Tap into GameTap

October 17 was the first birthday of GameTap, Turner Broadcasting System’s subscription video game service. Just last week, I signed up for the service, and decided to write an evaluation of the service after a year of existence. Despite a few problems, I have to say I’m enjoying it.

GameTap offers about 700 older games, including games for Windows, DOS, and Sega consoles. I was impressed to see relatively recent games like Far Cry on the list, and my particular gaming tastes were excited by more obscure adventure games like The Last Express. Call me a Philistine, though, because I’m unimpressed by the countless ancient arcade and Atari 2600 games. Maybe Burger Time was fun once, but those days are happily long gone. Additionally, there are a lot of real dogs in the mix; Mall Tycoon left me depressed, and I’m not even going to get near Extreme Paintbrawl 4.

From the technical side, the service isn’t bad. The games download and run more or less smoothly, although the oversized front end has crashed on me repeatedly. If your bandwidth limits can handle the download of Game X’s gigabytes of content, you don’t have to worry about installation or setup; the game just runs. You do have to go through GameTap to run it, though. There’s no way to play games without wading through the noisy and colorful GameTap “experience.”

Speaking of noise, I am not thirteen years old. However, GameTap thinks I am. Packaged with the games is the mostly-useless and usually juvenile GameTap TV. I don’t know who these prepubescent bands are, or care that they play video games, but they’re enthusiastic about it all the same. Most of the content feels like advertisements for the service I’m already paying for. How can I take a show seriously when it speaks glowingly of Prince of Persia 3D? The only shows I’ve seen worth watching are old Sam & Max cartoons, the anime Mezzo, and maybe the original animation Computer Lab.

The fact that it’s targeted at youngsters, though, means that GameTap is perfect for one thing: families. In addition to basics, like auto-censoring of swear words in chat, the service also has an extensive content rating system and secondary accounts (with separate logon information) that can be restricted to certain age categories. Add to that an extensive catalog of educational and family games, and you’ve got a perfect service for a group of youngsters who aren’t ready for the big-kid games.

The most promising thing about GameTap is its newly released “GameTap Originals” label. For now, “Originals” seems to mean “games other people cancelled,” but when it means I get a really promising series of new Sam & Max games and animations, as well as the relaunch of Uru Live in December, I can’t really complain. I’m really looking forward to Uru Live.

GameTap is available for a flat monthly fee of $9.95, with discounts if multiple months are purchased at once. Until October 22, GameTap is offering a special yearly rate of $60 ($4.95 a month). Once you pay the subscription fee (in whatever form), you can play any of the games at no additional cost, and you can create several secondary accounts. Up to two accounts under the same subscription can play at once. If you end your subscription, you lose access to all of the games, and there are reports of AOL-style difficulties when users have tried to cancel.

Despite all the problems, I’m going to stay subscribed after my free trial period. I’d recommend signing up for a trial and seeing for yourself if it’s worth it. Personally, though, 5-10 new (old) games a week with a back catalog of hundreds is worth $60 to me. That’s the price of a next-generation console game, and it’s worth it despite the problems.