Steam Sales 2015 • Hacker News Board

Re: Steam Sales 2015

#81

Post by otakucode » Wed, Jan 06, 2016, 2:21 AM UTC

Steam still desperately needs a competent recommendation engine. Simply recommending the biggest sellers is a terrible solution, but appears to be what they are doing now. I am worried that Steam doesn't want to pursue this, however, because big publishers wouldn't like it. My personal Steam interface wouldn't be trying to sell me the latest AAA titles at all, for example. And Steam has thus far been very much a 'for the big publishers' affair. Sure indie devs have made some great successes there, but those were all despite Steams policies and structure rather than thanks to it.

Steam also continues to face the threat of large publishers creating their own competing marketplaces, like EAs Origin. Since Steam offers nothing unique that a publisher couldn't reproduce themselves with little effort, drowning in a sea of clones wouldn't be terribly surprising. When Apple came out with iTunes, they demanded that music publishers do things like sell individual tracks, and cap those at 99 cents. They forced publishers to take advantage of digital distribution. So when music publishers wanted to compete, they found that they simply couldn't. Their board of directors would demand that they sell albums together. They would demand more than 99 cents a track. And users would never go for it. But with Steam, which places absolutely no restrictions upon the publisher whatsoever, that's not a problem. Origin showed that gamers loyalty to the franchises they like far outpaces any loyalty to Steam.. and why shouldn't it? Steam doesn't guarantee lower-than-physical-retail prices. They don't guarantee anything, really, for consumers.

I would love to see Valve start squeezing publishers and forcing them to take advantage of digital distribution. Cap new game prices. It is patently absurd to pay $60 for a digitally distributed title when distribution makes up the vast majority of the price of a retail title and digital distro drops the cost of distribution to nearly nothing. It would require big publishers to violate their distribution agreement contracts with retailers, just like iTunes forced music publishers to violate their distribution agreement contracts with record stores, but Steam would end up being much more robust as a result.

Back to the recommenation engine, though. My nephews got their first laptops for christmas. They're 9 years old and their parents are not technical at all. So they ended up with the cheapest Black Friday craptops you can imagine. There are plenty of things on Steam that they could play, but I didn't even install it for them. Because if I had, Steam would have inundated them with advertising for games that they don't have any chance of running, and, being 9 and used to tablets and consoles, they would not understand why they couldn't run something. Finding something they COULD play would be very difficult.

Alright, I should stop complaining and just build something to solve the problem. At least Valve doesn't seem aggressive against scraping Steam data and the like.

Re: Steam Sales 2015

#82

Post by otakucode » Wed, Jan 06, 2016, 2:25 AM UTC

wnevets wrote: post #39

alimbada wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm reluctant to breathe a sigh of relief yet. I've been visiting the Steam Store a lot less since they opened the floodgates to any and every game under the sun as I believe discoverability is now horribly broken and the queue and recommendations features both fail to mitigate the issue.

> I believe discoverability is now horribly broken and the queue and recommendations features both fail to mitigate the issue. I agree, my queue is littered with genres I have zero interest in. After the 10th anime dating sim I marked not interested in, it should prevent those games in the future.

Steam makes it pretty clear that your queue and recommendations are absolutely NOT based upon your preferences at all. They even tell you what it is based on - a game is popular, or it's new. Big publishers might be displeased with a solution that used by-now-standard recommendation tech. It certainly wouldn't recommend any AAA titles to me as even though I have 1000+ games in my library (which I never play... I might have a problem) I haven't purchased a $60 on-release-day title for well over a decade. How horrified would Ubisoft and Activision be if they knew a lot of people never even saw mention of their latest title? And first and foremost, Steam appears to be built for them.

Re: Steam Sales 2015

#83

Post by otakucode » Wed, Jan 06, 2016, 2:30 AM UTC

brobinson wrote: post #74

alimbada wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm reluctant to breathe a sigh of relief yet. I've been visiting the Steam Store a lot less since they opened the floodgates to any and every game under the sun as I believe discoverability is now horribly broken and the queue and recommendations features both fail to mitigate the issue.

I want a way to filter out indie games and DLC when searching.

A simple Bayesian filter trained on the tags and maybe short description text to rank games per-user would probably do everything most people want. Steams Web API is nearly useless though, so you'd have to build a whole site, and do loads of scraping, to offer that to people.

Re: Steam Sales 2015

#84

Post by otakucode » Wed, Jan 06, 2016, 2:35 AM UTC

anon4 wrote: post #53

_pmf_ wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think the bottom has been reached, look at the "best of" of the Play store. That's the cess pit the PC game market will be turning into, and I have no hope that Steam's Greenlight will prevent this.

But those games have always been there. Go in your local store that carries physical copies of games and count the shovelware. Steam isn't supposed to be a curation service - there are tons of those, find a reviewer you like and follow their recommendations. Steam should be as full as possible a repository of paid games you can download.

Yeah, we solved this problem already. YouTube is FILLED with garbage. But you only find the garbage you like, mostly. Steam is a problem because they don't have a recommendation engine that learns from a users preferences. And really, that should be inexcusable today.

Steam would be fairly easy to compete with, I expect, since they don't do anything other than let big publishers do whatever they want and provide a dumping ground for everyone else. If they restricted the big publishers, then it would be tough because you'd have to get them on board, but Valve even paid to implement their "preloading" system so big publishers didn't have to run the risk of actually taking advantage of digital distro and endangering their retail distro agreements by having stuff available 2 weeks before the boxes could make it onto the shelves.

Re: Steam Sales 2015

#85

Post by otakucode » Wed, Jan 06, 2016, 2:41 AM UTC

douche wrote: post #6

distances wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would myself have guessed at least 50%, but that would be just based on anecdotal experience. I've bought the occasional Humble Bundle outside of Steam, but that's the only one for several years now. The same applies for all of my friends as far as I know.

I would have thought they would have had a commanding majority as well. Occasionally I'll buy something on GoG - but it's usually an oldy-but-goody for $5 or less. Almost every single game I have gotten through Humble Bundle has just been a Steam key. I guess there's Origin, but I've only ever bought Mass Effect 3 from them. Good luck even finding PC games in a box in a retail store... EDIT: Derp, completely spaced B…

Walmart is still a gigantic part of some games PC sales. It's the reason why Valve is careful not to ask anything of the big publishers that would endanger their agreements with Walmart. That's why even though the cost to get a game through Steam is 10% of what it is to get it at Walmart, you still pay full price and often more than what you pay at retail. The big Steam discounts are only possible after the game has been removed from retail, since the retail agreements require not offering the game anywhere else for a lower price (though retail outlets are able to offer discounts from the MSRP which is why you might find a game that is $60 on Steam for $55 at Walmart). It's also why the stupid "preloading" system exists where you download a game you paid for, but aren't allowed to run it until retailers have a chance to put it on their shelf.

Re: Steam Sales 2015

#86

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jan 06, 2016, 3:55 AM UTC

aluhut wrote: post #33

joonoro wrote: post #9

>Indiepocalypse is cancelled, you can stop worrying now. I think I speak for quite a few people when I say thank God . I have nothing against indie games in general but the sheer volume of low-quality DayZ/Minecraft-inspired early-access survival game clones that were all broken in the same ways that were never finished by the developer have left me jaded.

That is true but I'm (as a customer) still happy with it since I got one single game out of it that I can't stop playing and this is a feeling I had not since...college. The game is Rimworld and it's a early-access clone of prison architect. The game is far from done, the dev left for a long extended break but the game is still a endless source of joy. And I haven't even touch the mods. The sheer diversity and new id…

[deleted]

Re: Steam Sales 2015

#87

Post by bduerst » Wed, Jan 06, 2016, 3:55 AM UTC

jdcarter wrote: post #54

aluhut wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is true but I'm (as a customer) still happy with it since I got one single game out of it that I can't stop playing and this is a feeling I had not since...college. The game is Rimworld and it's a early-access clone of prison architect. The game is far from done, the dev left for a long extended break but the game is still a endless source of joy. And I haven't even touch the mods. The sheer diversity and new id…

Another Rimworld player here. The parent post was complaining about knock-off survival-style games, and Rimworld assuredly isn't a knock-off. The developer, Tynan Sylvester, put a ton of thought into the game mechanics and created a simulation masterpiece--made even better by the extensive modding community. Tynan also wrote a book, "Designing Games," which is worth checking out. Also, the similarities to Prison Arch…

Rimworld looks like a sci-fi Dwarf Fortress with Prison Architect interface.

Re: Steam Sales 2015

#88

Post by nikdaheratik » Wed, Jan 06, 2016, 6:18 AM UTC

joonoro wrote: post #71

zyxley wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calling it a clone of Prison Architect is pretty weird. There's very little shared except for the graphics style. Even the basic "click to place walls" construction system is broadly different, given that in Prison Architect you have to lay down foundations and then build on top of that.

In the past they were more similar, at least the NPC art style was. When they first started Rimworld they used a sort of Prison Architect art style for their NPCs as placeholders until they got their own art in (which they have now). If anything, both Rimworld and PA are "clones" of Dwarf Fortress.

Except Dwarf Fortress has so many mechanics (not a complaint) that almost any game could be considered a "clone" of Dwarf Fortress!

Re: Steam Sales 2015

#89

Post by moomin » Wed, Jan 06, 2016, 9:45 AM UTC

nikdaheratik wrote: post #88

joonoro wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the past they were more similar, at least the NPC art style was. When they first started Rimworld they used a sort of Prison Architect art style for their NPCs as placeholders until they got their own art in (which they have now). If anything, both Rimworld and PA are "clones" of Dwarf Fortress.

Except Dwarf Fortress has so many mechanics (not a complaint) that almost any game could be considered a "clone" of Dwarf Fortress!

Meh, Dwarf Fortress is just a clone of Dungeon Keeper with worse play-balancing. :p

Re: Steam Sales 2015

#90

Post by pc86 » Wed, Jan 06, 2016, 2:13 PM UTC

dandelany wrote: post #68

pc86 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I was creating charts I would want the freedom to do this. Perhaps display a warning if both Y-axes are the same units (e.g. both dollars) because there is little reason to do that - either the values are related and the graph will be hard to parse/misleading, or the values are not related and they probably shouldn't be on the same chart. But I can certainly see a use case for $ v. %, etc.

> display a warning if both Y-axes are the same units because there is little reason to do so OK - let's see a line chart showing the correlation between average daily lunch cost and annual salary :)

A perfect example of "I know what I'm doing, let me do something that is usually disingenuous." :)