For those who play casual games almost exclusively — or if you’re like me, you owe your allegiance to no game genre, bwahah! — err, yeah ... portals for downloading games have been around since well, the beginning of casual games. That particular portion of the industry develops, publishes and distributes for each other — company for company — as if it’s the normal course of business. A few years back, Valve’s Steam was the new kid on the block for digital downloads, quickly pushing out IGN’s Direct-to-Drive in visibility (but not popularity). And although both have their place in the scheme of things, opponents to DRM find them cumbersome; if a company doesn’t want DRM, there’s no choice; and for me, I’m not fond of the requirement to be online to play my single-player game. There are alternate choices out there: Good Old Games for some of the best games ever made; Stardock if you love epic space opera; and the new up-and-comer-everything portal, GamersGate.

More than once GamersInfo.net has received press copies of titles through GG, but

At the Game Developers Conference 2009 was my opportunity to get to know a bit about the company itself. Did they think of themselves as the “new” Steam? Or were they positioning the portal as something wholly different? Marketing and PR Manager Pernilla Eriksson spent a lovely breakfast answering my tired but rapid-fire questions as best she could. They simply don’t know everything yet; and some are still secret.

Their philosophy is simple: GamersGame is less of a digital download portal and more of a simple online retailer. The majority of the games available on the network can be had in the store. Though the company is based in the teeny country of Sweden (I think it’s teeny), it understands the scope and restrictions of North America. There is no intention of making GG a destination for exclusive downloads but simply a supplementary destination for those who cannot reach a store or for those who have the bandwidth and do not wish to brave the traffic of the city. (They do include a flier in every retail box to notify purchasers that the download option is available.)

GamersGate also includes patchers for each game in a single location and gives the player options on when they want to patch. This helps if you have a friend who isn’t yet updated — you’re not forced to update to play, and you can still play multiplayer with that friend. Woohoo!

The system also is client free. As someone who uses three separate systems on a regular basis, this makes me very happy. The smaller the footprint on my oldest system the better. DRM isn’t included on every game either — that is the prerogative of the publisher. When you start to look at the number of vendors who choose not to use DRM, it can be quite startling.

Currently, GG is targeting North America and all English-speaking countries except Australia. (Sorry, guys!) Canada has had a notoriously difficult time with software distribution, so the more digital distributors that work to bring games to them the better.

Community is the final piece to any portal, and GamersGate understands this. Its community is in its infancy, but it’s rather nice that it includes so many from Europe. A significant portion of the titles are released in Europe first, which allows for basic reviews before they hit the United States. By including a mentoring system, community members can earn Blue Coins, which can be converted to make purchases on any title they wish. If kept under control, it will be a nice system to encourage users to engage one another.

Reader scores also are a big part of the community, but unless the game has been purchased from the portal, you’ll find yourself unable to score it. Unfortunate if you’ve played it in the past but good in that it keeps members from gaming the system and bringing down/raising the score of a title. There are plans to segment the community to give further weight to the scores, but whether that is by use of the site or self-definition (I’m a mom who plays RPGs versus I’m a bachelor who plays FPSs) has not yet been decided.

With download speeds (listed for each game) that allow for 1MB/sec, some really unique titles from Europe, no DRM, the ability to patch when you want, and those funky blue coins, GamersGate is quite the up-and-comer in the portal wars for digital download dominance.