I remember being younger and being hit with this realization that not only are there more books than I could read in a lifetime, but more excellent books than I could ever read, even if I had a...
I remember being younger and being hit with this realization that not only are there more books than I could read in a lifetime, but more excellent books than I could ever read, even if I had a perfectly curated-to-me list (and mind you at this age we didn't have "the algorithm" to dictate such suggestions). And at the time, this filled me with great dread -- a certainty that I will be missing something beautiful and worthwhile. I briefly considered that movies and shows have likely breached this same event horizon, but didn't feel I could assert it with the same confidence, nor was I terribly interested in the thought since I liked books and games more.
Video games have always been my favorite medium, I recognized that comparatively it is young with few entries. At the time, it seemed entirely possible I could actually play every excellent-for-me entry... If time were frozen. And at the time this brought me some small comfort. I couldn't tell you when we breached that event horizon, but I can confidently say we're well past it. My backlog anxiety and wallet weep, that old dread lurks in the background too, but in earnest I have learned to be grateful that the medium is expanding and evolving so rapidly. Better to miss beautiful unknowns than to run out of meaningful experiences.
My Steam wishlist has been slowly growing over the past 4 years, whereas it was kept under 10 before then. I still go through and trim it every once in a while, but it's currently at 41. There are...
My Steam wishlist has been slowly growing over the past 4 years, whereas it was kept under 10 before then. I still go through and trim it every once in a while, but it's currently at 41.
There are still games that are an instant buy for me (Hades 2 going 1.0 this week was one of those, it's so worth it if Hades 1 was your thing), but more and more of those are games that have already released. Of those 41 games on my wishlist, 30 are already out, with 8 of those on sale. Games that I want are on sale and I'm not buying them because I have other games to be playing. Of the 11 that haven't released yet, only 3 of them are going to be "instant buy"s upon release with the rest joining that already growing list.
I'm with you on this one, there are amazing games that I'm playing. Experiences that are truly artful, mindless fun, and social experiences among them. I've come to terms with the fact that I won't get to everything on my wishlist. If I were to do another wishlist trim right now there would be 8 games removed from it. That's the price I pay for taking time to enjoy the games I've chosen to enjoy. I'd rather be doing this than rushing to complete everything I'm interested in at the time it comes out and before the next one comes out.
I had an app a while ago I can no longer find called “Gemini” and it’s main thing was it just used some ML to identify photos in your photo library that are good candidates for deletion. It just...
I had an app a while ago I can no longer find called “Gemini” and it’s main thing was it just used some ML to identify photos in your photo library that are good candidates for deletion. It just goes through and gave you a Tinder like interface to keep or lose photos that were either very similar to other photos you have or where one or more people on them are making a derpy face.
I feel like we need more anti-fomo tools like this. You don’t NEED to keep everything. We don’t need stuff staying in our wishlists from 7 years ago that we realistically will never play. Just let some AI show up to declutter.
Apple can reliably identify pictures from the past that will make me cry, they need to do the opposite too and identify pictures I don’t care about and will never care about.
You put that so beautifully! I agree, it's a mixed feeling for me as well. The fear of not being able to experience everything, balanced by the liberation I feel knowing I can drop a game at any...
You put that so beautifully! I agree, it's a mixed feeling for me as well. The fear of not being able to experience everything, balanced by the liberation I feel knowing I can drop a game at any time, and there'll be so many others I can pick up, to suit my wants in that moment
I struggle with being too much of a completionist and achievement chaser at times, playing games beyond the point where they're fun anymore, and thinking on the optimistic side of there being too many amazing games, can definitely help me with that bad habit
You can also flip this around and conclude that, no matter how much you read, or how old you will become, there will always be something interesting and beautiful to read, watch or play. Yes, you...
I remember being younger and being hit with this realization that not only are there more books than I could read in a lifetime, but more excellent books than I could ever read, even if I had a perfectly curated-to-me list (and mind you at this age we didn't have "the algorithm" to dictate such suggestions). And at the time, this filled me with great dread -- a certainty that I will be missing something beautiful and worthwhile.
You can also flip this around and conclude that, no matter how much you read, or how old you will become, there will always be something interesting and beautiful to read, watch or play.
Yes, you will not be able to consume it all. But that goes for countless things that are enjoyable. You cannot eat all the candy in your supermarket, let alone the candy of all the supermarkets. No-one is bothered by this.
Since I started doing audio books the speed that I finish books and/or series has probably more than doubled. I almost feel like the opposite - like I have a fear that I will consume everything!...
Since I started doing audio books the speed that I finish books and/or series has probably more than doubled. I almost feel like the opposite - like I have a fear that I will consume everything! Sometimes I listen to the books at 2x speed because it helps me relax but it feels wasteful.
The part of the article that implies that discoverability needs improving in the industry is a part I'm on board with. As the end-user though I have no qualms about being spoiled for choice. I...
The part of the article that implies that discoverability needs improving in the industry is a part I'm on board with.
As the end-user though I have no qualms about being spoiled for choice. I feel like games could permanently stop releasing today and I'd probably still be gaming for the rest of my life.
It's a paradox in terms of marketing. The games most needing discoverability are the ones that likely never get it. Meanwhile, all that advertising will be focused on games that will probably be...
It's a paradox in terms of marketing. The games most needing discoverability are the ones that likely never get it. Meanwhile, all that advertising will be focused on games that will probably be discovered anyway by any popularity sort.
The Hidden Gems of Steam 250 is a good start to the kinds of algorithm I'd like to see. Something looking for highly rated games with some, but not a lot of reviews. Some manual curation is inevitable here to really make this effective, though.
This is a problem that I think most players don't directly experience, it affects developers more than it affects players, I think, unless there are gamers out there who are unsatisfied by the...
This is a problem that I think most players don't directly experience, it affects developers more than it affects players, I think, unless there are gamers out there who are unsatisfied by the offerings they can find and might really enjoy something they can't find. Personally though, I can't remember the last time I truly had nothing I was excited to play or felt like there were no games available to me that met my tastes. There are times when I've opened up my game library and thought, "I don't feel like playing any of these" but I have come to believe this problem actually has nothing to do with the available selection and wouldn't be solved by having some other, "just right" game, it's a psychological one related to burning out on the activity as a whole, from time to time, and a natural experience I go through cyclically with all my hobbies and interests.
Anyway, I don't have a specific desired solution and my experience with this topic is all the secondhand "oh yeah I've heard indie devs talk about this" type of experience.
That part of my comment was more meant to express in shorter form that I noticed the article touches upon discoverability and I've heard before that it can be a challenge, and that I wanted to indicate not being ideologically opposed to it. In other words more an expression of empathy and solidarity with the notion and desire for discoverability, but no firsthand experience. I'm taking indie devs' word of the problem's existence in good faith because, probably by it's very nature, I can't tell if it's observable by an end user such as myself.
I can tell something is up because several of the lesser-known indies I find out about are ones that I found out about through word of mouth or social media, and not on platforms such as Steam which feels to me like the only evidence of the problem I can observe firsthand. But I typically find out about games by being terminally online and discussing with other gamers, and I do think my tastes are honed enough to find unknown games in a style I like through direct research if I really want to play something new. In the past for instance I have very deliberately searched specific itch.io tags and categories, but I know that's not the norm for the mainstream who kinda need something to show up at a trailer showcase to know it exists.
Edit: I have edited this message like 139204872390847 times since posting it, I think I'm done editing it now, sorry.
The gift link comes from the article author's Bluesky account I saw this over on Resetera, and in that thread, I see overwhelming agreement, thousands of games coming out every single year, it's...
The gift link comes from the article author's Bluesky account
I saw this over on Resetera, and in that thread, I see overwhelming agreement, thousands of games coming out every single year, it's well, overwhelming
Over the past few years, the video-game industry has faced a difficult contraction period during which companies have laid off thousands of employees due to flattened growth. There have been many reasons for this shift, such as huge, Covid-era investments that didn’t pan out. But one problem stands above the rest — there are too many video games.
In 2024, a staggering 18,626 games were released on Steam, according to SteamDB, a website that tracks data on the popular PC platform. That’s an increase of around 93% from 2020, when 9,656 games were released.
Most of last year’s Steam games went undiscovered and unplayed by the majority of users. But a surprising number were received quite well. Of the 1,431 games released last year that garnered more than 500 reviews — an indication that they were played by at least a few thousand people — more than 260 were rated positively by 90% or more of the players. More than 800 scored 80% or better.
In other words, this isn’t like the 1980s, when the US gaming market crashed due to a flood of poorly made products. Today, there are too many video games, and many of them are great.
I wish there was more heterogeneity in video games (and perhaps all media) distribution, community building, and discovery. I like steam as a platform and launcher, but by having almost all games...
I wish there was more heterogeneity in video games (and perhaps all media) distribution, community building, and discovery. I like steam as a platform and launcher, but by having almost all games funneled through its storefront (yes I'm aware of itch, GOG, epic, etc but I expect it's equivalent to saying that there are other search engines than Google) on PC it encourages a lot of snap approval rating shopping and an overload of games. As a consumer I'll just only look at and play the top 0.01% of games because, well, why wouldn't I? Steam makes that easy and there's many upsides for me individually to play the current community consensus best games in any niche. As an industry though, I expect it means that most releases are feast or famine. I've wondered if and how platforms could get players to play and build communities around games further down the tail of any given genre. In many cases players would get a game 95% as good as the market leader and the industry might be healthier for it. If there were more store fronts, more visible communities, more independent discovery methods, etc than just getting stuff through steam then there might at least be different consensus on the top set of games in any given niche available to a particular consumer.
This is kind of where Steam curators were supposed to come in, to make narrower views of the massive Steam store, but like most things Valve does, it was half-baked, half-assed, and abandoned...
This is kind of where Steam curators were supposed to come in, to make narrower views of the massive Steam store, but like most things Valve does, it was half-baked, half-assed, and abandoned without even being meaningfully functional.
If the game industry finds this issue a problem, they should get a discovery consortium together and build something that people can use to help connect each other with games. Something that isn't owned by one company/store/platform, that isn't built as a lowest common denominator marketing arm for mass releases, and where the companies do their diligence to support it but step back and let people actually be the actors.
If someone pretty much picks up the same games I do (and more importantly, passes the same games I pass), they shouldn't need to be a professional influencer for me to see when they like something I haven't noticed. That should be easy technology, but it needs to be done one place for everything, and user oriented so we can tune out the noise.
The problem is that kind of platform will always become pay-to-play if it's run by industry giants. If I'm Ubisoft, Balatro is a threat to my releases. If I'm Epic, I want my players grinding...
The problem is that kind of platform will always become pay-to-play if it's run by industry giants.
If I'm Ubisoft, Balatro is a threat to my releases. If I'm Epic, I want my players grinding their battle pass. Selling new games isn't the whole story anymore, and attention is a limited commodity.
Arguably, Discord is the closest thing we have to an organic discovery platform, and even they're starting to increase ads via quests because major publishers would love it if more status messages mentioned their game.
Ultimately, Discord is just a small "town square" of sorts, but skewed towards certain subjects. Joining a specific gaming discord will usually have topics to talk about other games or even other...
Ultimately, Discord is just a small "town square" of sorts, but skewed towards certain subjects. Joining a specific gaming discord will usually have topics to talk about other games or even other topics in general.
Those that become regulars and engage on those other non-main channels will likely talking about and bring up games similar to what that server mainly talks about. In my example, I have an active guild for a game and the #off-topic channel has people talk about all kinds of other games. Be it console games, F2P stuff, old games getting updates and patches, or even some small time games they just share. It's about as close to "word of mouth" as you can get.
More public channels can definitely be gamed, though. Larger gaming channels can definiteyl blur between "community" and "ad".
Monopoly is inevitable if nothing else otherwise tries to disrupt the natural course of things. Not just because market leaders will inevitably use their power to ensure their market dominance,...
Monopoly is inevitable if nothing else otherwise tries to disrupt the natural course of things. Not just because market leaders will inevitably use their power to ensure their market dominance, but because consumers fall into their own network effects and build habits around that service. People naturally want all their eggs in one basket, and that's the really dangerous part about market domination.
There are ways to get the best of both worlds. As an example, if your interface was the central hub and all other stores hooked into that frontend UI to provide their service. An RSS feed is a great example, and that's supposed to be what federation does (but in practice, many of these frontend UX's suck. But that's a whole other topic). Email is sort of like this as well in terms of the protocol allowing a variety of domains to communcate, though you still do store your mail onto someone elses servers
But obviously, most companies would not desire this outcome.
Any given person will have a fairly narrow range of games they are interested in playing. The issue is really poor discoverability. Taking Steam as the largest game platform the hit rate for me...
Any given person will have a fairly narrow range of games they are interested in playing.
The issue is really poor discoverability. Taking Steam as the largest game platform the hit rate for me for any recommendations is less than one percent, I also don't feel the relevancy is better than random distribution. And that is for adding the game to a wishlist and forgetting about it until a deep sale. Organic options are also lacking. Reddit used to have good communities for any particular niche here and some are still shambling along.
Myself I have strong a preference for grind free atmospheric games with good and internaly consistent storytelling that neither go into full on grimdark or force the player into their One True Way to play the game. I particularly dislike outside the game universe restrictions, such as for save games - add an option to settings which is literally a win win with no downsides, done.
Actually fnding something along those lines is hit and miss.
This may be true for some people, but honestly I've found I have pretty broad genre preferences when it comes to gaming (and I assume for the sake of this comment that I'm not some weird outlier)....
Any given person will have a fairly narrow range of games they are interested in playing.
This may be true for some people, but honestly I've found I have pretty broad genre preferences when it comes to gaming (and I assume for the sake of this comment that I'm not some weird outlier). My collection is mostly focused on indie games, but even that's not a strict preference -- it has more to do with trends in the AAA space not really aligning with my tastes most of the time. But I doubt I'm the only one with pretty broad and eclectic genre preferences!
Discoverability is a problem, but more for indie devs than for consumers imo. Unless the range of games you're interested in truly is super narrow, there's no shortage of options, and I've found Steam is good at recommending new titles based on stuff I've bought and liked. Not everything is gold, but it's good at pointing me towards stuff that's at least mid. Where discoverability sucks is if you're a developer trying to make sure people who'd like your game see it.
I tend to get games based in large part on word-of-mouth and reviews, though. I've bought several games solely on the basis of Yahtzee Croshaw's review making it clear that they're doing something interesting and are my cup of tea -- his reviews are fun to watch, but conveniently his opinions and taste align well enough with my own for me to buy games based solely on his thoughts and opinions. The channel he's part of, Second Wind, has also started a series that focuses on talking about new indie games to help with this kind of word-of-mouth discoverability. Honestly, I think independent games journalism is probably the most effective solution to any discoverability problem, and it's a shame there are so few outlets these days that aren't corporate owned.
For those who aren't aware, Steam's Interactive Recommender is a useful albeit hidden tool for discovering games. I would suggest moving the slider to "niche" and sorting from there.
I am aware of it and have used it extensively. It definitely helps and brings my personal hitrate up to around 1% I mentioned. I had most luck with recomendation threads since that means someone...
I am aware of it and have used it extensively. It definitely helps and brings my personal hitrate up to around 1% I mentioned.
I had most luck with recomendation threads since that means someone both decided it fits the request, probably, and cared enough about the game to mention it but that needs places for that to happen. Tildes is small and dedicated forums are hard to find.
Do you have any game recommendations that meet all of your criteria? I also think I might like what you've described. :)
Myself I have strong a preference for grind free atmospheric games with good and internaly consistent storytelling that neither go into full on grimdark or force the player into their One True Way to play the game.
Do you have any game recommendations that meet all of your criteria? I also think I might like what you've described. :)
Less all the criteria and more pick two or good enough. Just a list to not go offtopic too much Subnautica - the ambiance is really good, grind is not too bad, story is fine Titan Outpost - cool...
Less all the criteria and more pick two or good enough.
Just a list to not go offtopic too much
Subnautica - the ambiance is really good, grind is not too bad, story is fine
Titan Outpost - cool lonely atmosphere, branching and jank
Dex - cyberpunk vibes, story is there - a lot will depend on if the player gets sucked in by the aesthetic or not
Golem Creation Kit - weird unexpected story direction and light on story, short, unusual
Invincible - cool retro futuristic aesthetic, I am not too fond of some plot points but generally fine, mystery game, light on gameplay
Golden Treasure The Great Green - dragon hatchling perspective, font and word choice differentiation of characters, life journey
Solstice - visual novel, remote setting, mystery, personal focus
If people are interested I am willing to go more into detail and make separate thread, or maybe I'll make it anyway
As a lifelong gamer, it's interesting seeing the industry start to mature and saturate a bit. I do like that I have a million choices on what to play these days and it's almost hard to find bad...
As a lifelong gamer, it's interesting seeing the industry start to mature and saturate a bit. I do like that I have a million choices on what to play these days and it's almost hard to find bad games. That said, there was something a bit fun about gaming pre 2012 or so when there were a handful of releases each year that everyone bought and there was a lot of buzz for those games and all of your gamers friends were playing the same games. Nowadays, gaming is so wide that while you still have some games doing that (Baldur's Gate 3, as an example), it seems that fewer games are becoming long lasting cultural shifting pieces of media and that games tend to "come and go" more often. Maybe it's just nostalgia or maybe I don't immerse myself in gaming spaces as much. I don't think it's a bad thing that we have "too many" games now, but it's just an interesting shift. We're unlikely to see another game that globally shifts culture like World of Warcraft or Halo, but yet we still have games that become incredibly special pieces of art and influence their communities.
I'm kind of just rambling, I'm not really trying to make a point, just observing that gaming definitely does feel more saturated and "established" nowadays, for better or worse.
There’s a part of me that hopes this signals the end of the monolithic developer/publisher model. Granted, it’s something that has been weakening for a while, but still is holding for the most...
There’s a part of me that hopes this signals the end of the monolithic developer/publisher model. Granted, it’s something that has been weakening for a while, but still is holding for the most part. That model lead to studios having to crunch constantly, deal with absurdly high levels of stress because of impossible expectations, and only be shuttered and have everyone fired or shuffled to the next labor exploitation factories after the impossible doesn’t happen and they decide to shutter the entire studio. There are countless people who have quit the entire industry because of how bad their experience was with these big monied studios. All for games that are either the same as something that already exists or is barely iterative.
I’m very much in the “games are art” camp, and I think that outside pressure from monied interests is what produces bland art. Sport Game 2026 is still art even if it is just someone tracing over Sport Game 2025, but that doesn’t mean that it’s worth me paying any attention to. Big name sequels outside of sports are not nearly so egregious, but they are still close enough that it doesn’t interest me. In the meanwhile I have often purchased video games just because they have interesting music, visuals, story, or gameplay, even if the total package isn’t very fun.
Games from other people are not meant to be played. They are supposed to motivate you to download Godot or SDL3 and make your own to play with your friends.[citation needed] Making games can be...
Games from other people are not meant to be played. They are supposed to motivate you to download Godot or SDL3 and make your own to play with your friends.[citation needed]
Making games can be quite exciting. When you engage with e.g. geometry, play time is tens of hours easily. When you add lights, it grows to hundreds. Making assets is ten to ten thousand hours easily. Just skimming 2D animation principles will eat your afternoon. And all that before you even consider story or mechanics.
I remember being younger and being hit with this realization that not only are there more books than I could read in a lifetime, but more excellent books than I could ever read, even if I had a perfectly curated-to-me list (and mind you at this age we didn't have "the algorithm" to dictate such suggestions). And at the time, this filled me with great dread -- a certainty that I will be missing something beautiful and worthwhile. I briefly considered that movies and shows have likely breached this same event horizon, but didn't feel I could assert it with the same confidence, nor was I terribly interested in the thought since I liked books and games more.
Video games have always been my favorite medium, I recognized that comparatively it is young with few entries. At the time, it seemed entirely possible I could actually play every excellent-for-me entry... If time were frozen. And at the time this brought me some small comfort. I couldn't tell you when we breached that event horizon, but I can confidently say we're well past it. My backlog anxiety and wallet weep, that old dread lurks in the background too, but in earnest I have learned to be grateful that the medium is expanding and evolving so rapidly. Better to miss beautiful unknowns than to run out of meaningful experiences.
My Steam wishlist has been slowly growing over the past 4 years, whereas it was kept under 10 before then. I still go through and trim it every once in a while, but it's currently at 41.
There are still games that are an instant buy for me (Hades 2 going 1.0 this week was one of those, it's so worth it if Hades 1 was your thing), but more and more of those are games that have already released. Of those 41 games on my wishlist, 30 are already out, with 8 of those on sale. Games that I want are on sale and I'm not buying them because I have other games to be playing. Of the 11 that haven't released yet, only 3 of them are going to be "instant buy"s upon release with the rest joining that already growing list.
I'm with you on this one, there are amazing games that I'm playing. Experiences that are truly artful, mindless fun, and social experiences among them. I've come to terms with the fact that I won't get to everything on my wishlist. If I were to do another wishlist trim right now there would be 8 games removed from it. That's the price I pay for taking time to enjoy the games I've chosen to enjoy. I'd rather be doing this than rushing to complete everything I'm interested in at the time it comes out and before the next one comes out.
I had an app a while ago I can no longer find called “Gemini” and it’s main thing was it just used some ML to identify photos in your photo library that are good candidates for deletion. It just goes through and gave you a Tinder like interface to keep or lose photos that were either very similar to other photos you have or where one or more people on them are making a derpy face.
I feel like we need more anti-fomo tools like this. You don’t NEED to keep everything. We don’t need stuff staying in our wishlists from 7 years ago that we realistically will never play. Just let some AI show up to declutter.
Apple can reliably identify pictures from the past that will make me cry, they need to do the opposite too and identify pictures I don’t care about and will never care about.
You put that so beautifully! I agree, it's a mixed feeling for me as well. The fear of not being able to experience everything, balanced by the liberation I feel knowing I can drop a game at any time, and there'll be so many others I can pick up, to suit my wants in that moment
I struggle with being too much of a completionist and achievement chaser at times, playing games beyond the point where they're fun anymore, and thinking on the optimistic side of there being too many amazing games, can definitely help me with that bad habit
You can also flip this around and conclude that, no matter how much you read, or how old you will become, there will always be something interesting and beautiful to read, watch or play.
Yes, you will not be able to consume it all. But that goes for countless things that are enjoyable. You cannot eat all the candy in your supermarket, let alone the candy of all the supermarkets. No-one is bothered by this.
Since I started doing audio books the speed that I finish books and/or series has probably more than doubled. I almost feel like the opposite - like I have a fear that I will consume everything! Sometimes I listen to the books at 2x speed because it helps me relax but it feels wasteful.
The part of the article that implies that discoverability needs improving in the industry is a part I'm on board with.
As the end-user though I have no qualms about being spoiled for choice. I feel like games could permanently stop releasing today and I'd probably still be gaming for the rest of my life.
How would you like discoverability to improve? Discord, Steam, trusted reviewers (like NintendoLife), and best-of lists have always worked for me.
It's a paradox in terms of marketing. The games most needing discoverability are the ones that likely never get it. Meanwhile, all that advertising will be focused on games that will probably be discovered anyway by any popularity sort.
The Hidden Gems of Steam 250 is a good start to the kinds of algorithm I'd like to see. Something looking for highly rated games with some, but not a lot of reviews. Some manual curation is inevitable here to really make this effective, though.
This is a problem that I think most players don't directly experience, it affects developers more than it affects players, I think, unless there are gamers out there who are unsatisfied by the offerings they can find and might really enjoy something they can't find. Personally though, I can't remember the last time I truly had nothing I was excited to play or felt like there were no games available to me that met my tastes. There are times when I've opened up my game library and thought, "I don't feel like playing any of these" but I have come to believe this problem actually has nothing to do with the available selection and wouldn't be solved by having some other, "just right" game, it's a psychological one related to burning out on the activity as a whole, from time to time, and a natural experience I go through cyclically with all my hobbies and interests.
Anyway, I don't have a specific desired solution and my experience with this topic is all the secondhand "oh yeah I've heard indie devs talk about this" type of experience.
That part of my comment was more meant to express in shorter form that I noticed the article touches upon discoverability and I've heard before that it can be a challenge, and that I wanted to indicate not being ideologically opposed to it. In other words more an expression of empathy and solidarity with the notion and desire for discoverability, but no firsthand experience. I'm taking indie devs' word of the problem's existence in good faith because, probably by it's very nature, I can't tell if it's observable by an end user such as myself.
I can tell something is up because several of the lesser-known indies I find out about are ones that I found out about through word of mouth or social media, and not on platforms such as Steam which feels to me like the only evidence of the problem I can observe firsthand. But I typically find out about games by being terminally online and discussing with other gamers, and I do think my tastes are honed enough to find unknown games in a style I like through direct research if I really want to play something new. In the past for instance I have very deliberately searched specific itch.io tags and categories, but I know that's not the norm for the mainstream who kinda need something to show up at a trailer showcase to know it exists.
Edit: I have edited this message like 139204872390847 times since posting it, I think I'm done editing it now, sorry.
The gift link comes from the article author's Bluesky account
I saw this over on Resetera, and in that thread, I see overwhelming agreement, thousands of games coming out every single year, it's well, overwhelming
I wish there was more heterogeneity in video games (and perhaps all media) distribution, community building, and discovery. I like steam as a platform and launcher, but by having almost all games funneled through its storefront (yes I'm aware of itch, GOG, epic, etc but I expect it's equivalent to saying that there are other search engines than Google) on PC it encourages a lot of snap approval rating shopping and an overload of games. As a consumer I'll just only look at and play the top 0.01% of games because, well, why wouldn't I? Steam makes that easy and there's many upsides for me individually to play the current community consensus best games in any niche. As an industry though, I expect it means that most releases are feast or famine. I've wondered if and how platforms could get players to play and build communities around games further down the tail of any given genre. In many cases players would get a game 95% as good as the market leader and the industry might be healthier for it. If there were more store fronts, more visible communities, more independent discovery methods, etc than just getting stuff through steam then there might at least be different consensus on the top set of games in any given niche available to a particular consumer.
This is kind of where Steam curators were supposed to come in, to make narrower views of the massive Steam store, but like most things Valve does, it was half-baked, half-assed, and abandoned without even being meaningfully functional.
If the game industry finds this issue a problem, they should get a discovery consortium together and build something that people can use to help connect each other with games. Something that isn't owned by one company/store/platform, that isn't built as a lowest common denominator marketing arm for mass releases, and where the companies do their diligence to support it but step back and let people actually be the actors.
If someone pretty much picks up the same games I do (and more importantly, passes the same games I pass), they shouldn't need to be a professional influencer for me to see when they like something I haven't noticed. That should be easy technology, but it needs to be done one place for everything, and user oriented so we can tune out the noise.
The problem is that kind of platform will always become pay-to-play if it's run by industry giants.
If I'm Ubisoft, Balatro is a threat to my releases. If I'm Epic, I want my players grinding their battle pass. Selling new games isn't the whole story anymore, and attention is a limited commodity.
Arguably, Discord is the closest thing we have to an organic discovery platform, and even they're starting to increase ads via quests because major publishers would love it if more status messages mentioned their game.
I'm "old" and rarely use discord. How do you use it to discover games?
Ultimately, Discord is just a small "town square" of sorts, but skewed towards certain subjects. Joining a specific gaming discord will usually have topics to talk about other games or even other topics in general.
Those that become regulars and engage on those other non-main channels will likely talking about and bring up games similar to what that server mainly talks about. In my example, I have an active guild for a game and the #off-topic channel has people talk about all kinds of other games. Be it console games, F2P stuff, old games getting updates and patches, or even some small time games they just share. It's about as close to "word of mouth" as you can get.
More public channels can definitely be gamed, though. Larger gaming channels can definiteyl blur between "community" and "ad".
Monopoly is inevitable if nothing else otherwise tries to disrupt the natural course of things. Not just because market leaders will inevitably use their power to ensure their market dominance, but because consumers fall into their own network effects and build habits around that service. People naturally want all their eggs in one basket, and that's the really dangerous part about market domination.
There are ways to get the best of both worlds. As an example, if your interface was the central hub and all other stores hooked into that frontend UI to provide their service. An RSS feed is a great example, and that's supposed to be what federation does (but in practice, many of these frontend UX's suck. But that's a whole other topic). Email is sort of like this as well in terms of the protocol allowing a variety of domains to communcate, though you still do store your mail onto someone elses servers
But obviously, most companies would not desire this outcome.
Any given person will have a fairly narrow range of games they are interested in playing.
The issue is really poor discoverability. Taking Steam as the largest game platform the hit rate for me for any recommendations is less than one percent, I also don't feel the relevancy is better than random distribution. And that is for adding the game to a wishlist and forgetting about it until a deep sale. Organic options are also lacking. Reddit used to have good communities for any particular niche here and some are still shambling along.
Myself I have strong a preference for grind free atmospheric games with good and internaly consistent storytelling that neither go into full on grimdark or force the player into their One True Way to play the game. I particularly dislike outside the game universe restrictions, such as for save games - add an option to settings which is literally a win win with no downsides, done.
Actually fnding something along those lines is hit and miss.
This may be true for some people, but honestly I've found I have pretty broad genre preferences when it comes to gaming (and I assume for the sake of this comment that I'm not some weird outlier). My collection is mostly focused on indie games, but even that's not a strict preference -- it has more to do with trends in the AAA space not really aligning with my tastes most of the time. But I doubt I'm the only one with pretty broad and eclectic genre preferences!
Discoverability is a problem, but more for indie devs than for consumers imo. Unless the range of games you're interested in truly is super narrow, there's no shortage of options, and I've found Steam is good at recommending new titles based on stuff I've bought and liked. Not everything is gold, but it's good at pointing me towards stuff that's at least mid. Where discoverability sucks is if you're a developer trying to make sure people who'd like your game see it.
I tend to get games based in large part on word-of-mouth and reviews, though. I've bought several games solely on the basis of Yahtzee Croshaw's review making it clear that they're doing something interesting and are my cup of tea -- his reviews are fun to watch, but conveniently his opinions and taste align well enough with my own for me to buy games based solely on his thoughts and opinions. The channel he's part of, Second Wind, has also started a series that focuses on talking about new indie games to help with this kind of word-of-mouth discoverability. Honestly, I think independent games journalism is probably the most effective solution to any discoverability problem, and it's a shame there are so few outlets these days that aren't corporate owned.
For those who aren't aware, Steam's Interactive Recommender is a useful albeit hidden tool for discovering games.
I would suggest moving the slider to "niche" and sorting from there.
I am aware of it and have used it extensively. It definitely helps and brings my personal hitrate up to around 1% I mentioned.
I had most luck with recomendation threads since that means someone both decided it fits the request, probably, and cared enough about the game to mention it but that needs places for that to happen. Tildes is small and dedicated forums are hard to find.
Do you have any game recommendations that meet all of your criteria? I also think I might like what you've described. :)
Less all the criteria and more pick two or good enough.
Just a list to not go offtopic too much
Subnautica - the ambiance is really good, grind is not too bad, story is fine
Titan Outpost - cool lonely atmosphere, branching and jank
Dex - cyberpunk vibes, story is there - a lot will depend on if the player gets sucked in by the aesthetic or not
Golem Creation Kit - weird unexpected story direction and light on story, short, unusual
Invincible - cool retro futuristic aesthetic, I am not too fond of some plot points but generally fine, mystery game, light on gameplay
Golden Treasure The Great Green - dragon hatchling perspective, font and word choice differentiation of characters, life journey
Solstice - visual novel, remote setting, mystery, personal focus
If people are interested I am willing to go more into detail and make separate thread, or maybe I'll make it anyway
As a lifelong gamer, it's interesting seeing the industry start to mature and saturate a bit. I do like that I have a million choices on what to play these days and it's almost hard to find bad games. That said, there was something a bit fun about gaming pre 2012 or so when there were a handful of releases each year that everyone bought and there was a lot of buzz for those games and all of your gamers friends were playing the same games. Nowadays, gaming is so wide that while you still have some games doing that (Baldur's Gate 3, as an example), it seems that fewer games are becoming long lasting cultural shifting pieces of media and that games tend to "come and go" more often. Maybe it's just nostalgia or maybe I don't immerse myself in gaming spaces as much. I don't think it's a bad thing that we have "too many" games now, but it's just an interesting shift. We're unlikely to see another game that globally shifts culture like World of Warcraft or Halo, but yet we still have games that become incredibly special pieces of art and influence their communities.
I'm kind of just rambling, I'm not really trying to make a point, just observing that gaming definitely does feel more saturated and "established" nowadays, for better or worse.
There’s a part of me that hopes this signals the end of the monolithic developer/publisher model. Granted, it’s something that has been weakening for a while, but still is holding for the most part. That model lead to studios having to crunch constantly, deal with absurdly high levels of stress because of impossible expectations, and only be shuttered and have everyone fired or shuffled to the next labor exploitation factories after the impossible doesn’t happen and they decide to shutter the entire studio. There are countless people who have quit the entire industry because of how bad their experience was with these big monied studios. All for games that are either the same as something that already exists or is barely iterative.
I’m very much in the “games are art” camp, and I think that outside pressure from monied interests is what produces bland art. Sport Game 2026 is still art even if it is just someone tracing over Sport Game 2025, but that doesn’t mean that it’s worth me paying any attention to. Big name sequels outside of sports are not nearly so egregious, but they are still close enough that it doesn’t interest me. In the meanwhile I have often purchased video games just because they have interesting music, visuals, story, or gameplay, even if the total package isn’t very fun.
Games from other people are not meant to be played. They are supposed to motivate you to download Godot or SDL3 and make your own to play with your friends.[citation needed]
Making games can be quite exciting. When you engage with e.g. geometry, play time is tens of hours easily. When you add lights, it grows to hundreds. Making assets is ten to ten thousand hours easily. Just skimming 2D animation principles will eat your afternoon. And all that before you even consider story or mechanics.
Who cares how many games are already out there?