I'm sure a lot of people wished that it wasn't released to theaters at all.
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The Phantom "Trash Games" Crowding Digital Marketplaces
- Thread starter Dusk Golem
- Start date
Not everyone expects or wants the world to be organized around their own point of view. There's a bajillion games on Steam I would never touch with a ten-foot pole. I also recognize that it is good for the medium as a whole that the barrier to entry for the industry has been lowered, promoting innovation and diversity.
It sounds like you want a personal shopper who will pick out items that match your specific tastes. I am shocked that Steam is not providing this for you.
I like the unfiltered views on Steam, I browse new games almost daily with an open mind to find gems I did not know about and I find plenty, that being said there IS a lot of trash and shovelware games being published on Steam which is not just subjective, just browse all the released games from the past couple of days and you will find plenty. Is it a problem? For me personally no but some games that seems like half-finished experiments or student projects I do wonder why they did bother to put them up there.
I'm sorry, but I'm a professional skeptic. Please provide evidence for the bolded claim, because it strikes me as so much unsubstantiated "appeal to common folks" fallacy. If I'm shopping for my favorite high-fiber cereal for breakfast, what do I care if it's surrounded by three dozen types of sugary marshmallow pap?
It is to them. You could say the same thing about 50 Shades of Grey, Game of Thrones, or the entire library of Troma films. I think all of the above are rubbish, but I wouldn't even think of arguing they should be removed from any outlets or storefronts just because I don't find them of value.
Hey, I liked Thor 2 (see, ZeroDotFlow ?). It might be the weakest of the Thor movies, but it wasn't an insultingly stupid waste of time like Batman v. Superman was...
...but again, I wouldn't even think of arguing that BvS should be removed from any outlets or storefronts just because I didn't like it.
Yep and also shovelware companies promote their games with free copies and fake reviews. Not every mediocre game is bad and most of them have their audience but Digital stores are really chaotic nowadays.
Maybe I am misunderstanding your post, but the Upcoming tab has filters to make it so it would show, for example, only Games so you won't see DLC listed among them. Furthermore you can filter it to show specific genres, such as strategy
http://store.steampowered.com/search/?tags=9&category1=998&os=win&filter=comingsoon
Now if you mean to say that there should be an extra filter option so it'll not show games tagged with genres that one has no interest in, OK, that'd be fine, and Valve could just add additional filter options for the user's convenience, unless that's already in place.
The Upcoming tab itself is primarily to show any title that went through approval from Steam/Valve and is set for release over the coming days/weeks/months, it simply does 'exactly what it says on the tin'.
I don't want it taken off, mainly because every month I make a thread that highlights some of an upcoming month's releases, plus I could find any indie games that would interest me and I could wishlist it in advance.
Just the other day I was scrolling through Steam's Upcoming tab and came upon at least 10 titles that I found interesting enough to share
http://store.steampowered.com/app/762190/Epic_Loon/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/833510/Time_Skip/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/596240/Apocryph_an_oldschool_shooter/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/589670/Double_Kick_Heroes/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/501790/Unforeseen_Incidents/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/696530/Lake_Ridden/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/799810/Returner_77/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/764050/Maelstrom/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/667790/Downbreak/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/606890/Masters_of_Anima/
Excellent thread, Dusk Golem.
You could never rely on that, Steam has always had some bad games. The difference is that now if you buy a bad game you can refund it with zero hassle.
Well said.
Would you mind opening Steam and posting some of that trash that you see invading it? I question whether the games are actually trash or they simply don't interest you.
You could never rely on that, Steam has always had some bad games. The difference is that now if you buy a bad game you can refund it with zero hassle.
Well said.
Would you mind opening Steam and posting some of that trash that you see invading it? I question whether the games are actually trash or they simply don't interest you.
Okay,
1) Providing some degree of evidence for these claims would be good. The OP did a fantastic job at providing data to back-up their point, so the least that can be done is people at least reference an article when making actual claims. (Note: If you inserted "feels like" in those sentences above then it'd be fine, since you would only be arguing your feelings rather than some actual fact).
2) Valve have taken steps to remove games (and indeed whole publishers) from Steam when free copies/fake reviews have come to light. This is also something that affects other online stores - for example here's something from 2012 about the author RJ Ellory posting fake reviews of his books over a 10 year timespan - so the picking-and-choosing to attack Steam and not online retailers generally is a bit disingenuous.
Agree with you, DG.
I think what people are really looking for are games that have 'success'. Because the market doesn't lie. Neither do trusted voices in the industry. If these people haven't played the game, then its prob not worth playing. Funny isn't it? Nobody wants to be playing these games that have never been heard of before. What is this trash?
People just want Fortnite, Mario, Zelda, Kirby, Donkey Kong, Metroid all over the front page of every store, recognizable games, because these are successful games, and the market wouldn't lie. If the market doesn't lie, games that no one plays must therefore not be any good and not worth playing. Hidden gems? More like second tier alternatives amirite?
How can you blame anyone for thinking this way, when its the very same method enforced by all the popular online game stores like Steam and PSN driving the most 'popular' games to the top of New and Trending or Top Selling? People are subconsciously exposed to this system of picking games to play.
I think what people are really looking for are games that have 'success'. Because the market doesn't lie. Neither do trusted voices in the industry. If these people haven't played the game, then its prob not worth playing. Funny isn't it? Nobody wants to be playing these games that have never been heard of before. What is this trash?
People just want Fortnite, Mario, Zelda, Kirby, Donkey Kong, Metroid all over the front page of every store, recognizable games, because these are successful games, and the market wouldn't lie. If the market doesn't lie, games that no one plays must therefore not be any good and not worth playing. Hidden gems? More like second tier alternatives amirite?
How can you blame anyone for thinking this way, when its the very same method enforced by all the popular online game stores like Steam and PSN driving the most 'popular' games to the top of New and Trending or Top Selling? People are subconsciously exposed to this system of picking games to play.
Sorry to be honest i dont even wanna bother looking and sourcing everything right now. To be completely honest ive also only read a bit more than half of the post (it's so long and doesn't get to the point sorry OP) but I totally appreciate the topic. As you said i personally think that the situation is bad yes. I look daily at New Steam releases and most of them look like shit. The Switch Eshop Store also needs a better interface. It's horrendous and takes the fun out when you see the same 0815 copied game on plattforms with many of them being promoted by shitheads that get paid by them.
It feels saturated with copy pasted games
Also yeah Steam removed SOME of these games but does not really care for months
Edit: i will read the rest later though! Just took to long at that moment
User Warned - Drive by Generalizations against a member
Almost everyone else's trash is your treasurw for the obvious reason that you are a collector. Like, 7500 games? No wonder you want all that trash on Steam - it's collectibles to you.
I literally either own or have wishlisted over half of the Steam library, and have seen almost every single store page on Steam. I have done plenty of browsing. Don't you even try to start the, "you don't know anything," card.
I've also played a lot, but have a lot more to play.
Anyways, if we're talking Steam and not other places specifically (such as GOG or eShop or PSN or Xbox Marketplace, or the dead marketplace of Desura even), Steam only displays games which reach a certain amount of popularity on their front page. To find the garbage you need to dig deeper. And just because a game isn't your kind of game and you've never heard of it doesn't mean it's shovelware or something of the sort.
Then you have other people, that is looking for quality instead of literaly just quantity, and now all that trash is just in the way.
The Atari crash happened because there were only shit games available.
Right now its the exact opposite. There are far too many good games available that might hurt the visibility of other good indie-games.
Isn't this what wishlist functions are for? I just check the store every couple of weeks, look at the new releases and sling anything that catches my eye in my wishlist folder for later reference. Instant 'curated' list tailored to me. I also can't remember the last time I actually went onto the eshop looking to browse and then buy blind, I either want something specific that's easy to find, or if something looks cool I'll go and read up on it elsewhere, or ask you lot.
At no point have I been scrolling through hundreds of games, that seems like a waste of time to me. I don't go into a book or dvd shop and feel like I need to exhaustively browse all the racks and shelves of thousands of titles each time either, I'll usually have a good idea of what I want (or what I might want) and hone my search accordingly.
I agree with the OP's conclusion that some people just want to see the high-profile AAA releases and a handful of the most popular recommended indies (Celeste, Shovel Knight, Darkest Dungeon etc) so they feel like they are 'on top' of the release list and have played everything worth playing. It's easier to do that if you can call everything else rubbish. Personally the games I don't add to my wishlist are the latest AAA open-world shooters that get huge marketing pushes on any games media site, but I don't start suggesting that they be blocked from taking up screen space I might glance at because they aren't to my personal taste.
At no point have I been scrolling through hundreds of games, that seems like a waste of time to me. I don't go into a book or dvd shop and feel like I need to exhaustively browse all the racks and shelves of thousands of titles each time either, I'll usually have a good idea of what I want (or what I might want) and hone my search accordingly.
I agree with the OP's conclusion that some people just want to see the high-profile AAA releases and a handful of the most popular recommended indies (Celeste, Shovel Knight, Darkest Dungeon etc) so they feel like they are 'on top' of the release list and have played everything worth playing. It's easier to do that if you can call everything else rubbish. Personally the games I don't add to my wishlist are the latest AAA open-world shooters that get huge marketing pushes on any games media site, but I don't start suggesting that they be blocked from taking up screen space I might glance at because they aren't to my personal taste.
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I never did it in a physical store, either. Who the hell goes into a store and picks up a game at random because "Gamestop sells it so it can't be bad"?
It's especially strange to see this reasoning coming from here, of all places. If you read a forum that's all about gaming discussions and recommendations, why would you need a store shelf (real o virtual) to discover new games?
This is just plain disingenuous and ignores the effort and statistical analysis of the OP.
You're right OP, people clamoring for curation are just two steps removed from being AAA tools and are ready to scream blue murder to make sure only high-profile indie games and AAA games exists in their fantasy world.
And I know that there is the argument that indie devs wants curation too : I don't care. They're not the center of the world, they don't get to decide who gets to publish games or not. Video games are opening to the whole world, if you have to work much more in order to make your game visible, then it's your job to do so. Don't try to wall off the rest of the world (aka everything outside of America) just to make sure your game gets some visibility.
And I know that there is the argument that indie devs wants curation too : I don't care. They're not the center of the world, they don't get to decide who gets to publish games or not. Video games are opening to the whole world, if you have to work much more in order to make your game visible, then it's your job to do so. Don't try to wall off the rest of the world (aka everything outside of America) just to make sure your game gets some visibility.
OP
OP
Just waking up, hope to respond to more in this thread a bit later today.
I do collect games, but I show that with earnest desire for communication and understanding. My collection is not all I am (even simply from the angle of a gamer and not other faucets of life), I have a very deep rooted passion for finding especially good games and games that really speak to me. I also have as many games as I do on Steam via bundles, when you collect bundles from various sites for several years they do start to accumulate over time, and you can get something like 100 games in a month for less than the cost of a $60 game. This said, I do go out of my way to purchase games in genres I am especially an enthusiast for, most notably horror games.
This said, I don't collect them to just own them. While no doubt I'll never be able to play all of them, I play a lot more than I think most people do. For example, no joke, I right now could spend some time and come up with a list of my top 500 horror games. It'd take a while to arrange them, but I've played over 500 horror games at this point. Currently I've played almost 3/4ths of every horror game that's ever released before the year 2005 for example, I went out of my way several years ago to buy the library of horror and horror themed games from all generations, and I'm getting close to completing all of them. Still a pretty sizable chunk to go through though. I am excluding the Japanese Sound Novels from this list as they are text based and I can't read Japanese, though I hope someday some get an English translation.
And I'd argue my greater pallets of games has actually lead me to become a better critic. Think of a horror game, name it to me, I'll tell you if I've played it, and if I have I can give you an in-depth impression of what I thought of the game. I remember most games I play, and whether I like them, dislike them, love them, or hate them, I try to break down what I thought of a game and its elements, both personally and how I believe others opinions may differ from my own based on my own biases.
I say all of this because I think earnesty has a place in discussion. The internet often tries to pick apart earnesty, it can be viewed as a form of weakness and make you seem biased as you're arguing in this case, but no one on this planet is unbiased. I think to deepen understanding and communication what helps is to try and understand others rather than try to pick apart others, but that's just how I've chosen to live my life. And I can't ask for others earnesty if I don't give it to others first.
I do collect games, but I show that with earnest desire for communication and understanding. My collection is not all I am (even simply from the angle of a gamer and not other faucets of life), I have a very deep rooted passion for finding especially good games and games that really speak to me. I also have as many games as I do on Steam via bundles, when you collect bundles from various sites for several years they do start to accumulate over time, and you can get something like 100 games in a month for less than the cost of a $60 game. This said, I do go out of my way to purchase games in genres I am especially an enthusiast for, most notably horror games.
This said, I don't collect them to just own them. While no doubt I'll never be able to play all of them, I play a lot more than I think most people do. For example, no joke, I right now could spend some time and come up with a list of my top 500 horror games. It'd take a while to arrange them, but I've played over 500 horror games at this point. Currently I've played almost 3/4ths of every horror game that's ever released before the year 2005 for example, I went out of my way several years ago to buy the library of horror and horror themed games from all generations, and I'm getting close to completing all of them. Still a pretty sizable chunk to go through though. I am excluding the Japanese Sound Novels from this list as they are text based and I can't read Japanese, though I hope someday some get an English translation.
And I'd argue my greater pallets of games has actually lead me to become a better critic. Think of a horror game, name it to me, I'll tell you if I've played it, and if I have I can give you an in-depth impression of what I thought of the game. I remember most games I play, and whether I like them, dislike them, love them, or hate them, I try to break down what I thought of a game and its elements, both personally and how I believe others opinions may differ from my own based on my own biases.
I say all of this because I think earnesty has a place in discussion. The internet often tries to pick apart earnesty, it can be viewed as a form of weakness and make you seem biased as you're arguing in this case, but no one on this planet is unbiased. I think to deepen understanding and communication what helps is to try and understand others rather than try to pick apart others, but that's just how I've chosen to live my life. And I can't ask for others earnesty if I don't give it to others first.
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Indies asking for curation are either asking for a market for themselves... or are asking to be out of the system.
People on GAF and ERA wanted "visual novel trash" to be removed from Steam....
Also if you read that post you can see that actually it can be that 7500 are good/okay. Dusk Golem added Alexandros post in the OP:
So if Steam has around 20k games, half of them have a mostly positive rating, that means around 10k have good ratings/are considered good by the people who played them.
I also dont get why people point out Dusk_Golems Steam library. If you know his posts from GAF or his posts here on Era he is a far more valuable member who actually writes what he liked in a game or not. His horror game threads are great.
His Subnautica impressions are far more valuable then if I write "I liked that game"...
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I always say:
"Should Valve give Indies preferential treatment?"
"No. Unless it's me".
What about groups on Steam like Yolo Army that bribe Steam users into getting games onto the store?
What about games that are simple assest flips from the Unity store?
What about Steam devs that get their friends to find their games positive reviews to skew results?
Yes, none of these are the main reason that Steam is clogged, but they so contribute.
I'd say the biggest problem is that the systems Valve has implemented to find games is inadequate. The queue is about as accurate as Amazon's ads right after I buy an HDD. The only strategy games I own are Stellaris and Civ 6, but my queue got filled with nothing but strategy games I didn't care about for a month.
Ultimately that requires time to improve, but it doesn't seem to be getting better.
Valve's I'm kind of a shitty situation where even if they remove what should be removed, their store will still be crowded.
If they curate than they screw people over. If they don't then games get buried.
The people suffering the most under this are devs who's games don't get exposed.
What about games that are simple assest flips from the Unity store?
What about Steam devs that get their friends to find their games positive reviews to skew results?
Yes, none of these are the main reason that Steam is clogged, but they so contribute.
I'd say the biggest problem is that the systems Valve has implemented to find games is inadequate. The queue is about as accurate as Amazon's ads right after I buy an HDD. The only strategy games I own are Stellaris and Civ 6, but my queue got filled with nothing but strategy games I didn't care about for a month.
Ultimately that requires time to improve, but it doesn't seem to be getting better.
Valve's I'm kind of a shitty situation where even if they remove what should be removed, their store will still be crowded.
If they curate than they screw people over. If they don't then games get buried.
The people suffering the most under this are devs who's games don't get exposed.
They dont get exposed if they dont pay for marketing unless they are extremely lucky and get the word of mouth.
Like why should I buy some Puzzle Plattformers (even though its good) that I never heard of, when my backlog is big enough already and I have other puzzle plattformers in my backlog that I know are good, because they invested in Marketing?
It's foolish to think these games dont get exposed because of trash games. The problem is that every month, we get quality releases from indies... and AAA... and AA publishers. It's pretty simple. If you want exposure now, you need to be better. Being a pixely neat retro game won't cut it anymore.
Being a neat game wont cut it anymore. Indies got the market saturated in multiple ways:
The production value ramped up.
The price decreased.
As said in other previous posts, Steam has done several things to prevent the first case, Steam has looked after the exploits and eliminated games that went that way (as well as nowadays you dont need to bribe users to get into the store as Greenlight is dead).
The problem of an asset flip is not them being asset flip but rather there not being anything really interesting and valuable in the game, having a low quality. The number of asset flips has substancially decreased since Steam changed its policy to be an upfront amount of money that is regained after the game sells a certain number of copies and clamped down on the lucrative card exploit (where the game was just a venue to get money from cards). Lots of RPGMaker games are technically asset flips but they can be great and interesting games.
The third one is something that will happen eerywhere. Still in the case of a free key / reviewer key, the review is tagged with that, so you should be able to see it. Otherwise, it is not that uncommon everywhere and in teh end people that do not like the game will drown those fake reviews.
Great thread dusk.
I would also like to say that it is not only about the amount of really worthy indie titles having exponentialy increased due to better and simpler tools together with better access to the market (both pc AND consoles), but also an issue of big developers noticing that the long term sales of catalogue games in steam is good and porting them to steam / adding them there, creating a huge catalogue of previous generation classics that wouldnt be deleted as pcs have more or less "infinite" backwards compatibility
Not every company or individual can afford that though. Even if they can they're still at the whims of the algorithm unless you go looking for the game.
There's plenty of games that I see marketing for and own that I never see talked about. Games that are totally unique from any other game I've seen.
I didn't say that's the reason, I said it's part of it. I agree the main cause is oversaturation.
You're right in suggesting that I don't have hard numbers to back them up and frankly speaking I'm too lazy to search for them (props to Dusk Golem for a well-researched OP). That being said, my claim only speaks for myself: after seeing so many unappealing games in Steam's recommendations, I've stopped using the functionality altogether. With so few resources to spend I only feel comfortable relying on good word of mouth, not Steam's own curation. I think it's likely that others feel the same way.
Again, I'm not arguing for removing games from Steam unless they're blatant rip-offs that wouldn't pass a copyright test or highly offensive in nature (i.e., games that are likely infringing on others' rights or games that don't deserve a platform). I just think Steam has done a poor job matching customer to product. That may be why there's such a common perception of the majority of Steam games being utter trash.
Then I would advise those not to develop on PC though. Marketing IS so important. You can see that for AAA budgets half of the budget is used for marketing.
I cant expect to develop a new puzzle plattformer, put it on a storefront that already has 100 GOOD puzzle plattformers and just do 20 twitter posts and call that marketing. Still no one knows about my game besides those 100 followers.
It must be PAX/Gamescom/Twitter/Instagram etc. for people to notice you and if you cant afford that, then maybe really dont release a game on PC.
It is not only that but in the PC field, influencers (god i hate that word) such as youtubers and twitch players have a great impact. Being in good relationship with some of them that may play similar games and giving them free early copies to showcase the game is a good way of generating some level of hype in some of those smaller groups. Also pc specific magazines tend to be given less love by big publishers than most, so it is easier to ge some reporting from some of them such as pc gamer and rps.
I know from personal experience that a lot of fans of Western RPGs consider Japanese RPGs trash. And even that there fans of Western games who consider Japanese games in general bad.
For instance, people on the Escapist, at least the years ago I went before abandoning the site, were very Western centric in their tastes. I don't know if that's changed. But for instance, most people there didn't like most Japanese games.
It was a bit of a "culture shock" of sorts, if you can call it that. Because for me, gaming has always been synonymous with Nintendo, SEGA, Sony, Namco, Square, Atlus, Nippon Ichi, Sunsoft, SNK, and ect.
There's also several companies and organizations that I think hold those same biases. Just as I'm biased in favor of Japanese games, and outside of Japanese games, have very "Japanese tastes", for games like Undertale, or Korean games.
A lot of Japanese games simply weren't accepted on Steam before Recettear helped open the floodgates. And Cave shooters like Mushihimesama and DoDonPachi probably weren't accepted on GoG because they were seen as very Japanese, and very niche.
Basically "not good enough" for the platform.
I always supported Greenlight from the beginning. Because even though I knew it would let a lot of bad games selling only on meme references or the like get in. It was also what was taking down the barrier from Japanese games, and especially niche Japanese games and niche indie games of all varieties from getting on Steam. I would rather there be bad games on Steam, then me not be able to buy the games I would like.
For instance, people on the Escapist, at least the years ago I went before abandoning the site, were very Western centric in their tastes. I don't know if that's changed. But for instance, most people there didn't like most Japanese games.
It was a bit of a "culture shock" of sorts, if you can call it that. Because for me, gaming has always been synonymous with Nintendo, SEGA, Sony, Namco, Square, Atlus, Nippon Ichi, Sunsoft, SNK, and ect.
There's also several companies and organizations that I think hold those same biases. Just as I'm biased in favor of Japanese games, and outside of Japanese games, have very "Japanese tastes", for games like Undertale, or Korean games.
A lot of Japanese games simply weren't accepted on Steam before Recettear helped open the floodgates. And Cave shooters like Mushihimesama and DoDonPachi probably weren't accepted on GoG because they were seen as very Japanese, and very niche.
Basically "not good enough" for the platform.
I always supported Greenlight from the beginning. Because even though I knew it would let a lot of bad games selling only on meme references or the like get in. It was also what was taking down the barrier from Japanese games, and especially niche Japanese games and niche indie games of all varieties from getting on Steam. I would rather there be bad games on Steam, then me not be able to buy the games I would like.
Alexandros' findings were a bit inaccurate/misleading, to quote myself from the previous thread:
I don't think we have to kid ourselves thinking curation would be fair (meaning, they'd have to go through all these thousands of games and rightly assess their quality), because it isn't. It's a trade-off. Of course good games would absolutely be denied at times. It just happens. What matters is whether you think overall better discoverability is more important or not.
Then there is the question of whether you really need thousands of games on offer in such a store, a significant portion of it just costing a dollar or less without discounts. Although admittedly a simple price filter like on Amazon would go a long way here.
I don't think we have to kid ourselves thinking curation would be fair (meaning, they'd have to go through all these thousands of games and rightly assess their quality), because it isn't. It's a trade-off. Of course good games would absolutely be denied at times. It just happens. What matters is whether you think overall better discoverability is more important or not.
Then there is the question of whether you really need thousands of games on offer in such a store, a significant portion of it just costing a dollar or less without discounts. Although admittedly a simple price filter like on Amazon would go a long way here.
Whether or not you 'need' thousands of games on offer in a store is irrelevant. There are only two means of reducing the number of games on the store from growing exponentially: going back and removing games already for sale, or preventing some games from releasing on the store entirely by some arbitrary metric. Neither is a good solution.
I'm up for having that kind of discussion. I would like from those in favor of curation to explain, in real terms and not in theory, how they would curate the 16,000 decent to great games available on Steam and what kind of effect that would have on game sales and the livelihood of those developers who will be shut off from Steam.
The problem isn't necessarily one of quality, but one of absurd quantity.
We have heard accounts from developers that say that their best window for selling their game is when the game is on the front page. This is about discoverability. If your game is only on the front page of Steam for half a day because 50 other new games dropped right after that, then it really doesn't matter if those 50 games are good or not. Your game is off the front page and is now much harder for the average consumer to find.
This isn't even a Steam thing either, the Shovel Knight devs have talked about how the game's sales dropped once it got bumped off the front page of the Switch's eShop.
Being able to filter New Releases by genre would probably do a decent job of helping in this situation. Nobody wants to comb through a dozen pages of new games just to find 1-2 games that maybe might interest them. Let me sort by Metroidvania or Platformer so I can see the new games in genres I'm actually interested in instead of a deluge of Train Simulator DLC packs and genres I honestly don't care about.
We have heard accounts from developers that say that their best window for selling their game is when the game is on the front page. This is about discoverability. If your game is only on the front page of Steam for half a day because 50 other new games dropped right after that, then it really doesn't matter if those 50 games are good or not. Your game is off the front page and is now much harder for the average consumer to find.
This isn't even a Steam thing either, the Shovel Knight devs have talked about how the game's sales dropped once it got bumped off the front page of the Switch's eShop.
Being able to filter New Releases by genre would probably do a decent job of helping in this situation. Nobody wants to comb through a dozen pages of new games just to find 1-2 games that maybe might interest them. Let me sort by Metroidvania or Platformer so I can see the new games in genres I'm actually interested in instead of a deluge of Train Simulator DLC packs and genres I honestly don't care about.
I buy lots of games because I like lots of games. And to have a broad media palate. I have more than 700 games. Most of them I like, though I do have a few purchases I regret.
I do it because it's the exact opposite of pirating a game and not buying it. I'm supporting an industry that makes things I enjoy.
I do it because it's the exact opposite of pirating a game and not buying it. I'm supporting an industry that makes things I enjoy.
Better search tools would help the situation tremendously. Let's say I'm looking for something new to play, I would like to be able to search for, say, all the turn-based RPGs released in the last year and have a metacritic of 60 or higher. Steam's current search tools are not comprehensive enough.
This is what it really boils down to, everyone says discovery needs to be 'better' but few people actually have workable solutions for solving that problem. I'm not even really a PC gamer (don't have a gaming PC, just a crappy laptop) and even I will admit that Steam is head and shoulders above the PlayStation Store, the Xbox Store, and the eShop in terms of discovery. Just having the Discovery Que is way more than what any other digital storefront does, and that's on top of having community curators, a robust review function, Metacritic integration into the store page, community forums for every game, etc.
You can do that though. You can just start an 'empty' search to get the whole list of games, order it by release date (descending by default) (alternatively click on New Releases and then choose "See more" for either Popular New Releases or (All) New Releases) and narrow it by tags and features with the filters on the right side. If you have Enhanced Steam installed you can even exclude genres in the search iirc.
For example if I narrow New Releases to Single-player JRPGs that aren't DLCs I get this list.
You can also browse tags directly and go to a filtered release list from there.
You can also search for a curator on Steam that reviews Metroidvania games.
I fully agree that discoverability and search granularity on Steam are far from perfect, but there are a lot of options it already gives you to find what you're looking for and to surface good and interesting games.
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I don't think you can really counter the 'it's a trash heap' argument with a simple 'different strokes for different folks', no matter how detailed. It isn't just about varying opinions. Much of the store is filled with straight up asset flips, complete broken games, direct copies, misrepresentation/lies, etc. Those aren't a matter of opinion, they are just straight garbage.
http://store.steampowered.com/tags/en/Platformer/
http://store.steampowered.com/tags/en/metroidvania
Hit "browse all new releases" if you want an unfiltered list of games with these tags. You can also add extra terms to hide badly reviewed games if that's what you want.
But what you're saying is not true. The numbers are clear, over three quarters of all the games available on Steam are rated 'mixed' or higher. The asset flips, the broken games, the direct copies and the frauds represent a very small part of Steam's total games library. This isn't an opinion, it is an undeniable fact.
Oh, I do believe that it's too late for curation anyway. I was looking at the results, not implying they should start pulling the rug from under everyone's feet.
It really comes down to the fact that some of my favorite games of ALL TIME, were games I randomly found on Steam's "new releases" list, that I had never heard of/never would have heard of.
Finding gems like that the last 2-3 years in the way I enjoyed doing so in the past is completely impossible despite Valve throwing another worthless bandaid at the problem every 6-9 months. I've tried all the "tips" from people in steam threads who essentially call anyone unhappy with Steam a liar but nothing has been remotely effective.
Most here seem to prefer it this way, but personally it's why I haven't bought a Steam game in over 2 years, and the gaming PC I build 18ish months ago has largely gone wasted since I've really played 95%+ old stuff that already ran fine on my old PC.
While you may prefer it this way, I certainly don't so good for you :) It's far too late to fix it anyways.
If "mixed" is your bar for quality you might as well not have one at all.
Finding gems like that the last 2-3 years in the way I enjoyed doing so in the past is completely impossible despite Valve throwing another worthless bandaid at the problem every 6-9 months. I've tried all the "tips" from people in steam threads who essentially call anyone unhappy with Steam a liar but nothing has been remotely effective.
Most here seem to prefer it this way, but personally it's why I haven't bought a Steam game in over 2 years, and the gaming PC I build 18ish months ago has largely gone wasted since I've really played 95%+ old stuff that already ran fine on my old PC.
While you may prefer it this way, I certainly don't so good for you :) It's far too late to fix it anyways.
If "mixed" is your bar for quality you might as well not have one at all.
Discovery tools for digital stores need to improve. I'm not even going to address console digital stores, because they are going to be tedious (for me) to navigate and find stuff in them no matter what.
Steam promised an improvement for the Client for a while, but Valve time obviously so it's going to take a while. Yet, it could improve a lot by offering what some other users already talked about, like better defined genres filters, price filters and the likes.
Another thing that could be offered is to let user define genres they like and that they would like to be alerted about when new games hit the store so Steam can compile those games and email users to check them out.
Steam already alerts us about games on our wishlists when they release, when they are on sale, when they leave Early Access, when they hit Early Access. Alerting us about new FPS games that released in the last week, new RPGs, Puzzles or what have you, alerting us about the release of games in genres we are interested in would go a long way into cutting down a side of complaints about discovery problems. This would require developers to set the right genre tags for their games prior to releasing them though.
Steam promised an improvement for the Client for a while, but Valve time obviously so it's going to take a while. Yet, it could improve a lot by offering what some other users already talked about, like better defined genres filters, price filters and the likes.
Another thing that could be offered is to let user define genres they like and that they would like to be alerted about when new games hit the store so Steam can compile those games and email users to check them out.
Steam already alerts us about games on our wishlists when they release, when they are on sale, when they leave Early Access, when they hit Early Access. Alerting us about new FPS games that released in the last week, new RPGs, Puzzles or what have you, alerting us about the release of games in genres we are interested in would go a long way into cutting down a side of complaints about discovery problems. This would require developers to set the right genre tags for their games prior to releasing them though.
That is an Enhanced Steam feature.
But it would no doubt be helpful to those people who have issues with discoverability.
I keep saying they should let you follow Developers and Publishers and notify you whenever a new store page goes up or a game releases, etc. Maybe even with a personalized "release calender" page, where you can get a quick overview of the upcoming games you have on your wishlist or are from Devs/Pubs you follow.
You can when the 'bad actors' you are talking about are less than 1% of the library, but the people who maintain this narrative signal boost them to pretend that that 1% represents "Much" of the store.
Length of OP doesn't necessarily correlate to robustness of argument.
For example, the paragraphs on psychology:
This is pseudo-intellectual nonsense based on the most speculative of points. There's no data to back up such a conclusion. It's coffee-table psycho-analysis.
I'm someone who goes through gaming droughts and combs the Steam store for something new and decent to play and frequently comes up empty due to the amount of dreck on there. "Too many games to play" is not an issue.
For example, the paragraphs on psychology:
This is pseudo-intellectual nonsense based on the most speculative of points. There's no data to back up such a conclusion. It's coffee-table psycho-analysis.
I'm someone who goes through gaming droughts and combs the Steam store for something new and decent to play and frequently comes up empty due to the amount of dreck on there. "Too many games to play" is not an issue.