We’re all avid gamers here at 3magine. When we’re not building beautiful interfaces or coding complex systems, we’re playing games. Diablo 3 and StarCraft 2 are staples here at the office, but the one game that I’ve forever fallen in love with and play almost on a daily basis is Counter Strike. I’ve been playing it since version 1.5 (it has been 10 years since the release of Counter Strike 1.5) and I can’t say that I’ve ever become bored of the game. For those of you unaware of the history of Counter Strike, it was originally a Half-Life modification released in 1999. In 2000 the original developers partnered with Valve, and the rest is history.
This brings us to Steam, a digital distribution system and multiplayer communication platform developed by Valve which houses Counter Strike along with some 1500+ other titles.
To me, Steam has always been about statistics and the multiplayer aspect of games, or should I say, I wish Steam was more focused on statistics and the multiplayer aspect of games.
Let’s leave the desktop app out of this as I’d like to bring focus to the Steam iPhone app, specifically the lack of game and multiplayer centric features. I remember back in the day, being able to go to a Counter Strike server website (a server I’ve often played at) and immediately be able to look up some very interesting statistics; how many hours I’ve played the past week, the different types of games I’ve played, be it a regular game or a gun game death match. Seeing my rankings, my kill statistics, my per weapon kill statistics, and much, much more. This functionality does not exist in Steam, desktop or mobile.
When the Steam App came out on the iPhone, I was quite excited. I thought that perhaps Valve added some mobile statistical information over their desktop app (which I think on its own needs a significant overhaul in both usability and what it brings to its users). I thought I would finally be able to browse my rankings across the different servers I play at, see how many times I’ve knifed the last round I played, or how many headshots I got in the last game. Well, to keep it short, I was quite disappointed. Not only was none of that available, but to actually get to any statistics on a game I play is next to impossible. There does not exist a dedicated “Games” section… and there aren’t any interesting stats for any games I play available on the app, at all! Sure I can chat with friends… and I can purchase a desktop game… on my iPhone… but I can’t casually browse what interests me most… game statistics. Why would I want to buy a game on my iPhone, to play on my desktop? I’d rather do that on my desktop, where I can immediately download the game after the purchase. When I’m on the iPhone, where I can’t play games, I want to be entertained. What will entertain me about games when I can’t play them? Checking out stats on the games I play. I want to see what’s been happening on the servers I play. I want to check out how my kill to death ratio has been improving over the last few weeks. I want to see how my accuracy is doing with the shotty. Unfortunately I can’t.
If Steam can’t bring us all of these features, we can at least do a hypothetical redesign to bring them to Steam. This kind of functionality will probably never see the light of day, but the least we can do is hope.
Today I’ll be introducing the general art direction of the app, as well as a streamlined navigation and the part that excites me the most… an introduction to games! And so we begin our journey of our pretend Steam iPhone app redesign, which we will be bringing to you over the next few months. This is the first post of many in the Steam redesign series.
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We’ll start off with the login screen. If you are using this app for the first time, you have to log in. We’re keeping with Steam’s branding and the use of the app’s official colours of predominantly grey with accents of blue.
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The guts of the Steam iPhone app: We would like to introduce the “Games” section. You’ll also notice a new, very streamlined navigation, listing only “Profile”, “Games” and “Friends”. No more buying games, viewing catalogues, wishlists or news feeds. Steam is about games, and the people you play them with.
The “Games” overview screen gives you a quick and easy access to all the games you play. The blue “activity” indicator gives you a quick visual indication that there is new activity in a particular game. This could be a new achievement, a new comment, or a new forum post. We’re envisioning additional social elements to engage you when you can’t actually play the game (more on that in later parts of the series).
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Your feedback is greatly appreciated, especially if you’d like to suggest how you would improve the current Steam iPhone app. Leave a post in the comments below. How would you change the Steam iPhone app?