Steam is Changing...

[wraith808]

Valve has decided to make an overhaul to the way gamers interact with Steam and how it works.  There's a great breakdown on Kotaku about these changes. 

But to summarize:
1. A new Steam Discovery Queue
2. An expanded recommendations system with a new "endless" recommendation feed
3. A curator system, where people can recommend a collection of games, and you can follow different feeds

It looks like a great update, and I'd like to flesh out the DC curator page.  Unfortunately, they're a bit swamped so I couldn't get it started, but will once the servers stabilize.

What do people here think about these changes?

[Deozaan]

So far I've found it harder to find what I'm interested in. I don't care about curators. I don't care what other random or YouTube/Twitter Famous people recommend. The only recommendations I care about are from some people I actually know, and they will usually tell me "Hey, you should check out this game!" instead of making a review/curation page for me to look at.

"Endless" scrolling things suck. There's no easy to way to link to it or resume where you left off if you click a link and then the back button.

I like the color scheme. I guess.

One thing that I really do like, though, is that it is now very easy to see which games you already own, since there is now an indicator across the game's banner image which shows whether you own it or if it's on your wishlist. That's nice.

[wraith808]

Well, if your group *is* your friends, and you follow them, then you'll get good recommendations.

I've found more than a few of the games that I've bought recently from seeing what friends have been buying and playing.  This seems an extension of this.

[Deozaan]

The new Steam Discovery Queue is worthless. 12 games (at a time) it thinks I may be interested in.

"This game is in your queue because..."

• "It's popular." -- Yeah... I don't really care if it's popular. Not interested.
• "It's a top seller." -- Yeah... this is just another way of saying it's popular. Still not interested.

And that's it. Imagine how well that would work introducing you to other people.

"We recommend you get to know John Doe because..."

• "He's popular."
• "Most other people are getting to know him right now."

But what is he like? What are his interests? Do we have anything in common?

It's totally useless.

How about "This game is in your queue because..."

• "You spent 500 hours playing Terraria and this game is popular among gamers who like Terraria."
• "You spent 300 hours playing Civilization and this game is similar to Civilization."
• "It's a 4X strategy game, and you play a lot of 4X strategy games."
• "A lot of your friends play this game."

[wraith808]

That is what I'm thinking is the next step.  But this particular way- dishing the same content to all is easier to test.