be difficult. While Steam can certainly try to remedy this situation, it might not be feasible for a digital distributor to emulate the way in which physical media can be shared legitimately among friends and family. Digital rights management always gets in the way somehow, often ruining the experience, while the total absence of digital rights management leads people to stop sharing and start giving away free copies. Neither scenario is ideal. (There are some DRM-free digital distributors, like Humble Bundle and GOG.com, but they're basically operating on the honor system, and they can only pull it off because their customers like them enough to support them voluntarily.)

Although any publisher of any intellectual property, retail or digital, might prefer that your friends buy their own copies of whatever you have, borrowing physical media is so commonplace that nobody really complains. But is it only allowed because it can't be avoided? Nintendo didn't try to stop me from lending my copy of Metroid Prime to a friend back in 7th grade because lending GameCube discs is legally and socially acceptable, but what's more important is that, unlike a digital distributor, they had no way of stopping me. The same can be said of music CDs, paperback books, and anything else you can physically hand off to your good pal. It always felt a little unfair that digitally distributed games like those on Steam — or, in fact, any game protected by any form of DRM, even if it comes on a disc — cannot be shared in the same way as your favorite book... but hey, maybe we're just spoiled by centuries of unauthorized sharing gone unpunished.

In any case, Steam's new Family Sharing feature will not erase all the perceived injustices of DRM, and Valve had its own arguably evil part to play in the rise of online DRM with the introduction of Steam back in 2003, but it seems to be a step back in the right direction. (At the very least, it certainly isn't a step in the wrong direction, since they're giving us some new options and taking none away.) The new feature on Steam certainly isn't a perfect imitation of "real" sharing, but it's a decent compromise.

The known limitations, while forgivable, are numerous. For example, your Steam library is shared not with a person but with a single computer, which means the so-called borrower cannot simply play your shared library anywhere he or she wants. Furthermore, you cannot lend a dozen of your games to a dozen different friends, since your library can only be shared on ten computers. Finally, since only one account can access a lender's library at a time, a single borrower essentially reserves the entire library instead of grabbing a single game. You can't let your friend play one game while you play another, so it's kind of like lending your copy of The Kite Runner to a friend when all the books on your shelf are glued together.

This kind of sharing does have some perks, though. After I lent that copy of Metroid Prime to that friend, I never got it back. If you're sharing your Steam games, you don't have to worry about this, and you can even boot your friend out of your library while he or she is playing if you've decided it's your turn to play. (According to the FAQ linked above, the other person will be given a few minutes to finish up or to buy their own copy of the game. How kind.) Better yet, since it's all digital, there's no "sorry, I scratched the disc" or "oh man, my mom sold it at the yard sale." The fact that your entire library is shared at once can also be a good thing, unless your friend is a young kid who needs to stay away from your bloody murder simulators.

It's entirely possible that Family Sharing will make Steam more attractive to those who usually avoid buying digital copies. Many of them, however, will probably continue to avoid Steam on principle, regardless of how Steam's features and restrictions might affect them personally. Even those of us who are always online, and always signed in, can be annoyed when going online and signing in is a requirement for installing a game. Even those of us who don't think Valve is likely to go suddenly bankrupt can be angry about what would happen if our accounts were to vanish into thin air. Even those of us who only care to share our Steam libraries with a single friend might be critical of the fact that we can't allow more than some arbitrary number of shared computers. Unfortunately for consumers of PC games, however, DRM is a fact of life. It has been for years. At least Steam makes it relatively painless most of the time.

I won't say they're adding this Family Sharing feature out of the goodness of their hearts — that's not how businesses operate. The most altruistic motivation they can have is the hope of bringing in new customers by improving their image. In this case, they might also be responding to the problem of accounts being shared off the record. You can share your Steam account without the help of Family Sharing simply by giving your password to a trusted friend, and Valve obviously knows some people are doing this. Instead of alienating customers by enforcing tighter restrictions, they're embracing the idea of sharing, but with sane limits. They can't stop us from sharing our accounts, but they can try to keep sharing under control if they can convince us to do it their way.

Going Nowhere Rather Slowly

For the first few months of its existence, when I was between jobs, this blog was essentially a weekly project. Now that I've been employed at not-so-enjoyable jobs for almost a year, while struggling to balance multiple hobbies with personal relationships and weighing the possibility of going back to graduate school, I fear it's becoming a monthly one. I'll try to step it up, because I know that writing makes me happy even though I'm often too tired to write, but the schedule of this blog has always been "when I feel like it, when I have time, and when it's done."

This kind of schedule isn't always very kind to time-sensitive subjects like coverage of game-related news and commentary on current events, which is why I've only written two articles for Gather Your Party. In fact, this kind of schedule isn't kind to any of my ideas unless I stop watching TV and commit to working. I have a few things in the works, but I've had to choose carefully which things get written down. I'd like to write a detailed analysis of every game I play, but that wasn't happening even when I had all the time in the world, and it certainly isn't happening now.

I guess this will have to suffice: Torchlight II is fun but like any game in the genre it becomes an endless and slightly grindy search for better gear and you realize rather quickly that the entire game is just a glorified, rather complicated, weighted random number generator; Serious Sam 3: BFE doesn't improve the series with the addition of sprinting and iron sights, and if this is meant as a parody of modern shooters then it's only funny because the iron sights hardly seem to do anything at all; Heretic is a fun game but my decision to do a vanilla run before trying a source port might have damaged my eyes.

Anyway, I'm not dead, and the gradual decline in the frequency of posts on this blog doesn't mean that I've lost interest or that I've run out of things to say. Mostly it just means I'm spending more of my personal downtime actually playing video games. And I guess that's a good thing.

Steam Sales: Not What They Used to Be

This article was also published on Gather Your Party on June 12, 2013. Read it here.

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Today marks the beginning of yet another seasonal Steam sale. This typically means another themed event to accompany the daily discounts, and this year's summer sale is no exception, but users who aren't already enjoying the recently introduced Steam trading cards might be less than thrilled about the nature of this event. The Summer Getaway Sale predictably implements the new feature with the unveiling of ten Summer Getaway trading cards.

Always in search of ways to convince potential customers that Steam is more than a typical online distributor with some neatly packaged digital rights management, Valve has famously made a habit of supplementing its well-known seasonal sales with themed objectives, contests, and other giveaways. Last year's two big events, however, were arguably lackluster compared to those which had come before, and this isn't a nostalgia-induced observation.

The Great Steam Treasure Hunt of December 2010, for example, was a pretty big deal. By completing special objectives related to in-game actions and community participation, Steam users could enter into a series of drawings to win free games. Every two days, 20 people won the top five games from their wishlists; 3 users then won a hundred games at the end of the event. The Steam Summer Camp Sale in 2011 followed a similar format with a few differences, namely that a single "ticket" was earned for each completed objective. Three of these tickets could then be exchanged for something at the prize booth (e.g., free downloadable content for a Steam game). Each ticket earned also came with automatic entry into another free-game sweepstakes in which 100 people won ten games.

The Great Gift Pile event, which took place the following winter, was perhaps the most notorious Steam event to date. This time, each completed objective came with one of three prizes: a lump of coal, a coupon, or a free game. Seven lumps of coal could then be "crafted" into a non-coal prize, and any remaining lumps of coal at the end of the event were used as entries into yet another Steam game give-away: One lucky person won every game on Steam, 50 won ten games, 100 won five games, and 1,000 won the Valve complete pack. Unfortunately, Humble Indie Bundle 4 was going on at the same time, and the name-your-own-price bundle included Steam keys for some of the games whose achievements were needed to win prizes.

People quickly realized that, by creating dozens of Steam accounts and buying dozens of bundles for $0.01 each, they could vastly increase their odds of getting free stuff without spending a lot of money. All of that free stuff could then be traded back to their main Steam accounts. Because of this easily exploited loophole, Steam ran out of third-party coupons before the event was over, and Humble Bundle was forced to raise the minimum price for Steam keys to $1.00.

Compared to the previous events, the Summer Sale of 2012 was a massive step down. Discounts went on as usual, but the sale was devoid of any contests or cool prizes, possibly due to the previous event's Humble Bundle shenanigans. Only a few community-based objectives were posted for the duration of the sale, and the only reward for participation was an easily obtained Steam badge. The following Holiday Sale was more of the same.

These last two events did come with a couple of new features which return this summer: Flash Sales which roll over every few hours (like Daily Deals on crack) and a Community's Choice poll to determine which of three games will go on sale next. It should be noted, however, that the games featured in Flash Sales and Community's Choice polls often seem to end up being featured as Daily Deals anyway.

So here we are, at the start of another sale, and again there are no sweepstakes or contests in sight. Furthermore, with the absence of any specially themed achievements or objectives, it looks like the last remnant of the old Steam events has been swept aside to make room for something presumably more lucrative.

This event's special badge can only be earned by crafting all ten Summer Getaway trading cards, and these cards can be obtained in a few ways. The easiest is by casting Community's Choice votes (three of which are good for one card), yielding a maximum of one card per day. Unfortunately, this only works if your Steam level, based on previously collected badges, is 5 or higher. If not, or if you can't check into Steam every few hours for the next eleven days, you'll have to turn to alternative methods: spending money on Steam (which is likely Valve's favorite option), crafting badges for games you already own (which involves collecting other sets of cards), trading other items for the required cards (which means you need something worth trading), or simply buying the cards from other users on the Steam market (a monetary transaction from which Valve takes a small percentage).

As Valve continues to push the new trading card feature, frequently adding to the list of participating games, it's possible that the use of trading cards to earn a badge, as opposed to the completion of special achievements, will be the norm in future Steam events.