I made a game discovery system based on your profile & preferences as a player.

[DISCOVERIOUS]

As a side project, I was thinking of a way to give game suggestions based on various number of criteria.

It's pretty basic right now, you have 6 different types of profiles.

Each profile has one game linked to it, which should be related to the profile preferences.
So you get the profile which fits you the most as a player (trying not to spoil too much here) as well as one game linked to it.
For the time being, I have limited it to PC games.

I deliberately choose games which had a low to medium visibility on Steam, but still had a decent number of good reviews to ensure that they are complete games and not school/hobby projects.
You can check it out right here.

Disclaimer: I do not own/made any of the game presented as a recommendation there.
I do, however, have authorization from the studios to display their game.
I have no financial benefit in this project.
I made all the illustrations myself using Adobe Illustrator.

F.A.Q.
- Why only one game recommendation?
To keep the recommendation system a bit simpler to manage on my end, I have started with only one game recommendation.
However, 16 different games are listed in the system right now.

- The game I got do not match my preferences and or profile.
Sorry to hear it! I'm trying to make the system evolve with the users feedbacks, so it can be fixed!

- What do you do with my personal information?
The only question relative to your identity is the last one, regarding providing an email address.
This question is not mandatory, I have no way to link your answers to someone identity without it (and even with it, it would be overreaching a bit).

- How do you handle GDPR?
The survey tool I've used, Typeform, states that the creator of the survey is responsible for the data.
The data from this survey will be only available to myself, and since the email input is optional, I cannot link answers to a specific individual without its email.

 

[Brian Boru]

Welcome to the forum

I did the survey, looks legit. I forget how long it took, but not too long—maybe 15m.

 

[DISCOVERIOUS]

Welcome to the forum

I did the survey, looks legit. I forget how long it took, but not too long—maybe 15m.

Hello Brian!

Awesome, thanks for your participation and the confirmation that the survey is legit!

 

[ZedClampet]

....

I wish you the best of luck with this. It sounds like the kind of project I would enjoy doing.

Needless to say, with the limited scope of its current form, I wasn't expecting to get a recommendation of a game I would want to play, and while the game recommended looked interesting to me, it definitely was not something I would play.

This is going to be a huge challenge. If you are committed to a survey type of preference collection, that's going to have to be one perfectly crafted survey, and probably one of some length.

 

[DISCOVERIOUS]

I wish you the best of luck with this. It sounds like the kind of project I would enjoy doing.

Needless to say, with the limited scope of its current form, I wasn't expecting to get a recommendation of a game I would want to play, and while the game recommended looked interesting to me, it definitely was not something I would play.

This is going to be a huge challenge. If you are committed to a survey type of preference collection, that's going to have to be one perfectly crafted survey, and probably one of some length.

Hi Zed, thanks for your feedback!

Yes, the survey structure has a lot a limitation, therefore giving a good recommendation can be tricky.
What profile did you get?

To be honest I was thinking about expanding the concept to a dedicated website instead of a survey, which will be much more flexible and fun (and difficult) to do than a simple survey.

 

[ZedClampet]

Hi Zed, thanks for your feedback!

Yes, the survey structure has a lot a limitation, therefore giving a good recommendation can be tricky.
What profile did you get?

To be honest I was thinking about expanding the concept to a dedicated website instead of a survey, which will be much more flexible and fun (and difficult) to do than a simple survey.

I believe it was the Explorer profile. Oddly, the game recommended had nothing specifically to do with exploration, Wolfstride.

 

[DISCOVERIOUS]

I believe it was the Explorer profile. Oddly, the game recommended had nothing specifically to do with exploration, Wolfstride.

Well you've got a bit of exploration since Wolfstride is set up in a pretty original environment, but I get your point.

You can take a look at this game or this one also, which are the 2 other recommendations as an Explorer.

 

[ZedClampet]

Well you've got a bit of exploration since Wolfstride is set up in a pretty original environment, but I get your point.

You can take a look at this game or this one also, which are the 2 other recommendations as an Explorer.

Yeah, I'm familiar with those two games. Those are nice choices, I think. Not for me, but they are nice choices for niche games in the Exploration category.

But it's hard to recommend to me. Valve knows more about me as a gamer than any company, knowing what I play and when, and they still don't do a good job of recommending games to me. I'll be interested to see if you have better luck with others on this site.

 

[Alm]

I got Gladiator. Which I think is rather appropriate to my taste.

But I noticed a couple of minor things on the questionnaire. It seemed to include PS5 but not the latest Xbox. Also had categories for FPS and Shooter. I guess Shooter includes 3PS? It's just that I think of shooters as FPS. But I wasn't 100% sure.

But great idea and implementation. I hope it continues and learns.

 

[Brian Boru]

I was thinking about expanding the concept to a dedicated website

I assume you're familiar with Quantic Foundry? How would you differentiate from their approach?

ETA: I forget exactly what profile I got, is there a Commander? That might be it…

 

[DISCOVERIOUS]

I got Gladiator. Which I think is rather appropriate to my taste.

But I noticed a couple of minor things on the questionnaire. It seemed to include PS5 but not the latest Xbox. Also had categories for FPS and Shooter. I guess Shooter includes 3PS? It's just that I think of shooters as FPS. But I wasn't 100% sure.

But great idea and implementation. I hope it continues and learns.

Thank you for your feedback!

You are completely right regarding the Xbox, I am (still) a bit confused with Xbox and the terminology of their hardware, it's corrected now!
Yes regarding the FPS & Shooter differentiation, in the Shooter genre I take 3PS into consideration as well as for example 2D shooters.

Thank you for your kind words! It means a lot

 

[DISCOVERIOUS]

I assume you're familiar with Quantic Foundry? How would you differentiate from their approach?

ETA: I forget exactly what profile I got, is there a Commander? That might be it…

Yes, I am familiar with Quantic Foundry's work!

From my point of view, Quantic is more oriented toward delivering data models to studios and developers to help them focus their approach when working on a new game.

As a player perspective, when you did Quantic's survey, you get your profile and ... basically that's about that .
Also, their game recommendations are mostly based on pretty popular games and licences.

I would love having something more developed on a long-term basis, allowing players to discover their "player profile" as well as discovering more niche/indie games which could be appealing.

Indie developers are mostly struggling to reach their potential audience , so I thought that could also be a way to reach out a core number of players.

And yes there is a Commander profile! Did you liked the game recommanded?

 

[Brian Boru]

Quantic

I agree with your points.

Indie developers are mostly struggling to reach their potential audience

Oh yeah, with 20-30 releases per day on Steam alone, discoverability is the crucial part of the process which devs need to focus on. If you can help that, it would be a wonderful service to devs and players.

Did you liked the game recommanded?

Similar to Zed above, I wouldn't choose to play it, but it was suitable recommendation.

 

[DISCOVERIOUS]

Oh yeah, with 20-30 releases per day on Steam alone, discoverability is the crucial part of the process which devs need to focus on. If you can help that, it would be a wonderful service to devs and players.

I would really love to! I talked to more than a hundred indie studios/solo developers and the first issue coming up on their side was the lack of promotion/discoverability.

They are kind of burried between themselves regarding video game coverage, and on top of it biggers studios with huge marketing budgets are eating much of global media presences.

Similar to Zed above, I wouldn't choose to play it, but it was suitable recommendation.

I totally get it!
Thank you for your feedbacks, I enjoyed talking to you regarding this topic.

 

[Brian Boru]

I talked to more than a hundred indie studios/solo developers and the first issue coming up on their side was the lack of promotion/discoverability

I assume they and you know about the GDC channel, they do some good stuff about marketing, incl case studies by indie devs who have managed to survive or thrive.

 

[DISCOVERIOUS]

I assume they and you know about the GDC channel, they do some good stuff about marketing, incl case studies by indie devs who have managed to survive or thrive.

I did not to be honest!
Thank you, there is a lot of qualitative content on their channel, will defintely follow that.