The IT Curated Steam Tag List

[Bjorn]

So with the introduction of Steam tags, the idea occurred that we can create a curated list of all the best games on Steam as decided by the Thumbs, all tagged with the same IT-centric word.  Thus whenever someone asks you "what is game?", you can just link them.  Because that's something refined IT listeners hear all the time.

 

If this becomes a thing, I'll update this with the list of games that thumb listeners should be tagging.

 

Possible tags to use:

 

Idle Thumbs

As Heard on Idle Thumbs

As Loved by Idle Thumbs

Jeff Goldblum

Baboo

Puffin

Congrats Nick

Wizard -The current tag link is http://store.steampowered.com/tag/en/wizard/  which is kind of awesome, but would likely eventually end up populated with a lot of other wizard related games.  Even if we use something else, we should still all tag Far Cry 2 with Wizard.

 

Games to tag:

Far Cry 2

Gone Home

Spelunky

The Ship

DOTA 2

[Hermie]

I quite like this idea, but what's wrong with just calling it Idle Thumbs?

[Bjorn]

I quite like this idea, but what's wrong with just calling it Idle Thumbs?

 

Nothing probably, just not as funny?  Or so I thought, then I looked at the Far Cry 2 tags:

 

[elmuerte]

How about tagging games according to:

- discussed in an episode

- recommended by idle thumbs

- thumbs involved in its creation

[SecretAsianMan]

- thumbs involved in its creation

 

The Walking Dead games (and other Telltale games) need to be tagged with "Famous" and "Video Games".  Gone Home and Bioshock 2 should be tagged "Hot Scoops".  Can you swear in a tag?  Could a "Congrats Nick" tag exist?

[Justin Leego]

 

Although I smell inter-forum warz.

[Bjorn]

How about tagging games according to:

- discussed in an episode

- recommended by idle thumbs

- thumbs involved in its creation

 

The Walking Dead games (and other Telltale games) need to be tagged with "Famous" and "Video Games".  Gone Home and Bioshock 2 should be tagged "Hot Scoops".  Can you swear in a tag?  Could a "Congrats Nick" tag exist?

 

Playing around with the tagging system, it appears that a certain threshold has to be met before a game actually becomes associated with a tag.  So the more tags we think about using, the less likely we'll be able to get them to actually stick.  Though I do think that multiple tags is a good idea.   And swear words are right out, all the ones I tried were blocked (thank god, you can't trust the Internet with bad things). 

[elmuerte]

********* is accepted though

[SecretAsianMan]

And swear words are right out, all the ones I tried were blocked (thank god, you can't trust the Internet with bad things). 

 

Guess we'll have to use "Congrats Nick"

[Lu]

Man, hidden gem is such a good tag for that game. 

[toblix]

And when we're done tagging Steam games with hilarious in-jokes we can stealthily insert a bunch of Idle Thumbs Crusader Kings II references into lesser-visited historical articles on Wikipedia!

[Forbin]

Good luck vandalizing wikipedia.  It's amazing the amount of effort that people put into protecting articles.

 

Also, what should we tag Lords Management games with?  "Lords Management" or "LoMa"?  There's an unfortunate "Lords Management" tag being used right now :/

[tegan]

Good luck vandalizing wikipedia.  It's amazing the amount of effort that people put into protecting articles.

 

I think the joke was that making joke tags for Steam games is kind of unhelpful vandalism and interferes with the actual purpose of game tagging.

 

...Not that the Steam tag system hasn't already been vandalized to heck and back. Don't read the tags on Gone Home 'cause they will make you depreeeeeessed.

[SecretAsianMan]

If the Steam tags ever had a chance of being a serious and actually helpful thing, I would never suggest making dumb jokes like this.  But since that's not likely to happen I think Baboos are in order.

[Dualhammers]

Indie Cabal.

[Roderick]

"Deep Malaria-based Gameplay" is the best tag.

[Dosed]

There's no way that this who tags thing will be useful, and there's no way they'll be able to police it. I can't even think of a way around preventing it from being full of hilarious internet meme jkz besides just camping the tags section and exterminating any stray ones, but I guess that's why I don't work at Valve. 

 

Teagan I had to look the tags up and "Walking simulator" made me laugh really hard. I'm not sure if it's because I'm tired and hungover, or if the tag is supposed to be sarcastic, or if I can imagine the Thumbs discussing that tag and I've invented some sort of hypothetical imaginary Idle Thumbs bit about steam tags in my head.

[Bjorn]

I'd argue that something like this is still useful, even while being a funny in-joke for the thumbs fans.  If someone wanted to go to Steam and find a whole bunch of games that the podcast had recommended over the years, this would be one of the easier ways to do it. 

 

If I had never heard of Far Cry 2, and I saw that "Deep Malaria Based Gameplay" tag, I'd be buying that shit in a heartbeat.  Whatever that is, is something I need.  Even some of the shitty tags can be useful.  A bunch of games I like are tagged Pretentious.

[mikemariano]

I am strongly opposed to this implementation of Steam tags.  It's plainly not meant to be helpful for Steam users or shoppers.

 

But since I'm more of a troll than a Steam shopper, that's fine by me.  Has the tag "Baby Game" been used yet?

[Codicier]

Wouldn't making owning the game a precondition towards tagging it be a fairly simple and effective fix to most of the problems this system has?

[Dewar]

I guess they think as more people get involved, the people who want to tag things for real will outnumber those who want to vandalize? I mean look at Wikipedia. There's some crazy people policing over there.

[Bjorn]

But then you would have to give some people a level of moderation power to strip out certain terms, which has it's own problems.  I mean, tagging something with a critical word is not an inherently bad thing, it's just clearly being abused. 

 

So what are people's thoughts on trying to pull this off?  Should we go for it, or is it just contributing to the overall noise on Steam?

[SecretAsianMan]

Valve implemented downvoting so it probably won't work anymore

 

http://steamcommunity.com/groups/SteamClientBeta/discussions/2/558747922194202319/

[Bjorn]

The Idle Thumbs tag on Far Cry 2 actually looks like it went up in prominence following the reporting feature.  That feature also seems to have cleaned up the Gone Home tags.

 

I think an Idle Thumbs tag would probably stick on at least some games, but using something weirder probably wouldn't. 

[Hermie]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think the tag has to be in the top for the game to appear in a search for it? So even if the game doesn't have Idle Thumbs among its most popular tags, you could still get it on a list of games relevant to IT?