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Steam store page update (discovery, curation, customization, blueness)

It's mediocre. I don't need this feed of recommendations at all, that's what Steam-GAF already does and does well. A lot of wasted space in the design, but I prefer the hues now. Annoyed that I have to go through hoops to get to games' forums. Damn, this is how I feel about the GOG redesign.
 

The Cowboy

Member
Is there no way to disable all the stuff you don't want?, i don't want 50% of my main store page filled with curators, queues or recently updated.
 

Feep

Banned
And so begins #NeoGAFGate

:p
Seriously though, this puts a LOT of power in the hands of a few. TotalBiscuit putting a game up means serious cash for the developer. I'm not saying he'd accept, but you'd imagine lots of folks will offer things.
 
Seriously though, this puts a LOT of power in the hands of a few. TotalBiscuit putting a game up means serious cash for the developer. I'm not saying he'd accept, but you'd imagine lots of folks will offer things.

Youtube personalities and (of course) journalists have been a thing for years now, this is just highlighting the work they've already done. Presumably huge brands will top the curation lists anyways, so it's just another avenue to see their opinions.

That said, it will be interesting to see whether this new layout helps or hinders games releasing on Steam in the future...
 

Lain

Member
Switching from Italian to English made shit appear on the store page for me, which helps making the store page work the way it's supposed to, though I hope they'll fix that soon.

On the other hand items on the wishlist having wishlist written on the game image is driving me crazy.
Adeb.png

Like, why? Why put it there? Why not somewhere else? Why not make it a color like ES does?
 

nbthedude

Member
Follow my curation!

I'm a PhD in Literature and will curate my page with smart games that have smart things tos say. These are games that I would proudly bring into my classroom as I feel their presentation of various themes are rich enough that they could be developed into full lectures and generate great class discussion.

As new games worthy of these titles come to my attention, I will add them to the list, but I promise to be very choosy, highlighting only the best that gaming has to offer in this regard.

http://store.steampowered.com/curator/6856811/
 

TheSeks

Blinded by the luminous glory that is David Bowie's physical manifestation.
Don't like the Blue. I want my Black back. *hiss like a cat at Steam*

I also don't like the curator thing. I mean it's a nice idea in theory but I can't really... "care"... about it.

I also would like to filter out Indies in addition to already filtering out Early Access. Thereby the AAA console port deluge I buy would float to the top instead of a bunch of things I don't really care about popping up in the "queue."

That said, the recommended page seems more hits than misses for me. Probably because I only buy stuff I'm interested in so it's showing mostly stuff I'm interested in already.
 
Well, after going through my queue 140 or so times I've hit the limit on what Steam will allow. When I try to "Not Interested" FF14: A Realm Reborn, it says "There was a problem saving your changes. Please try again later."

Oh well.
 

HariKari

Member
That said, the recommended page seems more hits than misses for me. Probably because I only buy stuff I'm interested in so it's showing mostly stuff I'm interested in already.

"Recommended Tags" for me has been pretty good. I've played some of Dawn of War recently, so "Warhammer 40k" is one of them. Others are more generic like 'Multiplayer'.
 

TheSeks

Blinded by the luminous glory that is David Bowie's physical manifestation.
Well, after going through my queue 140 or so times I've hit the limit on what Steam will allow. When I try to "Not Interested" FF14: A Realm Reborn, it says "There was a problem saving your changes. Please try again later."

Oh well.

Oh, so you can't spam that willingly to stamp out all Indies off your page? Damn it, Volvo...
 

Nzyme32

Member
Seriously though, this puts a LOT of power in the hands of a few. TotalBiscuit putting a game up means serious cash for the developer. I'm not saying he'd accept, but you'd imagine lots of folks will offer things.

As that happens, won't people become disenfranchised with those groups/people if the games are not what they expect or want? Importantly too, I'd hope that the amount of curators and variety of specialisation dramatically increases and is somehow filterable. It will tale a few months to really see if and how some curators game the system, and whether there will be enough variety to make the issue negligible in scale
 

U-R

Member
So, today Valve has casually changed the way the entire videogame industry will work in the upcoming decade.

*Tip of the hat*
 

GeekyDad

Member
Nope, don't care for it. It looks fine, but the previous design was easier to navigate, especially the specials.
 

jblank83

Member
It's mediocre. I don't need this feed of recommendations at all, that's what Steam-GAF already does and does well. A lot of wasted space in the design, but I prefer the hues now. Annoyed that I have to go through hoops to get to games' forums. Damn, this is how I feel about the GOG redesign.

I hate it. I hate that it takes up my entire homepage. I hate that it bumped down the "top sellers, recently released lists" and daily deals sections. I use those. They're useful. This recommendation crap is terrible. I don't give a flying **** what TotalBiscuit thinks I should buy, nor algorithmic purchase recommendations based on the last game I played. I hate that I have to scroll down to get to the stuff I actually want and that I can't modify the layout of the front page.

This stuff isn't useful. Useful would have been to modify the search functionality so I can delimit my own searches based on information like "average session playtime" or "number of players online at 6pm PST". Useful would be opening multiple store tabs, rather than having to back and forth all the time.

As for "curation", it's curation in name only. It's not managing a set of historical artifacts, educating people on something and enlightening them, like a museum curator. It's especially not that with the Twitter-like character limits on "curation" notes. Instead it's recommending a couple of games for purchase. It's a purely mercantile, advertising, selling, self promotion activity, an activity no one will pay attention to unless the curator is already a known media presence (not most of you).

That means it's going to be overrun by big names hunting for more page/video hits, just another metric to brag about, like having 158k followers on Twitter (see TotalBiscuit, PC Gamer, etc). And while Steam "curation" is not a monetized activity, the "curated" reviews can link directly to review pages on websites and youtube videos, which are monetized. So anyone who cares about actual curation, for instance documenting all 2d platforming games available on Steam, is going to be buried by the who's who of video gaming media. With 100,000,000 Steam accounts out there, no one with any interest in selling their brand is going to ignore direct quotes on store pages and links back to their monetized content.

Which would be fine if Steam would allow me to customize the layout of "my homepage" (it's not mine if I can't modify it [no, choosing whether you can tell me about Early Access games or not in the newly released games window is not significant modification]). Then I could get rid of all this crap cluttering up my view and set it up as I see fit.

In closing, here are some useful "curations" taken from store pages:

LogicBots

Recommended By Curators
"i do not recommend this game"


Cho Dengeki Stryker All Ages Version

Recommended By Curators
"A longer VN which Story heavily relies on Shounen tropes and "epic" battles. Some like it, some do not."


StarForge

Recommended By Curators
"É um jogo ainda no "beta" mas podemos ver que os devs estão se esforçando para trazer um produto final legal. É um "survival" + "crafting" espacial."
 

Caffeine

Member
eh not really feeling it too blue stuff moved down they should just let us choose which page we want tbh i liked the old one.
 

kodecraft

Member
Nice update, Now the UI is cleaner and easier to navigate. More casual friendly. Make way for the PC in the living room baby.
 

Chronoja

Member
Absolutely hate it. It's a clustered mess of metro esque squares for shit I don't care about. The only thing's I cared about were, at a glance, seeing what was newly released, and what was currently on sale, the new releases so nicely reduced to a total of 3 games and an extra click to a list completely seperate from the main window. The old scrollable lists did just fine.

edit: nvm

also, their new "in library" : "in wishlist" system is like some stupidly inferior version of enhanced steam. "let's make this tiny little icon and barely perceiveable fading on games you own, you know, something much less striking than entire constrasting colours"
 

Yarbskoo

Member
I find it interesting they replaced "Sort by: Metascore" with "Sort by: User Review Score" in the search screen.

I still wish they had more sorting options for the search function, like an option for sorting by biggest discount, either percentage or dollar difference amount. I also think it would be a good idea to make ESRB ratings more visible, or to have an option to include/exclude games with a specific rating.

Overall though, I like the effort made to giving the community more power over what is and isn't showcased on the storefront, even though I don't personally spend much time there.
 

Kade

Member
I wish there was a way to mark everything with "Mine", "Block", "Zombie" or "Survival" in the name or as tags as Not Interested. It would make my Steam experience a lot better.
 

Lijik

Member
I really wish the recommendations wouldnt autofill with like five games at the top just because I viewed a store page. If I bought the game Id understand, but casually browsing the store shouldnt give me a bunch of a games I dont want to look at.
 

Angry Fork

Member
I feel like everything I want to get to is always some small little button nowhere to be found but huge banners about dumb shit stays in my face. Where's the button to see how many players are online and what the max numbers are.
 

Timeaisis

Member
Already got some guy going around "recommending" everything and then writing "i do not recommend this game" in the description.
 
Too much blue... The new design came out just like that leaked preview a while ago. A lot of things are also taking up so much space now.

But the new features look neat.
 

Pakkidis

Member
Stupid question but how do you become a curator? I can add curators to my homepage but I don't see how I can become one?
 

Pakkidis

Member
Stupid question but how do you become a curator? I can add curators to my homepage but I don't see how I can become one?

Nevermind,

"How can I be a Steam Curator?

Any Steam Community group can become a curator. By default, the officers of all groups have permission to make recommendations as a curator. To get started, go to a Steam Community group that you are an officer of and click the 'Curator' tab.

Click here to see your groups"

I was under the impression that anybody could become one. So I have to start my own community group now? I'll just stick with neogaf
 
Nevermind,

"How can I be a Steam Curator?

Any Steam Community group can become a curator. By default, the officers of all groups have permission to make recommendations as a curator. To get started, go to a Steam Community group that you are an officer of and click the 'Curator' tab.

Click here to see your groups"

I was under the impression that anybody could become one. So I have to start my own community group now? I'll just stick with neogaf

You can just make a group with just you as a member or something. I'm not sure why it's like that.
 

Scrooged

Totally wronger about Nintendo's business decisions.
About time they updated the store front. Looks like a good step in the right direction.

So glad they got rid of those abominable sliding lists.
 

Hanzou

Member
Did you need a client update do use the new store in the client or was it just a refresh that was needed to load it in?
 
I'm liking this layout more simply because I don't feel like I'm looking at countless trash games like I did in the old layout when I first clicked on the store tab.
 
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