First World Problems LIVE

[cmdr_zoom]

It seems that about half the cool semi-recent games that I picked up in Steam's holiday sales (that I can finally run on my new computer) demand a Games for Windows LIVE account/profile for even basic stuff like saving my progress. What the hell? If I don't want to play online and I don't care about achievements, why do I need this? Did the whole industry just somehow forget the concept of offline play or how to make savegames work?

So if I want to actually play, I need to suck it up and make a profile, grumble mutter. Can you believe I'm stuck on something as simple, yet important, as a name? I suppose I could always simply use this one, but I'm not sure if I want to - want to connect them like that. Heck, it's possible, though unlikely, it's already taken; I figure the XBL man-children have claimed most of the decent handles and at least half of the indecent ones.

Comments

[z-gryphon.livejournal.com]

My GfWL handle is "unwillinglylive". :)

[cmdr-zoom.livejournal.com]

*fistbump*

[z-gryphon.livejournal.com]

I think the game people do it so they can get on with some kind of administrator account and laugh at how weak my Street Fighter IV scores are.

[kowh.livejournal.com]

Microsoft had the bright idea that "hey, we could charge people to play PC games online if we just bring over the Xbox Live platform to Windows!" and coerced a bunch of companies to use the service in an effort to get a killer app.

It failed as spectacularly as you'd expect, and now it mostly gets used by lazy devs who want to do cross-platform Xbox/PC games. Lazy because on Xbox they're required to use Microsoft's code for some things (like matchmaking), which means they'd have to write that code for Windows (if they didn't use Games for Windows Live). Also stuff like host their own matchmaking and update servers.

The solution of course is to use Steam, I believe they make it pretty easy to use as a replacement for the bits XBL does, and has the advantage of actually being half-decent to use.

[cmdr-zoom.livejournal.com]

Yup, and while I was slow to embrace the Power of Steam(tm), I'm a pretty enthusiastic convert these days.
Alas, several games (like the ones I just got) have GFWL hard-coded into them, so...

[sptrashcan.livejournal.com]

Ham Doctor (http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/7/22/).

[cmdr-zoom.livejournal.com]

Tempting.
But almost surely either taken by another reader, or Red Flagged.