Steam Trading Card

[Justin Leego]

So people actually use Steam as a kind of "gamer facebook"?

 

Huh...bizarre. But I guess anyplace with a friends list and a profile page can be shoehorned into that mold if its creators try hard enough.

 

Gamerbook.com is available for purchase via popular web-squatting service sedo.com. There are 110 global monthly searches for "gamer book".

[SecretAsianMan]

Gamerbook.com is available for purchase via popular web-squatting service sedo.com. There are 110 global monthly searches for "gamer book".

 

I used to play TF2 with some guys who started gamekrib.com as a kind of Facebook for gamers.  I guess it still exists.

[elmuerte]

Oh, really? That changes everything! I thought that since you had to collect the cards again if you wanted to level up the badge, it would mean you no longer had access to the cards you used to craft it.

They just show up dimmed, but you can still "zoom" on them to view them.

[Roderick]

Whoa, I just made a whopping 97 cents on selling a few jpegs!

[thestalkinghead]

one thing that slightly worries me about selling cards on the market is that because the market is now local currency there will always be a slight difference between the listed price of things (especially at low prices)

eg. at current google  exchange rate £0.13 = $0.20 and £0.14 = $0.21 but £0.12 = $0.18 and £0.15 = $0.23

this means i couldn't match a dollar price of $0.22 i could only go over or under, also with the example i gave of increasing the price from £0.13 to £0.14 that makes my increase of £0.01 = $0.01, but obviously they aren't equal so americans would get a better deal, it would probably be a better idea to have one currency on the market but with an exchange calculator in a convenient place

 

 

edited slightly

[osmosisch]

Dear lord, is that one sentence!?

[thestalkinghead]

Dear lord, is that one sentence!?

not any more, i was writing and thinking at the same time

[osmosisch]

I think you're saying that due to exchange rates you're unable to make your price as precise as you would like in some cases?

[thestalkinghead]

yeah, and at the small prices of the market £0.01 equalling $0.01  and not being able to properly match or just slightly undercut prices it makes a big difference

[shammack]

OK, I sold my Half-Life 2 cards, used the funds to buy the Don't Starve cards I was missing and craft a badge, and had enough left over to buy a Doug emoticon and get $0.24 off the FTL soundtrack. I guess I can grudgingly see how this could be sort of fun even if you don't put any money into it.

[thestalkinghead]

i have basically decided to be the miner or raw materials collector (cards) of this economy i sell the cards so other people can make the badges etc. and i guess once i have ran out of drops i will just have to wait for booster packs, i guess it is sort of a loyalty reward for playing/buying games on steam that basically gives you a discount on games, it's a bit like an free to play MMO (or a bit like eve) where there will be a few people who actually pay into the economy to buy stuff, while free players like me just play the game and occasionally get cards to put into the economy

[TheLastBaron]

I currently have 7 games running on steam at the same time on my computer while I'm doing stuff in the other room, so that I can get all the cards possible from games I have.  I'll probably sell all the ones for games I don't care about, but the main objective is to get to the point where I can be eligible for lots of booster packs and then slowly make tiny amounts of money for doing nothing.

[Gormongous]

Yeah, I've sorta conceptualized it as a one-a-week minigame that gives me 25% off all the DLC I've been meaning to buy. Like I said in the Steam Summer Sale thread, I just feel bad that, by participating, I'm aiding and abetting someone else's habit. Eh, whatever.

[elmuerte]

That works? You can run multiple games and you receive cards for them both? Finally a use for my 16GiB of RAM

[Twig]

Yeah, I've sorta conceptualized it as a one-a-week minigame that gives me 25% off all the DLC I've been meaning to buy. Like I said in the Steam Summer Sale thread, I just feel bad that, by participating, I'm aiding and abetting someone else's habit. Eh, whatever.

I don't know why you feel bad. If that's what they want to do, and they have the money to spare, why not? It's cheaper than most hobbies.

[TheLastBaron]

That works? You can run multiple games and you receive cards for them both? Finally a use for my 16GiB of RAM

Yeah I ran Borderlands 2, Civ 5, Saint's Row 3, CKII, Dungeons of Dredmor because they all only open a launcher, then Binding of Isaac and Alan

Wake and got cards for all of them.  The only thing I'm not sure about is how cards are spread out, meaning I got a card for each of them, so 7 cards total, and I don't now if that means I would have gotten 7 card drops anyways if I just ran a couple games and gotten more from each game.  If that's the case it might be worth just running one at a time and maxing out my drops from each one earlier.

[Twig]

I think I was told it averages out at one card per half hour, but I have no facts to back this up.

[TheLastBaron]

I figured it was something like that, as in a flat drop rate per hour.  I'm going to just keep one game open at a time now so I can max out single games faster and become eligible for boosters from them.  Also, after getting a bunch more cards I've definitely started to feel what other people were saying about preferring to have all the cards over one badge, though I guess if you can still see the cards used to craft the badge then that point is moot.

[SecretAsianMan]

So I'm curious.  I've seen a lot of people on my friends list lately "playing" older games that now have cards.  What I'm wondering is how many of them are actually playing the game, or if they start it and do something else while it idles and they get their drops.  Has the inclusion of cards actually encouraged anyone to go back and replay a game or is everyone just hitting their drop limit and moving on?

[Twig]

I can't speak for anyone else, but I finally finished that "under four hours" run of Magicka I started about a month after the game came out! It also made me want to play the DLC that I never played. D:

 

For Hotline Miami, though, I'm just idling in the game. I've beaten that game to a bloody pulp. It has nothing left to offer me. (I await Hotline Miami 2 with bated breath.)

[shammack]

It got me to play some FTL and some Surgeon Simulator 2013. I have so far avoided running games just to idle for card drops because I feel weird about it for some reason.

[Gormongous]

I don't know why you feel bad. If that's what they want to do, and they have the money to spare, why not? It's cheaper than most hobbies.

 

The same reason I'd feel bad buying a crackhead's TV. I know, that's not a fair comparison and I'm exaggerating for laughs, but I still feel as though each of us getting what we want might not be the best thing to happen.

[Zeusthecat]

The same reason I'd feel bad buying a crackhead's TV. I know, that's not a fair comparison and I'm exaggerating for laughs, but I still feel as though each of us getting what we want might not be the best thing to happen.

Great analogy. I laughed.

[Twig]

hey what's wrong with crack

[Gormongous]

Oh no, it's television that I'm against.