Ever since we spoke last month with CD Projekt's Tom Ohle about the company's new digital delivery system for recent-retro PC games, we've been looking forward to getting our hands on some Good Old Games. GOG.com, at present, is in the early stages of beta testing, looking to fully launch in September. GameCyte has had a chance to look at what the site offers, and how it will bring our favorites back to life. Join us for our impressions of nostalgic shopping binges to come, after the jump.
It's important to note that GOG is not complete at this point, and our impressions are based on a website that is not even equipped yet to take your money. That being said, if GOG can deliver on the features that it seems ready to offer, your shopping experience will be painless and simple. GOG.com does not direct you to a proprietary client, as you might find with Steam or Impulse; the store is entirely browser-based, like Greenhouse. That isn't stopping GOG from trying to provide a multi-featured experience with lots of community content, however: As early in the process as signing up for your account, you'll be treated to GOG's dynamic site design and upbeat tone. Filling out each field will pop up a helpful flag, pointing out on-the-fly whether your username is available, whether you've missed a necessary detail, etc. Also, when it's time to fill out your community detail, there's roughly 20 different choices for your gender, including selections like "Guy," "Dude," "Grrl," "Chix0r," "Pirate," or "Ninja." Ethno-societal role confusion aside, it's an amusing gesture that provides an encouraging hint of what GOG.com is about.
Once inside, you'll find a slick interface waiting to take your order from a catalogue of classics, including Fallout, MDK, Descent and Freespace, and a handful of other yesteryear titles from Interplay and Codemasters. GOG is obviously hoping to add more publishers as time goes on, but for now, the Interplay lineup is filling out nicely. Well, mostly nicely; they also have Earthworm Jim 3D for some reason. Still, whatever your diversion of choice may be, GOG provides the usual web-store options to find it, allowing you to browse by title, genre, publisher, or developer. It also allows you to browse by average user-submitted rating, or by price. The latter option, mind you, only has two choices: $5.99 and $9.99.
This, to me, is really the stunning thing about GOG -- they are taking an extremely optimistic and friendly approach to game sales. Though GOG doesn't yet have any means of payment, and the "shopping cart" feature has yet to be implemented, we were allowed to download a game or two in order to evaluate the game acquisition process. It's about as simple and nonrestrictive as I've seen from a digital download service; once you've bought a title, it is added to your account permanently, and a single click lets you download a standalone installer for the game. That's it -- no authentication, no limited installs, no machine-specific tracking or locking of content. One of GOG's core philosophies is a total absence of game-ruining DRM, and they appear to mean it. Once a game is in your account, you can download it as many times as you like, from as many machines as you like.
Needless to say, there's room to abuse this permissive system, which is really quite a shame, because for an ethical and legitimate user, this mantra of "It's your content, do what you want with it" is really the only way to go. Lost your connection halfway through the file? No problem -- download it again. Lost the game in a hard drive failure? No problem -- download it again. Beat the game and want to clear off your hard drive to make room for other games, but you might want to play it again in a few months? Hey, guess what -- you can download it again. I was especially grateful for this feature when I downloaded a game onto an older computer that wasn't quite up to the task. Twenty minutes later, I'd signed on to GOG from a better PC, re-downloaded the title, and I was up and running without penalty or hassle. It's clean, easy experiences like these that make you realize just how ridiculous the DRM schemes are for games like Mass Effect.
Equally surprising is the level of support and extra content GOG is proposing to offer at $6-$10 a pop. Once you have a game or two to your name, returning to the "My Account" section will present you with a wealth of options relating to your purchases. Beyond the aforementioned ability to re-download the game at your leisure, you'll also find that you now have access to all of the game's related extras, which vary from basics like the game manual to bonuses like wallpaper, soundtracks, and avatars. GOG also hopes to ultimately provide game guides and user-created mods, but what's there so far isn't bad at all.
In addition, your game selection also directs you to their related sections of the GOG forums, or to technical support articles, should you need them. It's especially encouraging that GOG's support section contains an excellent feature which provides a touch of personal attention to any problems you may have: also contained within the "My Account" area is a tab entitled "My E-mails." While having some difficulty with a downloaded game, I visited the support articles, and found it to contain the usual "frequent problems" tips that one might expect from any tech support website. Sadly, my specific problem wasn't listed, so I had occasion to fire off a message to the GOG support team. The website is well-equipped to answer your questions, going so far as to encourage users to attach screenshots of their problems, and a DxDiag report. Then, once your question is submitted, the email will appear in the "My E-mails" tab, as a reminder that you've made your request, and once it's been answered, the tab will be flagged when you next visit the site, to show that your answer is waiting for you (it will, of course, also be sent to your email address).
Good Old Games still has some work to do before they're ready. A few translation errors here and there are a reminder of the company's European origins, compatibility is likely to be an ongoing battle, and obviously GOG will eventually want some way to receive your money. Still, what's already there is incredibly promising. As fond as I am of Steam and GameTap, they don't even come close to matching GOG for ease of use, speed, and accessibility of one's content. Assuming everyone doesn't act like a jerk and abuse this very generous system, I would like to see more game sales take this approach.
Don't act like jerks, everyone.
Leave a Reply