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Catan on Live, PopCap on Steam
Two interesting bits of news on the casual gaming front today. GI.biz reports that PopCap games has signed a deal with Valve to have their games offered on Steam. The casual Xbox Live Arcade will also be getting some new visitors, though of a much more hard-core variety. Classic German boardgame Settlers of Catan will headline a trio of titles for Microsoft's downloadable games service, Gamespot reports. From that article: "Outpost Kaloki X is about to have some genre company on Xbox Live Arcade, as all three titles will call on strategic thinking from the players. The announced games include the civilization-building Settlers of Catan, the tile-based city-building game Carcassonne, and the Arabian-themed stock-market game Alhambra set to be available through the Xbox."
...now we get to hear "WOOD FOR SHEEP!!" live over the network.
Steam is associated with shooters and action games right now, but there's no reason why it has to stay that way. Its distribution system would be ideal for Popcap, because their games are small enough to download fairly quickly on dialup, and all of the authorizations are stored on the server side. Go over to a friend's place (or work) and download the Steam client, then download the games you've already purchased licenses for. Popcap doesn't have to worry about mailing media out, or people passing installer discs around to their friends, which saves on expenses.
The two services' pricing structures are already rather close. There are several expansions, episodes and mods available for less than a twenty, which is the same general range that Popcap games fall into. Near-instant gratification for a fairly low price is a very good way to separate people from their money.
You want to play modern board games online? Go to BrettSpielWelt. Free, online playing of over a hundred boardgames. Not only Settlers of Catan and Carcassonne, but also Caylus, Citadels, Medina, Power Grid, Princes of Florence, Puerto Rico, Ra, San Juan, and many, many, many more. The language to use is English at most of the site. Warning: there are many very strong players there, so prepare for a humiliating defeat at your favorite game.
If you want to play it without having to shell out for a console, there is a open source java version here.
Best way to play it though is of course around a table with some good friends.
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
The good news part 1: In addition to Settlers of Catan, you can play 62 other games.
The good news part 2: There is a web client so that you can play on virtually any platform.
The good news part 3: There are platform specific clients for Windows, Mac, and Linux so that you can have a better UI than in the web client.
The good news part 4: It's all free.