Wow, I guess I hadn't realized that so many logos are some variation on a circle. Looking down at my task bar confirms this realization as well. Chrome, last.fm Scrobbler, Skype, Open Office, even Audacity's logo is rounded. Sure there are a few outliers: K-Chart LE, Guitar Pro 6 (although it is rounded, but not circular), the open folders tab. . . But I'm getting away from my own train of rambling though.
I had initially set in to write a post comparing Valve's Steam client and GOG's new (beta) Galaxy client. I had a few pictures all set up too that I was planning on using, but that turned into a "which games do I want to publically display that I have on Steam?" There was even something about how similar the clients were, but in reality they are not, at least between Galaxy and Steam. Mentally I think I had this expose-type post planned but I decided to scrap that idea when I realized that I would not be able to put down all of the words the way that I wanted them to. Maybe it's because I haven't had my daily dose of liquid caffeine yet.
Basically what I think the article boiled down to was that with GOG's Galaxy client, I find myself more apt to compare games there to the same games on Steam. Something that I really like about the Galaxy client too is that all of the goodies that come packaged with a lot of the games (concept art, developer interviews, soundtracks) are accessible through Galaxy and can be downloaded to Galaxy's download folder. This ease of access, not only to the games and the extras has made me a lot more likely to not only use the games I have on GOG, but to be more likely to purchase games through GOG.
And just because I noticed that The Witcher series has gone on sale this weekend over on Steam, and I already have the first game in the series (The Witcher: Enhanced Extended Director's Cut) over on GOG. All three games in the series, through GOG come packaged with some combination of maps, making of videos and the complete soundtrack, and all for the same price when sales are not taken into account. Granted not all games on GOG are packaged with videos and soundtracks, but those that I have noticed that are (7th Guest, Baldur's Gate Complete, The Witcher, I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, Sanitarium) are all equally priced over on Steam and from what I can tell, do not include a soundtrack. We like video game music over here by the way.
And then there is Origin, the gaming client from EA where only IP's that EA owns are sold. I'm 97% positive that it has already been mentioned, but I think this is Origin's biggest weakpoint. What few games I have on Origin are mostly freebees through their "On the House" program which offers a free game every few months. Games like Sim City 2000, Syndicate, Wing Commander III, Bejeweled 3 and Crusader: No Remorse were all "On the House" offers that I gladly snatched up because why not, they're free. I'm not sure where The Sims 3 came from and it might've even been a freebee around the time The Sims 4 was coming out, but The Sims 2 was a promotional offer to new Origin accounts over a year ago. I think the only thing that I've bought on Origin was a DLC for Dead Space 3, but that was when they were having a Dead Space sale so I didn't even buy it for full price. Other games I acquired through an EA Humble Bundle. Basically for me, Origin is a game client that only offers EA games that I feel I could already get on Steam or Galaxy.
The last video game client that I have is Desura. I acquired it sometime around January of last year (2014) when I found out about the Half-Life 2 demo for The Stanley Parable. So I went ahead, got an account with Desura, picked up The Stanley Parable Demo and then noticed that Desura had also imported access to a number of the games that I normally run through Steam. Perhaps in an act of retaliation, I later found that I had access to The Stanley Parable Demo through Steam even though I had not added it myself.
So what does all of this talk about video game clients boil down to? Basically, I still have Desura because I just haven't gotten around to uninstalling it. I have Origin because every so often they offer free older games that might be fun and is the only way I will be able to play Dead Space 3. I use Galaxy in order to have access to older games that are not available on Steam or are comparably priced on Steam but offer extras that entice me to purchase the product through GOG. I use Steam because that is what solidified me in the PC gaming arena, the frequency of the sales for games that I would like to acquire (and hopefully get around to playing), it's what a lot of my friends use, and I really like the interface.
So what can we gather from all of this? That GOG's Galaxy and Valve's Steam are my preferred clients for running video games on my little laptop although during the writing of this article, I did locate a couple free games on Desura that looked interesting enough for me to pick them up, so we will see in the future.
~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
As It Is Written
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