it's very funny* to me that people defend steam's algorithm when it's so terrible.
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I hate how "similar games" doesn't show you similar games at all. Oh you liked Terraria, you should try Skyrim and Counter Strike...
@Beldarak@mastodon.gamedev.place yep, it's entirely based on what tags users added to the store pages for those games. which are often completely incorrect. people like to add tags like "psychological horror" to completely unrelated things as a joke
CC: @eniko@mastodon.gamedev.place
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it's very funny* to me that people defend steam's algorithm when it's so terrible. on youtube you routinely see videos from channels with barely any subscribers break out, but you will basically never see a steam game that isn't primed with tens of thousands of wishlists at release break out
*but not funny ha-ha
@eniko yeah I don't even directly interact with Steam's recommendation algo. I rely on YouTubers and SteamDB to find games.
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@eniko yeah I don't even directly interact with Steam's recommendation algo. I rely on YouTubers and SteamDB to find games.
@ThunderComplex how does steamdb surface games?
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@ThunderComplex how does steamdb surface games?
@eniko They don't. But the features they have (searching by tags, features etc.) allow me to find games that I'd like much easier.
It's definitely a lot more manual work, but I've found a lot of gems just filtering my way thru SteamDB. -
@loathsome_dongeater my brain: but 2018 was just a couple years ago, right?
........... right?
@eniko @loathsome_dongeater
I worked with some kids a few years ago and my brain had to take a second to comprehend that an 8 year old was born in 2016… -
it's very funny* to me that people defend steam's algorithm when it's so terrible. on youtube you routinely see videos from channels with barely any subscribers break out, but you will basically never see a steam game that isn't primed with tens of thousands of wishlists at release break out
*but not funny ha-ha
@eniko It makes sense when you consider that Steam only cares about maximising revenue. They badge it as "caring about reflecting what gamers want" but it actually means "following on the coat tails of things that are already on a success trajectory". Absolutely zero-effort bandwagon jumping (with the token effort of New / Upcoming but that's not helping anyone really) but hey, it makes them the most money and everyone else has to do the effort to get exposure. Super super conservative
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@eniko It makes sense when you consider that Steam only cares about maximising revenue. They badge it as "caring about reflecting what gamers want" but it actually means "following on the coat tails of things that are already on a success trajectory". Absolutely zero-effort bandwagon jumping (with the token effort of New / Upcoming but that's not helping anyone really) but hey, it makes them the most money and everyone else has to do the effort to get exposure. Super super conservative
@sinbad but it doesn't maximize revenue though. if this kind of algorithmic surfacing was *worse* for youtube it wouldn't do it
a game with few sales and high conversion rate should be trickled out to an ever increasing group of people who, based on tags and the like, might also be interested in that kind of game, until such a time the conversion rate dips
but on steam conversion rate seems to mean jack shit for discoverability. that's money they're leaving on the table
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@sinbad but it doesn't maximize revenue though. if this kind of algorithmic surfacing was *worse* for youtube it wouldn't do it
a game with few sales and high conversion rate should be trickled out to an ever increasing group of people who, based on tags and the like, might also be interested in that kind of game, until such a time the conversion rate dips
but on steam conversion rate seems to mean jack shit for discoverability. that's money they're leaving on the table
@eniko The difference with YouTube is that if they show you something you don't care about, you still see the ads so they still get the revenue. Steam never wants to show you something you wouldn't buy, and the only way they know how to do that is to massively weight things that other people are already buying / wishlisting. Unless you've already bought it or explicitly told them you don't want it, they assume that what other people are already buying has the best chance
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@eniko The difference with YouTube is that if they show you something you don't care about, you still see the ads so they still get the revenue. Steam never wants to show you something you wouldn't buy, and the only way they know how to do that is to massively weight things that other people are already buying / wishlisting. Unless you've already bought it or explicitly told them you don't want it, they assume that what other people are already buying has the best chance
@eniko As more than just a dollar business, as a centre of creative output, they absolutely should be doing more to take chances on less well known titles. The fact that they don't demonstrates that they're a cash funnel first and a game curation system (far) second
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@eniko I'm not sure I've ever seen a recommendation algorithm that I've ever been impressed by. They've always fed me trash. That was part of the allure of mastodon to me, not even having one I interact with by default.
The closest I've ever seen was the connection graph system in gazelle. Genuinely the only discovery system I've actually found gave results I felt good about, because it's basically just a manual discovery assistant that only shows some kind of nebulous distance metric.
@theeclecticdyslexic
fellow old torrenter detected :3 -
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