Wildly Un-representative Survey

How many of you still have Steam installed on your desktop?
How many of you bought Rag Doll Kung Fu?
How many of you downloaded Lost Coast?

Comments

[RodeoClown]

Yes - steam installed (and running)
No - bought Rag-Doll Kung-Fu
Yes - downloaded Lost Coast (even though I can't use any of the HDR stuff)

[Greg]

No -- damn if i'm gonna let some thing download god knows what to my hard drive without my knowledge and permission.

No -- I =so= want to buy Rag-Doll Kung-Fu--but not it if means I have to reinstall Steam.

No -- I'm not an FPS junkie, sure it's good for what it is, but you know...

[spoonix]

yeah (but it's disabled)
nope, and probably won't unless I hear a trusted source raving about it
nope, and I am an FPS junkie :)

[Tom Henderson]

No
No
No

Not really into fps and of course because I'm OLD.

[StuntGibbon]

Yes - Systems like this will be one of the only ways to thwart the pre-owned game problem.
Yes - Yup, great fun and hard to believe it was only one guy responsible for the game.
No - Haven't got it yet, not because I don't want to.. but there's SOOOO much stuff to play right now. I'll probably snag it when it slows down a touch.

[Viridian]

Yes - I have Steam installed
No - I have not bought Rag Doll Kung Fu; doesn't look like there's actually a game there
No - I have not yet downloaded Lost Coast, thanks for reminding me to do that.

[Billy Zelsnack]

yes
no
yes

[Austin]

Yes - Installed and used for HL2 so far...
No - Although given the low price point, I'll probably pick it up when I get bored with other games
Yes - Although not yet played it

Greg, I'm surprised that you ( http://manifestogames.com ) wouldn't be a fan of alternate distribution mechanisms like Steam. Care to explain what you don't like about it?

[Robert 'Groby' Blum]

Yes - unfortunately. It annoys the living daylights out of me, but it's the only way to play a game of CS with my office mates. (I decidedly *hate* Valve for the fact that I have to run that thing just to play a game I own. Not to mention the fact that I have to trust my systems security to a company who lost their source code on the net *and* bungled their authentication system.)

Yes - unfortunately. Simply speaking, I fell for the hype. I'm sorry, but it's not a brilliant game. It's an average shareware game with adolescent-humor videos. The $15 cost is pushing the limit of what it's worth.

No - and no plans to get it. I bought HL for CS/DoD, and that's it.

[Nate]

Yes, yes, and no. I'd probably download Lost Coast if I thought my machine could run it though.

[Jay Barnson]

No - I'll probably re-install it in the future though.
No
No - Not yet.

[Scott Brodie]

Yes - But has been disabled since I beat the game.
No - But that's just due to lack of time.
No - But that's just due to lack of interest :>

[Vernon Finch]

No - Uninstalled it instantly after completing HL2, and that was more satisfying than the game I think.

No - I have been meaning to check it out, but initial impression is its not something I'd buy.

No - I just don't want to install steam again, I'll make do with reading the articles.

[jean-christophe]

No - Weird.. i uninstalled it yesterday. Not because i was disapointed with the product (i am one of those rare few who actually CAN disable the auto-downloading feature). But yesterday it came to me that i was only playing CS or DOD as a time waster. I don't want to be someone who plays such games like there were time waster.
No -
Yes - Look! Pretty lights!

[NeARAZ]

Yes (just for RDKF, normally it's disabled)
Yes (enjoyed it)
No

[Idlethought]

Yes (It may be a pain, but it's vastly better than the alternative machine-crippling copy-protection, I've probably spent about 60-70% less on games over the last couple of years because of copy protection issues)
Yes (Because it was nice and cheap and easy)
Not Yet (But I expect too)

[Jeffool]

No - Been reformatting a lot over the past week.
Yes - Dug it. Worth the cash.
No - But I'll likely get around to it once I'm convinced Windows is again stable. (WinXP x64 is a bad, bad thing.)

[Hugh "Nomad" Hancock]

Yes
No
No

And I've only still got Stream installed because I'm lazy...

[chrisf]

-Yes
-Yes, it's fucking brilliant.
-What, it's out?? I'll do that later.

[SpiderMonkey]

Yes - I play a lot of Counter-Strike and enjoy replaying sections of Half-Life 2 from time to time. It's not 'on my desktop' as an icon, and it doesn't start on startup, but it is fairly prominent in my start menu.

No - I watched the GDC video and it didn't really appeal to me.

Yes - Valve made so much noise about it, I couldn't help but check it out. Worth doing, since the new lighting effects are subtle but sexy, the commentary is fairly interesting, and more HL2 is always welcome.

[James]

Yes - begrudgingly.
No - I haven't really been inspired to. I did briefly consider getting it on the grounds it was at least original, but then again it seems to basically be International Karate but with ragdolls, so maybe not so original after all.
Yes - I think the HDR thing is slightly overdone at the moment (so you notice it?) but is a nice effect. I used to live for my weekly FPS LAN sessions, and I took a day off work to play HL2, but I have been slowly getting bored of FPS games.

[Chris]

No - I moved to a Powerbook (OS X) in October
No - It looks cute, but again, it's not available on OS X, and I've never cared much for fighting games
No - I love the HDR because it's novel, but can't play HL2 on this machine

[Ben]

Yes - I have steam installed, but I spent about quarter of an hour making sure it didn't auto run when I booted windows - they really should give you the option to do it yourself, very rude. I have no problem with the idea but I don't want to be force fed advertising whilst I'm working.
No
No - it looks nice but I don't really care. There will be loads of games that use HDR in the future so I'll just play them, I'm not in any hurry.

[Josh]

Yes - reinstalled recently. I bought the CD, but lost it. Steam let me download and play the game anyway. Yeah steam!
No
Yes - It was short and buggy, but the narration was interesting.

[Sean]

no - (had installed it to play HL2 that I bought in the box thinking that would avoid Steam, but uninstalled and gave my account info to a friend/game-developer so he could play it--but not planning to ever have it installed except to play Valve-game-du-jour)
no
no

[Raph]

yes, still installed.
No, didn't buy it. Yet.
No, never got far enough in HL2 to justify it.

[Josh]

No ... so no & no.

I removed Steam when it refused to allow me to login. At that point I realized I was potentially tossing a decent amount of money into Valve's upcoming products that I would never know if I could use again. Ever. That sucks. I have games from the 90's I can go back to if I want, but here was a game I bought ... from a store ... a month earlier and Valve wasn't letting me play it.

I believe in digital delivery. Before, I used games.yahoo and loved it. I don't believe in paranoid, buggy, intrusive bloatware.

[TurgoN]

YES
no
no

I have steam only for Counter-Strike 1.6

[Jay Woodward]

Steam: Yes. Non-retail content delivery for the win. I even indulge it its frequent nattering about upcoming products, because the information is welcome. For now. And the white-hat brigades will guard against Valve doing anything naughty or foolish.

Ragdoll Kung Fu: God, why? No.

Lost Coast: Yes. So overhyped. All right, HDR is swell. It was swell in Fable and Ico too. The commentary concept is great; the actual commentary is kinda meh. Please do tell me eight more times how you had to rewrite all your shaders for HDR. And as for the actual experience -- never have I blown past so much pretty in so little time. Corridor shooters for the loss. I want a commentary node that's just the art director weeping softly.

[Jesper Juul]

Yes
Yes (supercool, but not sure about the controls...)
Yes - after you mentioned it.

[Jez]

Yes, as I recently started playing CS:S again and it let me download it
Yes (but probably wouldn't have if Steam hadn't popped up telling me how cheap it was)
Will do soon

I suspect that my Xbox gaming has dulled my pain threshold w.r.t. annoying locked-down systems that do stuff behind my back...

[zachary j. gamedesigner]

Yes.
No. No demo and the video wasn't compelling :|
Yes. But my video card can't run it with the HDR stuff despite the fact that it is a very high end card (fx5900 ultra).

[Mavlock]

Yes
Yes
AND HELL YES!

[Alan Dennis]

Yes
Yes
Yes