It has been 7 hours, and you have 0 comments, and that makes me very sad.
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People just do not know how to respond to something so profound.
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playfire uses your community stats from the gaming platforms you add, if your doing a independent achievements site with no ties to a company or platform how would you get it to track your progress and stats?
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I can't claim to have the right answers here - anyone with bright ideas, this is a great place to voice them - but my personal approach to it would be for devs to use some kind of standard file format for storing achievement/stat details for their games. If you're running a client which is compatible with the format, then it would automatically import your new achievements while you play, if not, then you can import those files later. This storage would be clientside, but if you want to show off your achievements and compare them with friends, then you just sync your achievement client with some kind of online service - that could be something similar to Playfire or Astats. Depending on the details a game shares, this could be used to improve on achievements - while some players enjoy trying to meet the developer's challenges, fans could also create their own achievement ideas to challenge friends with.
There are two obvious criticisms of this - the first is that it sounds unwieldy, but it's not all that different from, for example, what happens if you earn achievements while in offline mode, just designed in a way that doesn't have to be tied to the platform you play on. What I describe as an 'achievement client' could basically just be a module in a larger client, if people find that more convenient. The second issue is that there's no cheat protection (though this is mostly true of Steam achievements anyway), and there's also less pressure for people to be expected not to cheat - but I don't think that would matter much to the average player. For those who would be happy to accept a reduction in their freedom in exchange for being able to play games on a more serious competitive level, there would still be a place for closed services, and those would benefit since they wouldn't be expected to find a compromise that also appeases the rest of us.
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Given today's events and because of the (small, but) positive response previously, I rewrote the thread a bit and I'm giving it another chance with a bump. :)
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THE PROBLEM
Whatever you think of the decision to take paid modding back to the drawing board, recent events have raised concerns and highlighted some of the control that Steam have over the future of PC gaming.
I think most of us, when we see someone saying they're going to boycott something related to Steam, know that they're going to have pretty much no effect. We're all attached to Steam in one way or another. Using an alternative doesn't mean that your library, social network, achievements, inventory items, etc will all disappear, but you do have to use Steam to access them and the value of those things depends on how much we value Steam as a whole. If people want to have their voice heard and really have an effect, then they need to be prepared to make some kind of temporary compromise on those things, for the sake of future improvements elsewhere.
THE SOLUTION?
It's fair to say there's a lack of serious alternatives right now, but I think there's a lot that can be done by creating and encouraging the use of open standards for many aspects of PC gaming. Let's discuss ways in which features we associate with Steam could be opened up, and the advantages and dangers of doing so. What I've written here are simply some loose examples, and any development, constructive criticism or completely different ideas are welcome and encouraged.
Systems similar to cryptocurrency could allow for non-client specific game items to be traded independently from clients. This could even be used for game ownership - people could buy the license for a game from the developer in the form of a digital token that proves ownership (and may include trading permissions), and downloads could then be provided by the developer or an authorised download service. There might be a small charge involved for this if it's overused, but that's not necessarily the case, and even if it was, it would hopefully be compensated for by other improvements.
For typical achievement users, some kind of 'open achievement/stat manager' would allow for equality and comparison with different versions of a game, and could also allow players to make, share and compare their own achievements for games where appropriate.
There are also some 'community clients' such as Raptr and Playfire, though at the moment these tend to be more annoying than helpful and just split things up more. There's definitely some scope for an open community standard that allows different clients to connect with each other, and for clients of different purposes to work smoothly together.
For modding, personally I've no issue with people selling mods, but I think it needs to be handled up front, so that players can decide whether they want to support a game and its community or not. One of the issues with Skyrim is that nobody was expecting this, or for it to be handled in this way. I think modding is one of the key parts of PC gaming, and from this point forward, developers should aim to have a clear license about mod licensing from the moment a game is released, and avoid relying on any specific client to use mods.
Obviously there are many issues with all this and it's not stuff that'll happen overnight, and there are places where closed services are appropriate (for example, for cheat protection for some competitive multiplayer/achievement/leaderboard games) but if enough people are willing to support and develop ideas that make PC gaming more open again, then I believe it'll lead to improvements both on and off Steam.
(EDIT NOTE: The thread has been shortened and rewritten a bit. It's still a bit long, but thanks for reading it if you did. :) )
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