A Social Network for Counter-Strike

While I thoroughly enjoy playing Counter-Strike Source at home, I miss playing with people I know at gaming centers. Valve promises to bring some of that experience home with the upcoming Steam Community, built on their existing digital distribution platform.

Right now most players double-click a server and play with strangers for an hour or two, then never see them again. Valve’s latest big announcement, The Steam Community, will encourage you to play with friends, and make new ones.

The headline feature is one-click matchmaking, both for new games and existing ones such as Counter-Strike. You’ll be able to jump straight into a game with players of your skill level, with no history of griefing, by pressing a single button. It also lets you form a party with your friends, and automatically find a game that you can all jump into and play together. There are parallels to Microsoft’s Live service, obviously, but the differences are heavily in Steam’s favour. You need the £40-a-year Gold subscription to get Live’s matchmaking, whereas Steam’s is free, and it’ll be supported by masses of our favourite games from day one.

Best bit: if you’re a dirty camper, the world will know it. Call it gamer reputation management.

Lastly, but perhaps most visibly, Steam Community gives you a personal gamer page that’s accessible via the web, with embarrassingly detailed stats about what you play, how much you play it, and what kind of player you are. It even highlights noteworthy trends – the example we saw told the user “You like playing as a Boomer. Sometimes you (accidentally?) shoot your fellow Survivors.”

VoIP, commerce, CAD, ads — you can build a lot of things on games, as long as you make them relevant to the games. Good to see Valve integrate social networking in such a relevant fashion.

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