Steam Curation!

[Erkki]

Hmm... with my 2 followers, I was actually sent a steam code for a game with hopes that I will recommend it as a curator. Which I might actually end up doing since I had just recently looked at some videos of the game and it seemed potentially very cool.

 

I guess I'm now part of the feminist illuminati conspiracy?

[tegan]

Nah, that just means TotalBiscuit gets to take you under his wing.

EDIT:

 

I wonder if there's someone who actually doesn't use Steam for buying and downloading games, but instead just uses it as a chat client, research tool for buying games physically at Gamestop, and just buys trading cards and makes badges because they look cool.

 

Steam is, to me, a chat client that also happens to have a button that lets me play Spelunky. It's very rare that I check the store, I never bother with badges or trading cards, and I've only ever spent something like thirty dollars total on games in nearly three years of Steam use.

[Tanukitsune]

I haven't payed much attention to Steam curators since too many of them are trying to be "hilarious" instead of informative, what's worse is that 2 of the recommendations are from "comedians" and one of them is "8Chan", which I assume is twice as bad as 4chan?

 

I'm not sure I get this, the most popular ones are YouTubers and sites, followed by people who already know them and consume their content, so they already know what's on the list? I haven't visited the Idle Thumbs yet, but I've already read the jokes about FarCry 2, and I'm pretty sure the rest are games from the podcast.

[BadHat]

Don't forgot the numerous popular gamergate curator groups who all makes jokes about feminism because it's totally not about feminism.

[SecretAsianMan]

I never used Steam as a method of discovering new games.  To me that seemed like walking into a Gamestop with no intention of buying anything and just looking around to see what's on the shelves in the hopes that something will strike your fancy.  At best, the Steam store page just served as a reminder to me that the game I was considering getting is out now.  If I'm going to the Steam store, I'm going there with a specific intention and not random browsing.  I don't know if curated lists will change any of that but I have a feeling they won't.  I'd still rather hear about things from the podcast or the forums than see an item pop up on a list.  That's just me though.

 

Also the way the front page looks now it feels like a cheap website where the content is entirely ads.  Which I guess it is now that I think about it.

[Bjorn]

Once or twice a week, I browse through the new releases on Steam and occasionally find something I'm interested in that I hadn't heard about.  But that's about the extent of me discovering things on Steam.

 

Although curators may also end up serving as a decent metric for judging whether or not a game is good.  Rather than being a discovery tool, it may become something like like, "Oh, here's a game I'm interested in, lets see who has curated it.  Oh, Idle Thumbs, RPS and Justin McElroy all recommend it, fuck, I should buy this!"

[SecretAsianMan]

Steam updated their policy for curators.  If you have been paid or otherwise compensated for a review or recommendation, you have to disclose that information in the recommendation.

[syntheticgerbil]

But if you have to say you were paid off, then what's the point of being paid off? Can they at least write it in 8 point font with light grey text and a mid grey back?

 

If not, there goes some easy cash.

[clyde]

Itch.io just added tye ability to follow developers. It's a pretty obvious thing to implement, but I'm excited about it because on Game Jolt it's a facebook-esque friend-request to follow a developer (which is not well though out if you ask me) and I can't always play a new game by a developer on the only day they tweet about it and often forget a few days later.

It hasn't been active long enough for me to see if it sends followers a notification, but that's what i'm assuming.