Steam, we’ve got to talk

And if you didn't catch today's deals, don't worry!
And if you didn’t catch today’s deals, don’t worry!


Steam’s Autumn Sale 2013.
Here we go again. Daily deals. Yesterday’s deals. Flash deals. Community picks.

There are 86 games in my account: most of them I’ve bought in different Humble Bundles or other sales, such as the ridiculous Holiday Sale of 2011. I’ve played less than half of them and even less than half of those have I “completed” –  quotes because the games that I prefer nowadays are generally speaking impossible to complete. A relatively small  fraction of those 86 games I got through Game 2.0 for reviewing. I don’t receive physical copies anymore, but I’ve long  got over the need of owning real copies of games, especially after getting stuck with boxed copies of games that are tied to Steam keys and which I therefore can’t sell – I’m looking at you, stack of Total Wars!

This time around, you threw in our faces Skyrim Legendary Edition for 13€, Bioshock Infinite for 7.5€, Spelunky for 3€ and Civilization V Gold and the expansion Brave New World for 10€ each. Of all of the above I only resisted to buying Skyrim (it sounded very enticing but I doubt I can give it the time it probably deserves at this point), and still believe I will buy more games before the deals are over (eyeing Super Hexagon and Anno 2070). Only a fool would skip on those prices… And then you’re going to have the Holiday Sale, of course you will. I hope we’ll at least have enough time to enjoy Civilization V online with Garret and Daphne who both got the game the day before during the sale – actually, I got it for Daphne because she seems to love it so much; who would have thought that the hot seat would have grown this hot?

I feel as if I’m being manipulated to no end. It’s confusing to my Fi (ethical system/inner values to you MBTI beginners!) – which dictates that I should at least be trying to avoid being exactly like women going crazy in the shopping mall – as well as it is destructive to my wallet and my time management. You’re tearing me apart, Steama!

But seriously. What gives? How can this even work? How can you have 1532 sales every year without cheating all of the producers and developers? How is this system viable at all? I mean, with these sales and the existence and dominance of Humble Bundle, combined with the ridiculous prices games have at launch only for them to be reduced in a matter of months through these offers (and given the extreme oversaturation of the market), it’s no wonder top AAA games are slowly becoming obsolete. Given of course that people just don’t have enough money to spend on consoles (most of the people I know don’t want to buy a new console, either because of lack of interest, money or both), it’s really no wonder that you, with your cheap, flexible and robust system (and your upcoming Steam Machines) and iOS with its innovation and low prices are looking like you will together dominate the industry even further. And really, what would happen if everybody eventually stopped buying games on day one or – god forbid – stopped preordering like tiny little consumeristic muppets? I’ll tell you what would happen: the entire industry would collapse. Again.

You know something? As cool and comfy as it is, deep down it makes me feel uncomfortable having all of my games in this digital vault made out of thin air. Now you look healthier than ever, but will that be the case in 10 years? 20? You had your DRM creep on us and had us get used to it, and now we bash everyone who tries to steal some of your limelight (yes, I know it’s fun to hate EA and forbidden to even slightly criticise mama Valve). Even if you have allowed offline play, you have made reselling games impossible. Why? How can I trust you, Steam? These cheap games are like a trojan horse: you’re becoming the Google of gaming – people put up with your shitty monopoly because you’re just so damn useful. What if tomorrow I have to buy your SteamMachine to play? What if I suddenly have to, say, pay a fee to access my games – even just a small one? I’d probably pay up just in order to still be able to play 90% of the games I own or play on a regular basis (most of which I certainly won’t have played even by then). Oh, maybe you’re like the other great benefactor, Facebook, which promises that it’s free and always will be. Isn’t that a role model of a company.

Maybe I’m expecting too much – or I’m too sceptical/paranoid. Maybe my thinking is a relic from a different era, when physical mattered more – was more tangible – than digital. Maybe in this Brave New World there really will be no difference between offline and online, the physical and its digital counterpart. As far as I can see, the counterpart in many ways has already replaced the original or is indistinguishable from it (or they really are the same thing). The strictly private has become public, a single thought or utterance shared with the world is immortalised and pinned to its creator forever (or at least for what the word ‘forever’ means in the beginning of the 21st century). The social as well as the commercial sphere is changing too quickly for us to figure out, and, well, honestly we’re just not that smart to understand in what ways we’re being manipulated, controlled and generally taken advantage of at this time by “free” or seemingly harmless services.  I hope you can understand, though: all these huge companies who are operating as monopolies (mostly in the digital plane) at the same time working with the secret services of the world or using us in other mostly unknown nefarious ways are just scaring me. No corporation can inspire my trust. That’s all.

I hope you can understand and won’t block me from playing Civilization V because I told you these things. You know I still love you. Right?

Is it really Christmas?

fuck christmas

So here I am, sitting in my room at my place in Nea Smyrni, stealing someone’s WiFi (together with 6 other people… Logging in to routers with default WEP settings and changing the keys is soo tempting… but I am not that evil), blogging when I should be working on my projects. I’ve been here for a few days already and I’m not feeling like it is Christmas at all. I look at all the constructed, fake festivities around me and I am feeling nothing but disgust for this joke of a festival centered around “love”. Just sneaking a peak at all the advertisements targeted at children, the true targets of this consumeristic parody, is borderline depressing. It’s no wonder we all have a sort of nostalgic aftertaste of Christmas which really stems from our childhood, when it all seemed so magical, so true, so happy… Is it the presents, the holidays, the sweets, the music? Maybe it is the sheer fakeness of it all, the same thing that draws children to Disneyland, that manages to enchant them so. What can indeed be said about the “holiday season”, a cultural curiosity which is one of the best examples of globalization today? I feel that if I let myself loose I’m going to fill pages upon pages of ranting about something that everybody knows is true yet decides to turn a blind eye to, preferring to drown their sorrows in ethical and guiltless super-consuming.

The fact, then, that I’m not feeling as if it’s Christmas is probably a good sign.

Maybe it is because so much has happened in my life in so little time. Maybe it’s because I have been consciously looking away from the very strong build-up that typically leads to an all-encompassing “Christmas spirit”. Maybe it is because I’ve grown mature enough to be able to appreciate being close to my loved ones and having some free time without associating the holidays with consumption, fake feelings of love for the world and this hideous “spirit”. It may be all, it may be none, it may be just one of these things, but whatever the reason, I am happy that I can see past the worryingly ultra-happy social appearances…

OK, Christmas flaming over. :] I started writing this post wanting to share what I’ve been doing the past few days and how I’m going to spend my holidays. Interesting much? It’s the fatal compulsion of blogging…


University Projects

One of the slighter reasons I’m not feeling too Christmas-y and/or relaxed is that I have a serious amount of work to get done for university. Four projects. It was going to be five originally but I decided to drop the project for Virtual Worlds and Digital Animation — my well of inspiration was looking a bit too dry for me to realise my relatively ambitious plans.

1. PHP. My project for WWW Technologies is to build a complete computer hardware online shop. That is much harder to do than it sounds, at least for someone who has little to no knowledge of dynamic website developing. This project is supposedly for two people but Garret doesn’t look like he might be a lot of help; he still needs to get his HTML sorted out. Anyway, it’s online tutorial and lab note time!

2. Cultural Representation. I chose to represent my top 5 favourite cities in the world for this one. I will have to make the workflow chart for an interactive application. I won’t fully develop it, but just designing a workable and attractive User Interface, as well as making it have the distinct Cubi style will take some full hours.

3 & 4. These are secret projects… ^^D

I promise impressive things… It’s not that I’m too bored to write about them or anything like that, no! It’s because I want to surprise everyone!


Flickr, Facebook and Online Identities

It’s been a a few weeks now that I deactivated my Facebook account. After a point, it felt downright hypocritic posting bad stuff about it but having a perfectly healthy account. Nevermind the less than impressive number of pictures I had on it.

Tell you what, I haven’t missed it a bit. A lot of people seem to find it strange that I’ve done so and have tried to persuade me to re-activate it. They say: “We miss you!”, just like Facebook said they would (and I thought it was being ridiculous…) To them, all I have to say is this. Sorry, but I will indulge in pathetic spying and “maintaining expired relationships” no longer!

Some other people, mostly from the Theatre and Photography groups, have told me that I should re-activate my FB so that I can upload photographs for all to see. I have a different reply for them: Flickr! Maybe you’ve noticed, maybe you haven’t, but I’m uploading more and more of my photographs there. It’s a very good image site, well-made, professional, respectful to the applying web laws as far as content protection goes. That is where you can head for my full lowdown of pictures! Look at that: it’s even got integrated support for WordPress (the sidebar pics are from my Flickr photostream, also have a look at my previous post). What else can one possibly ask for?!

To sum up:
Facebook sucks,
Flickr rules,
if you want to see my pics,
you surely oughta choose!


Windows 7 for free! Legally! How?

Casually browsing the web, a few days ago I stumbled upon MSDN Academic Alliance through my.aegean. What’s this, you say? It is a Microsoft service that allows students to download some of their software for free, all in the name of academia. Amazing eh? I was excited to discover that the University of the Aegean is eligible for this service. Why hasn’t anybody, ever, told us anything about it?

I really did download Windows 7 Professional, as well as a valid license key, for free, just by putting in my CT user name and pass. I burnt it on a DVD and now it’s waiting for me to tidy up my laptop HDDs before I format. This might take a while actually… heh.

Check it our for yourself!


Three Sequels and a Classic.

My gaming activity in the past few weeks has centered around four games: Modern Warfare 2, Banjo-Tooie, Half-Life 2 and StarCraft. Let me tell you a few things about these games.

Modern Warfare 2 is a great game in multiplayer, haven’t touched SP yet, as “controversial” as it may be. Enough said, I believe.

banjo-tooie christmas

Banjo-Tooie. Oh, Banjo-Tooie. I am very aware that about 2 years ago I placed it #20 in my 20 Favourite N64 games. I did not remember it very well back then, having only played it once before, when I was only 11. Not long ago I downloaded it from XBLA and decided to give it another spin, especially when I had so much fun downloading, replaying and 100%ing Banjo-Kazooie this time last year from the same service.

Tooie must be one of  the deepest, most innovative platformers in the history of the genre, not to mention one of the most expanding sequels ever. The level architecture is brilliant, how each world connects with a few others is something that hasn’t been used in other games since, even though it was such a good idea. The game is truly massive — getting 100% might take me 20+ hours when Banjo-Kazooie took me around 6. It’s definitely because I remember Kazooie almost perfectly even from my early years while now with Tooie it’s like playing it for the first time… Yes, the game is massive. TOO massive and time-consuming at times, when the original was a lot tighter and pure. I just have to comment on some of the humour displayed in Tooie; there are a lot more sexual references than in the original, and that can only be a good thing.

It doesn’t feel like I’m replaying it so it all feels fresh. If remade it could easily stand next to contemporary platformers and surpass them in many ways. Still, even if I have redeemed it a bit, the original still stands proud of its proximity to platforming perfection even when it obviously offers less, is shorter, much easier and has a fraction of the content of its sequel. I guess that is what separates a very good game from a classic. And talking about classics…

StarCraft. Yes, Blizzard’s other franchise that is about to see its full revival in a few months (and then we’re going to talk about sequels, period. Any new IPs please? :P) Even though I’m a strategy game fan, I’ve never shown great interest for Blizzard games. I’ve tried to like the WarCraft universe but I find it bores me. I still cannot exactly say why I like StarCraft and even worse, explain the on-and-off relationship I’ve had with it for years. Now, this Christmas, I’ve decided  to follow its story and see why it’s a game celebrated like few. So far I’m loving it! Haven’t had this much fun with a Single Player RTS campaign in years.

Want another game I’ve had an on-and-off relationship with for even longer? That’s none other than Half-Life 2 for you. I downloaded and tried it when it was released more than 5 years ago and was blown away by its atmosphere. For some weird reason I lost interest somewhere along the way. I tried to pick it up three times since, once after I bought the Orange Box, another time sometime last Autumn and another shortly thereafter… again and again, I kept losing interest a bit further along the road. My last save was two hours or so before the end of the game, in the City 17 streetfights. I had reached this point last time I’d felt like playing, that is last February. The morning before I left Mytilini and after a good dose of  caffeine, I finally took the bold step, closing a 5-year circle: I finished Half-Life 2.


I had been thinking that the game would have a tedious ending. How wrong I was. Getting rid of the Striders, climbing up the Citadel and then… *spoilers* was just so EPIC! Not only wasn’t it tedious, it was awe-inspiring. The rest of the game was like this, what in the name of Valve made me think the end would disappoint? Silly Cubi… Now, if only I could get Episode I to run on this laptop. Oh, don’t we wish…


That’s it for now! I have more things to share but they’re still being digested. Hey, there’s still lots of happenings left for the rest of the holidays anyway, they’ve only just begun! Soon it’s going to be the turn of the decade as well. Now that’s going to be awesome