The first computer game I ever played was Oregon Trail which is an experience shared by any child who went to grade school in the early 90's and especially one that grew up in Oregon, like myself. I am pretty sure it was state law to have at least two variations of The Oregon Train in every classroom. Like any good drug story, I soon became tired of shooting buffalo and fording rivers (if you know what I'm sayin') and I moved on to finding Carmen San Diego somewhere in the world and eventually blowing Nazis to smithereens in the treasure filled castle of Wolfenstein.
My youth was filled with PC essentials like Pitfall, Wolfenstein, Diablo, C&C Red Alert, and Half-Life (certainly there are more games and more important ones at that, but these are some the ones to which I had access). There was never a "gaming computer" in my house growing up. I would read minimum system requirements and purchase a game, hoping for the best. I owned a copy of Dungeon Siege for 3 years until my family upgraded to a computer that could run it.
While I liked PC games, I was not a technically savvy youngster. I didn't know what an IP address was which was hard on me, because in those days (old man talking here) there were few other ways to play online.
My first experience with online multiplayer was Diablo's Battlenet service. If I wanted to play a game online I needed to buy it as soon as it came out, because once the developers started patching it or people started adding sound packs from Unreal Tournament, there was no way I was going to be able to play it again. I would try to enter an online game, but be confronted with a list of files that I needed to download. So it was off to webcrawler.com or search.com (wow who would have thought that a website called "search.com" wouldn't have made it?) to find the long list of files. The searches would yield results of websites that would make any modern virus scan go into red alert and sound off as if nuclear weapons had just been launched directly from your browser.
Most patches required patches and in the tangled web of my early experiences with the internet, I would eventually just give up. The most prevalent example of this is Counter-Strike. Oh, how I wanted to play Counter-Strike. Everyone that played it had nothing but amazing things to say about it and it seemed like such a revolutionary step forward from the rocket parade of Unreal Tournament which I was playing at the time.
I bought Counter-Strike on three separate occasions over the course of a couple of years. Every time I saw a new box I would hope that it was the new version and I wouldn't have to find a million files from a million different seedy websites to get it up and running. In short, I could never get it working.
But in 2005 I was saved.
I was introduced to a little thing called Steam which did all of the dirty work for me. Steam was exactly what I needed to be a PC gamer at that time. It would automatically keep my games up to date and let me play without having to scour the internet for sounds like these.
From Counter-Strike and Day of Defeat I learned about Mods, but while Steam had all but cured the ills created by my tech ignorance, mods were still in the state that patches were back before Steam. Fear not! I am not writing this only to lay out a problem, but also to present a solution. Desura is the Steam for mods.
Created by Moddb, Desura was released last year and quite honestly, it's not receiving the coverage it deserves. Sure, Desura is a digital distribution client that looks and feels so much like Steam that one would swear is was a modder's tribute, but it serves a very different and distinct purpose.
I try to use as few digital distribution services as possible. I like having things organized and would spend a little more on Steam to have my games there rather than having some games from Direct2Drive, Impulse, Origin, Games for Windows Live, or any of the several other services. That being said, I do believe that some services serve a specific and important niche. I think GOG is great because they provide an important service that Steam does not (namely selling older games that work on modern machines).
Desura fits an important niche that Steam and no other service, for that matter, satisfies at this time. It is a way to organize and update your mods all in one place. Have you wanted to get more involved in the modding community (just like I wanted to get involved in online multiplayer) but just can't overcome the barrier of entry? Have you always wanted to play S.T.A.L.K.E.R. but S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Complete seems so much more playable? Desura is the answer you have been looking for. Don't take my word for it. Download Desura here and finally get GTA San Andreas multiplayer up and running or play Black Mesa Source; just kidding, Desura can do a lot, but let's not go crazy.
Desura the stepping stone that many gamers need to overcome the technical wall that has been holding them back from enjoying some truly amazing games. No need to thank me, your eternal praise is thanks enough.
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