There’s no doubt that Xbox Live — the online service that connects Xbox 360s around the world — has played a key role in making the Xbox 360 the success it is today. Despite its detractors’ arguments that it should be free and the recent downtime it has been suffering due to a surge of new gamers, it continues to be a valuable part of the overall package. What makes it so great, however, is the fact that Microsoft required it be an integral part of most of the games available for the Xbox 360. Through online leader boards, multi-player matchmaking, and buddy lists that help build a sense of community between gamers, Xbox Live has gone a long way towards making gaming a more social experience — even if you never actually meet your friends face-to-face. At the very least, it has uped the ante on what gamers expect from an online service and made several new features an industry standard — so much so that Sony has had no choice but to find ways of improving their own service through applications like “Home”. Unfortunately, the Games for Windows - LIVE service — Microsoft’s version of Live for Vista and Windows XP gamers — pales by comparison. That’s where Steamworks comes in.

Games for Windows and Games for Windows - LIVE are, at best, mismanaged systems. At worst, they represent a unanimous vote of “no confidence” in the Windows and Vista operating systems as a viable gaming platform from the very company that made them. While Microsoft continues to promise improvements on the horizon, thus far, it has been nothing but a lackluster set of features that have been available to PC gamers for well over a decade. Online multi-player — which really came into its own through PC games like “Quake” — was a complicated process at first. Like the first steps of a toddler, it gained support in small bursts. Early on, gaming over TCP/IP — the protocol by which computers communicate through the Internet — required a gamer to either know the IP address of a game server in advance or a third-party application such as GameSpy that would search for a list of available servers and launch the game for you. Even then, not all games supported TCP/IP, limiting them to a local-area network via ethernet — or worse, a direct connection through serial ports, requiring a null-modem cable. As online multi-player caught on, eventually gamers began to see server browsers built into their games. “Half-Life”, for example, completely negated the need of a third-party application by having this feature built-in. Another Games for Windows - LIVE feature that comes late to the party is the addition of online leader boards, which “Unreal Tournament” really brought to light as a way to determine who was “the best of the best” at “Unreal Tournament”. By keeping track of kills, deaths, and more, it gave rise to a huge community that took online gaming to serious heights. These features and more — voice chat, for example — are all relatively old hat to PC gamers. The question, then, is, what do we really need Games for Windows - LIVE for in the first place? Well, not all games are created equal….

It seems foolish that a game would come out for the PC and not support any or all of the features gamers take for granted these days, but not every developer has the resources to make that possible. Especially with independent developers, it might simply be a question of removing a feature rather than ship one that’s only partially functional. Even then, there’s no single, agreed upon standard that unites these games and gives gamers a consistent level of quality when switching from one game to another — something that Xbox Live has been able to do quite sufficiently. “Burnout Paradise”, for example, almost completely abstracts the concept of online multi-player by making your friends a mere menu selection away. Want to invite your buddy into your game for a quick race around town? Hit a button, select their name from a list, and that’s it. Assuming he or she accepts the invitation, moments later, you’re both in the same game, racing, chatting, etcetera. Of course, this has as much to do with how “Burnout Paradise” handles the Live network as it does the Live network itself, but it remains a consistent part of Live across all games that support it. Games for Windows - LIVE seeks to make this same experience as robust and easy-to-use for Windows XP and Vista gamers as it has been for their console counterparts, but the adoption rate has been utterly miserable. Currently, the only games that even support the LIVE service are “Shadowrun”, “Halo 2″, “Viva Piñata”, “Gears of War”, “Juiced 2: Hot Import Nights”, “Kane & Lynch: Dead Men”, “Universe at War: Earth Assault”, and — two games that are as yet unreleased — “The Club” and “Hour of Victory”. Enthusiasm for Games for Windows - LIVE remains exceedingly low. Meanwhile, Valve has been breaking new ground with Steam and finding ways of improving an already great system.

Steam began life as a content delivery and distribution network — a way of distributing patches and ensuring client software was up-to-date so that gamers had a consistent set of rules, maps, and features. PC games often require patch updates to fix bugs or add features — and in many cases, to patch the new bugs introduced by the new features. As a way to streamline this process, “Half-Life” developer, Valve, developed an application that would download and install the patch updates for gamers automatically — although it was not quite yet as robust as what Steam, the application, would eventually become. Being that online multi-player was greatly important to Valve and that there was a growing concern over unscrupulous gamers who were using hacked versions of the game to cheat, these patch updates gradually increased in frequency to combat the problem. Along with the occasional bug-fixing and performance improving patch updates were the addition of modifications like “Counter-Strike”, which also require occasional patch updates and remain extremely popular. Because of the need for increased functionality, Steam eventually outgrew its original purpose and has since become a way of selling and distributing games as well as becoming a social-networking application for a large group of PC gamers. It offers a clean interface that remains consistent across games launched through it and many other important features, such as: leader boards, voice chat, buddy lists, and events management. You can see who’s online, invite them to a game, and have fun. In almost every way, it is better than Games for Windows - LIVE. Naturally, game developers would want to take advantage of something as robust as what Steam and the Steam Community offer and Valve has decided to give it to them — for free.

Enter Steamworks: a set of publishing and development tools that give developers a way of easily incorporating Steam’s features into their games while giving publishers a way of selling and distributing their games online. It offers real-time sales tracking, an encryption system, auto-updating, regional control, multi-player matchmaking, voice chat, social networking, and even a way to include an “achievement” system which can add new life to a game by giving gamers a set of challenges and obstacles to overcome on top of what is already offered in-game — a very popular feature of Xbox Live and Games for Windows - LIVE. The best part is that these tools will be available to developers whether or not they elect to publish and distribute their games through the Steam network, thus ensuring that games will work seamlessly with the Steam application. It works with Windows 2000, XP, and Vista — although, currently, there are no plans to make it available to the Mac or Linux platforms.

While this is great news for PC gamers, there is no way this can be good news for Microsoft, who has failed to show any real devotion to the PC in regards to the Games for Windows - LIVE service. It continues to struggle along and still doesn’t include the extremely popular Live Arcade while Steam is available now and already supports a large number of games. However, it is worth remembering that Steam did not always enjoy its current level of gamer acclaim. It was harshly criticized when it first launched and even received “Computer Gaming World” magazine’s “Coaster of the Year” award in 2002. It still garners a large amount of hatred for forcing gamers to update their games and authenticate online — a process that can be painfully slow when the servers are busy — even if the gamer only wants to play a single-player game, but it has shown to be a valuable part of the PC gaming experience. As can been seen, Games for Windows - LIVE has a long way to go towards convincing PC gamers that it is worth anything, but given the same chance Steam had, the possibilities are endless. Even so, with the potential of Steamworks, it may already be too late.