What can Steam do to improve game discovery?

[Brian Boru]

I had early dreams of imparting sophistication, discrimination and nuance. But no more, you've all cured me of such illusion—so explode away me bangers and mashers hearties!

 

[Colif]

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it seems the link needs to be on a line by itself.
If you edit the link after its posted you have to delete the link and put it in again, or it won't unfurl

Ultimately this is just how the feature works.

There's a bunch of important stuff going on behind the scenes which enables

http://<url>

to be converted to the unfurled information when the thread is rendering.

In short, you can't just edit the link part of the tag because it skips the code which does all of the necessary things to fetch and save the information we need to display that link's unfurled info.

If you're aiming to modify the link, you need to delete the entire URL tag and replace it with just the link (keeping it on its own line) - this is the same process you follow when creating the post in the first place, you post the link, we detect it, we fetch the info and we store all of the metadata that we need for the system to work.

Answer from a Xenforo developer

Not a bug - Two issues related to unfurling URLs

First one is really weird. Here is what happens. I post a link in a post. I publish the post. Link is unfurled. I edit the post and edit just the link bit. Publish the post. Updated link appears as linked url and does not get unfurled. I am not sure why XenForo does not update the URL on...

xenforo.com

there might be more to it but I would really like to know the story.

 

[Charagma]

Speed read most of what was said but my 2 cents on this.

I love and hate their "Discovery Que" Love it because I get to watch trailers on games. Hate it because after scratching around on something you found interesting usually end up being something that is too big or new for my system.

I would say they need to first need to have a part that can recognize your PC. Once steam knows what system you have it can suggest games that will work on your PC starting with your most played genres at the top and working out to different genres from there.

Personally, I think Steam lose most of their sales because the trailers we see or suggestions we get, might not run on our pc's but if we could get them to say "yeah your PC can run anything in this list" there will be sales since you know whatever you buy will work.

I personally have a wide range of genre's I play so do not care much about specific genres but going through 500 trailers looking for one that is compatible, well I usually stop looking at them from about the 7th or 8th suggestion just knowing my PC is incompatible.

I fully grasp that the newer games are what they are trying to sell now, but not everyone can afford a new PC every year to keep up with games, so they are losing money on older titles that are still sellable. So, knowing what you buy will "RUN" can create a huge income boost for them on all levels.

 

[Frindis]

@Charagma These curator lists might be of interest for potato PC:

Steam Curator: Low System Requirement Games

Low system requirement games worth playing. Check the list tab for more options than the eight tags that actually show up. Everything Should Run on an Intel HD 2000 integrated graphics card or lower.

store.steampowered.com

Steam Curator: The Adventure Library

Point and Click (pnc) Adventure Games

store.steampowered.com

 

[Zloth]

I would say they need to first need to have a part that can recognize your PC. Once steam knows what system you have it can suggest games that will work on your PC starting with your most played genres at the top and working out to different genres from there.

That's not easy. Sometimes it can be - if a game requires 8GB of VRAM and you've got 6GB, then it won't play. However, most of the time the system specs don't say exactly what is needed. (Do you need such-and-such CPU because of the number of threads, the overall speed, the size of the cache....) There's also the problem of one person's "perfectly fine" being another person's "completely unplayable."

I'm not saying it's completely impossible. They could give some variation of "fine, dubious, barely, no, and hell no" as the rating and you could decide which ones show up on the list. They probably also need to make you sign something that basically says: "we're trying to help, but we could have totally screwed this rating up, and it's you're fault if you trusted it without doing your own research or if the publisher lied to us." It will be some serious work, though.

I fully grasp that the newer games are what they are trying to sell now, but not everyone can afford a new PC every year to keep up with games...

Come on, that hasn't been the way of things for thirty years! A mid-tier PC can last four years easily. Hardware advancements are slowing to a crawl.

 

[Charagma]

@Charagma These curator lists might be of interest for potato PC:

Steam Curator: Low System Requirement Games

Low system requirement games worth playing. Check the list tab for more options than the eight tags that actually show up. Everything Should Run on an Intel HD 2000 integrated graphics card or lower.

store.steampowered.com

Steam Curator: The Adventure Library

Point and Click (pnc) Adventure Games

store.steampowered.com

I did not even know about this. Use Steam on daily basis and been using it for years but never knew about these. Thank you.

That's not easy. Sometimes it can be - if a game requires 8GB of VRAM and you've got 6GB, then it won't play. However, most of the time the system specs don't say exactly what is needed. (Do you need such-and-such CPU because of the number of threads, the overall speed, the size of the cache....) There's also the problem of one person's "perfectly fine" being another person's "completely unplayable."

I'm not saying it's completely impossible. They could give some variation of "fine, dubious, barely, no, and hell no" as the rating and you could decide which ones show up on the list. They probably also need to make you sign something that basically says: "we're trying to help, but we could have totally screwed this rating up, and it's you're fault if you trusted it without doing your own research or if the publisher lied to us." It will be some serious work, though.


Come on, that hasn't been the way of things for thirty years! A mid-tier PC can last four years easily. Hardware advancements are slowing to a crawl.

See what you are saying. Yes will not be easy. For me just a playable game (even with low graphic settings) is acceptable but might not be for the next guy.

I am not that up to date on new hardware development. They can maybe to a "release year" based on your CPU as a good guide. 2 years down from your cpu release date should make it playable. But yes it will need some form of disclaimer to protect them.

Also do not know who is the more serious gamers. As far as I know there are two types. The one that will buy a game, if it doesn't work leave it and play something else. The other is the one buying it and modding it to work. Still believe when you make something your own you tend to appreciate it more.

 

[JCgames]

Free games on epic has been my steam discovery que,

idle champions and atom eve are two games i found from give a ways there that i adore a few more are on my must play list.