Monday, May 23, 2005
Get Serious evaluation
The reacton to Get Serious varied across the forums I posted it on, but the most common response went along the lines of "what are you talking about, Steam is an auto-update utility for Valve games", which is doubly the attitude I wanted to try and break.
The piece wasn't about nagging the developers: it was to inform the public. It is therefore unfortunate that I used next to no persuasion. I described the state of play today then reeled off a list of facts that don't have much relavance to people not already involved with Steam, which might have informed but left the reader to make the attitude-changing links themselves.
If I were to write the article again I would undoubtedly add true arguements to it, describing the benefits of competition between Steam (representing PCs) and Xbox Live (representing consoles) for both platforms. I might also have explained the slow but sure shift towards digital ditribution to highlight the momentum Steam is building up and it's importance, and linked to the three mini-articles you can find below this post to help demonstrate my ideas, particuarly given the images in Friends, Clans, Matchmaking, Stats.
Update: There was also a factual innaccuracy: content streaming does in fact work in Source, just very poorly. A glance at some of the reslists would explain why...
The piece wasn't about nagging the developers: it was to inform the public. It is therefore unfortunate that I used next to no persuasion. I described the state of play today then reeled off a list of facts that don't have much relavance to people not already involved with Steam, which might have informed but left the reader to make the attitude-changing links themselves.
If I were to write the article again I would undoubtedly add true arguements to it, describing the benefits of competition between Steam (representing PCs) and Xbox Live (representing consoles) for both platforms. I might also have explained the slow but sure shift towards digital ditribution to highlight the momentum Steam is building up and it's importance, and linked to the three mini-articles you can find below this post to help demonstrate my ideas, particuarly given the images in Friends, Clans, Matchmaking, Stats.
Update: There was also a factual innaccuracy: content streaming does in fact work in Source, just very poorly. A glance at some of the reslists would explain why...
Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home
"The piece wasn't about nagging the developers"
But I trust you shared the article with the devs, right? Anyhoo, I though it was a right nice piece of opinion. I look forward to your future brain sprouts.
But I trust you shared the article with the devs, right? Anyhoo, I though it was a right nice piece of opinion. I look forward to your future brain sprouts.
# posted by 
: 3:35 am
: 3:35 am
No, because there's nothing here they haven't thought about twenty times over ever since before Steam was announced. Plus that fact that Taylor at least will have seen it himself as he read the forums.
Tom, I really think you should email this to, if not Gabe, then Greg Coomer at least. Both perhaps. Remember, good ideas aren't enough: if users /want/ a feature, thing get moving. You may not give Valve any great new ideas they haven't considered, but you'll let them know what you, as a user, want from their product. They are very receptive to professional, well-thought-out opinions such as yours. With as much time as you've obviously spend on these three or so documents, I can't imagine why you wouldn't share them with the people to who really matter.
By virtue of the forum demographic, you're not likely to convince Joe Bloggs that content streaming should be improved in X, Y, & Z ways. However, the person responsible for developing the content streaming system might be very interested to here what you have to say. Or the person in charge of Friends. Or the person in charge of the future direction of the platform.
If Taylor /has/ forwarded this stuff around already, you're not waisting anyone's time by sending duplicates: deleting email is pretty easy. But if Mr. Sherman has not distributed your ideas... well, the point is, what do you have to lose? I would send your main stuff to Gabe and your more specific stuff to either Alfred or Greg (esp. that cool CSS idea for skinable web content). They really do love hearing from their fans, especially when their fans care enough about their work to give it as much thought as you've given this. That was inarticulate, but you get the idea. Nothing to lose, man. Nothing to lose.
By virtue of the forum demographic, you're not likely to convince Joe Bloggs that content streaming should be improved in X, Y, & Z ways. However, the person responsible for developing the content streaming system might be very interested to here what you have to say. Or the person in charge of Friends. Or the person in charge of the future direction of the platform.
If Taylor /has/ forwarded this stuff around already, you're not waisting anyone's time by sending duplicates: deleting email is pretty easy. But if Mr. Sherman has not distributed your ideas... well, the point is, what do you have to lose? I would send your main stuff to Gabe and your more specific stuff to either Alfred or Greg (esp. that cool CSS idea for skinable web content). They really do love hearing from their fans, especially when their fans care enough about their work to give it as much thought as you've given this. That was inarticulate, but you get the idea. Nothing to lose, man. Nothing to lose.
# posted by : 11:09 pm
: 11:09 pm Post a Comment
<< Home
