Steam can be depressing sometimes...What are your suggestions?

[ZedClampet]

I was doing a deep dive into the catalogue of games, and there are so many games that look like they deserved more attention from gamers. One game, by a single developer, (I don't remember the name now and have no idea how I would ever find it again) was a full on indie take on Medieval Total War, complete with a nice campaign map and battles with hundred of soldiers, and it had a single user review--and I believe it had been out for more than a month. Can you imagine how long it would take a single person to create a Total War game? And he probably has less than 100 sales. There were countless other examples of games that had to have taken a lot of heart and hard work that had anywhere from zero to less than 10 user reviews.

My suggestion is that Valve hire some people to do some human curating. Right now, if people don't put games on their wishlist, those games never show up on the front page of the store or through Steam's algorithms that are supposed to create interesting discovery opportunities. If you go into the "all releases" area, you can see that hundreds of games are being released in an average week, but the only games you ever know about are from people who are really into marketing and networking and can get people to wishlist their games. It's just a shame that some very worthy games basically have no chance.

If I had the money, which I don't, I'd create a Little Known Steam Games site and highlight these games. I could make a site, but there's no way that I could afford to buy a constant stream of games to test them out.

What are your suggestions for Valve to help them highlight worthy games?

 

[CParsons]

That's a hard one. There's always going to be problems with discovery. It doesn't only happen with games either, apps suffer from the same thing and even folks on Twitch. How many folks on Twitch are just streaming to no one simply because they're not on the front page? The number in all cases has to be huge.

I agree with your human curation idea, but it would need to be more than just one person for sure. They would need to have a whole team of folks dedicated to playing and telling folks about these 'hidden gems' and they would need to expand on the platforms they are sharing this information. eg: Setting up a blog and posting a daily gem, same with Twitch and YouTube channels. Perhaps, let those who have no chance of being discovered do some takeovers of their social channels etc.

That would certainly be a good start compared to what the situation looks like now. Of course, there's problems with that as well because for some folks it would seem like a lot of work for not much return. It could end up in a situation where no one is checking out that content as well and therefore, not really surfacing any of those gems.

 

[Mazer]

To be honest I tend to avoid using Steam's store page for browsing their games. Apart from their algorithms perpetually leading you back to the same small selection of AAA and better-known titles, the interface is a bit busy and more concerned with looking cool and fitting on a smart phone than with ease of use.

The website steampeek.hu has a pretty robust search system, and does a much better job at grouping similar games. As a for instance, I checked the 'similar games' section for Stardew Valley on both sites, and where steam listed The Sims 4 and Project Zomboid among the similar titles, Steampeek offered several pages of games which were all top-down farming and life sims, most of which I'd never heard of before, including one with an Australian setting called Dinkum which I'm now pretty interested in.

It also links up with isthereanydeal.com, which aggregates current and past discounts across multiple steam-key stores like greenmangaming and gamesplanet on top of Steam's storefront. This tends to be where I build my wishlist of future purchases so I can get a notification when, say, Dark Souls III has a discount of more than 75% anywhere. Super helpful.

 

[ZedClampet]

To be honest I tend to avoid using Steam's store page for browsing their games. Apart from their algorithms perpetually leading you back to the same small selection of AAA and better-known titles, the interface is a bit busy and more concerned with looking cool and fitting on a smart phone than with ease of use.

The website steampeek.hu has a pretty robust search system, and does a much better job at grouping similar games. As a for instance, I checked the 'similar games' section for Stardew Valley on both sites, and where steam listed The Sims 4 and Project Zomboid among the similar titles, Steampeek offered several pages of games which were all top-down farming and life sims, most of which I'd never heard of before, including one with an Australian setting called Dinkum which I'm now pretty interested in.

It also links up with isthereanydeal.com, which aggregates current and past discounts across multiple steam-key stores like greenmangaming and gamesplanet on top of Steam's storefront. This tends to be where I build my wishlist of future purchases so I can get a notification when, say, Dark Souls III has a discount of more than 75% anywhere. Super helpful.

That site is great. It doesn't reach the games I'm talking about, but it's a great tool to use.

 

[Brian Boru]

human curating

There are a bunch of curators on Steam. As far as I know they're mostly members like us, I've never dived into them so I can't comment further. Eg I see Civ 5 has over 3,000 curators which include it in their lists, including PC Gamer.

Steam Curators

store.steampowered.com

I'd create a Little Known Steam Games site

That would probably be too broad, such a site wouldn't interest me. Sites would need to be more specific, devoted to a genre or sub-genre, eg RPG Survival or Open-world shooters.

My main Indie source at the moment is a little YT channel by a Czech girl, Sampstra games—I've picked up a good few wishlists from her 10-30 minute intros or Let's Plays.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCksg1ApbNOYyxMmTcNKjwlg

steampeek.hu … isthereanydeal.com

Good sites.

 

[ZedClampet]

There are a bunch of curators on Steam. As far as I know they're mostly members like us, I've never dived in to them so I can't comment further. Eg I see Civ 5 has over 3,000 curators which include it in their lists, including PC Gamer.

Steam Curators

store.steampowered.com

That would probably be too broad, such a site wouldn't interest me. Sites would need to be more specific, devoted to a genre or sub-genre, eg RPG Survival or Open-world shooters.

My main Indie source at the moment is a little YT channel by a Czech girl, Sampstra games—I've picked up a good few wishlists from her 10-30 minute intros or alet's Plays.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCksg1ApbNOYyxMmTcNKjwlg

Good sites.

Those curators aren't good for what I'm talking about. They only curate the already known games and don't dive deeply into the unknown. What we need are people from Valve who are looking at every game and putting some effort into it. I probably confused you by using the word "curator" which is already used by Steam, but I meant Valve curation, which is much more important.

As for the site being too broad, it would have to be. (I'm just speaking in theoreticals because I'm not going to actually do it) The truly hidden games (and none of them show up in PC Gamer's "5 games you might have missed" column) come in all different categories. I couldn't make 20 different sites. There are hundreds of games each week that no one knows about. Many of them are likely not that good, but I suspect that some of them are. To get to them on Steam right now, you literally have to know what you are doing because Steam tries hard not to show them to you. In any event, there might be a few people like me who like a broad spectrum of games and find that site interesting. I wouldn't expect it to be a very popular site. But if a few people started buying the games, it would kick in Steam's algorithms.

 

[Pifanjr]

The main problem is that Valve doesn't really gain anything by increasing the visibility of indie games. I'm guessing the reason why indie games are hard to find and don't get suggested very often is because Valve prefers it when their users buy expensive AAA games instead of cheap indie games.

The other problem is that there are simply too many games being released for anyone to keep up with. I don't see how anyone could curate all those games without losing a ton of money on it.

 

[Pifanjr]

The website steampeek.hu has a pretty robust search system, and does a much better job at grouping similar games.

Awesome site, but now I'm just sad again that there isn't anything close to a new Black & White.

 

[DXCHASE]

lt would be nice to see a lot of indie games take off and get noticed/purchased, but the software to make indie games has become so widely available and relatively easy to use that virtually anyone can make a game if they have the time, skill and patience to dedicate to it, money too but sometimes thats not the issue. So you have a lot of people developing their own little games and being able to release them on steam, which can in turn bury better ones.

Steam could do better at showing indies for sure but it already does a lot to try to showcase up and coming games, at least for me. I've purchased a lot of little games for the purpose of just throwing money their way but it also takes those making games to do a good PR campaign (obviously if they have the money and time to).

There are lots of tools indie devs can also use outside of steam to raise money/awareness, its just being able to utilize them and harness them properly. It would be cool though for a site to only showcase steam games that have less than say 100 in sales, like you said, then that site would become extremely bloated with small indie games on steam that you'd still miss gems.

 

[ZedClampet]

There are lots of tools indie devs can also use outside of steam to raise money/awareness, its just being able to utilize them and harness them properly. It would be cool though for a site to only showcase steam games that have less than say 100 in sales, like you said, then that site would become extremely bloated with small indie games on steam that you'd still miss gems.

A lot of this is on the developers. I go to Kickstarter every now and again to look around and see the submissions, and it's remarkable how little work a lot of people put into it. They are expecting you to essentially donate money to them, and they can't even make respectable trailers or give sufficient details about the project. I've been tempted on multiple occasions to pledge money just so I could ask in the comments why they didn't spend more than five minutes on their submissions and how they expected to raise money with zero effort.

That same thing holds true for games released on Steam. A lot of people think making a good game is all they need to do, but with the level of competition, that couldn't be further from the truth.

 

[Zloth]

I don't know about those Kickstarter folks, but we sure didn't cover marketing much in any of the computer science courses I took.

I'm not sure what you folks are talking about with respect to Steam pages pushing toward AAA? They definitely push games that are more popular, which AAA often is (deservedly, because of marketing, or both). I see indie and B level studios all the time, though, too.

Try putting some work into curators. Go through your favorite games and check the curators that recommend it. If they have a lot of the games you like, start following them. Also, go through some games you really didn't like - preferably ones you consider "obviously bad." If you see any of your new curators liking those games, too, ignore them.

P.S. And, thanks to doing a little research for this topic, I've discovered Wildermyth. Not great graphics but the concept!!

 

[Brian Boru]

What about IndieGala.com? I've picked up a few freebies there, but never delved in.

virtually anyone can make a game

Dead right, there are no-code builders available now which overcome what is probably the main obstacle. Still got art, music and writing to deal with of course, so it's not a gimme just yet. But inevitably a big increase in dross.

I don't see how anyone could curate all those games without losing a ton of money on it

Agreed, it couldn't be a commercial operation with sales being the only revenue. Would need sponsorship and membership probably—maybe something like the old bookclubs which mailed you a curated book every month.

people think making a good game is all they need to do

That's across the creative sphere. Authors, musicians, film makers…


One problem games have is you can't just browse and click to see if you like it, like you can with books, music, video.

Would publishers work as the curator? If they like a game, they put effort into marketing it, which is a quality signal.

 

[Brian Boru]

Maybe these might help:

Top 250 best Hidden Gems on Steam

Helping you find good games on Steam: impartial games rankings compiled from Steam gamer reviews.

steam250.com

Steam Curator: Gaming Hidden Gems

Reviews and Tips for Great PC Games that went under the radar.

store.steampowered.com

This algorithm picks out Steam's best hidden gems

Some smart math helps unearth a list of some of Steam's most-loved, least-played games.

www.pcgamer.com

 

[MrShadow]

I was doing a deep dive into the catalogue of games, and there are so many games that look like they deserved more attention from gamers. One game, by a single developer, (I don't remember the name now and have no idea how I would ever find it again) was a full on indie take on Medieval Total War, complete with a nice campaign map and battles with hundred of soldiers, and it had a single user review--and I believe it had been out for more than a month. Can you imagine how long it would take a single person to create a Total War game? And he probably has less than 100 sales. There were countless other examples of games that had to have taken a lot of heart and hard work that had anywhere from zero to less than 10 user reviews.

My suggestion is that Valve hire some people to do some human curating. Right now, if people don't put games on their wishlist, those games never show up on the front page of the store or through Steam's algorithms that are supposed to create interesting discovery opportunities. If you go into the "all releases" area, you can see that hundreds of games are being released in an average week, but the only games you ever know about are from people who are really into marketing and networking and can get people to wishlist their games. It's just a shame that some very worthy games basically have no chance.

If I had the money, which I don't, I'd create a Little Known Steam Games site and highlight these games. I could make a site, but there's no way that I could afford to buy a constant stream of games to test them out.

What are your suggestions for Valve to help them highlight worthy games?

it depends what your idea of to much is....if you do have some sort of budget and if you want to host the files themselves-it might be worth having a look at dedicated server prices with a reasonable company like shockhosting-you coud set up a patreon account to get gamers to donate when they can to pay for it,i know its something i woud pay to see.

if you just want to use it as a kind of hotbed of indie information and links (instead of actualy hosting the files like steam) you are very welcome to host it on my shared shockhosting server and i can set it up so only you have the pw to that directory i think? (i have severe epilepsy so its destroyed much of my technical working and short term memory so id have to look this up),i have unlimited mysql, unlimited space, as much bandwith as needed etc.
all you woud need is to pick the software you want installing off the softaculous installer, and you woud need a domain- you can pick them up cheap. its just a thought -if you ever got in the position of affording hosting you coud then transfer the directory, sorry for waffle and offer is always open.