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  • Everything wrong with Steam tags.

    From JAB@21:1/5 to All on Sat Sep 16 10:11:01 2023
    This is something that's always bugged me with Steam Tags, users seem to
    add almost anything which diminishes the use of them. So I'm playing
    Shadow Gambit at the moment and some of the tags are, RPG - well you
    play a set of characters so kinda; RTS - nope it's has almost nothing in
    common with Total Annihilation; Dark Fantasy - it's got supernatural
    pirates but hamming them up for humour hardly seems dark; Character Customisation - I'm not sure I'd count the ability to upgrade a single
    skill for each character as much of a customisation.

    I could go on but won't as I think that's enough to get a mini rant out
    of my system!

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Spalls Hurgenson@21:1/5 to JAB on Sat Sep 16 08:44:20 2023
    On Sat, 16 Sep 2023 10:11:01 +0100, JAB <[email protected]> wrote:

    This is something that's always bugged me with Steam Tags, users seem to
    add almost anything which diminishes the use of them. So I'm playing
    Shadow Gambit at the moment and some of the tags are, RPG - well you
    play a set of characters so kinda; RTS - nope it's has almost nothing in >common with Total Annihilation; Dark Fantasy - it's got supernatural
    pirates but hamming them up for humour hardly seems dark; Character >Customisation - I'm not sure I'd count the ability to upgrade a single
    skill for each character as much of a customisation.

    I could go on but won't as I think that's enough to get a mini rant out
    of my system!

    That's a general problem with all sorts of meta-data. "In this picture
    of a cat you can see, in the very far right corner, the Millenium
    Dome, therefore we must tag it as 'London'". Or, "This book about a
    heroic quest to slay a dragon features two characters who fall in love
    with each other, ergo 'romance'". Or, "This movie about two characters
    meeting and falling in love involves them using computer dating
    service, so let's tag it 'tech'."

    But it's especially bad with games, because there are no clearly
    defined meanings to a lot of these tags. What, exactly, makes an RPG?
    Is it character stats? Inventory management? The ability to 'dress up'
    your characters in different costumes and armors? Dialogue trees that
    allow you to chose your character's behavior? If a game has only one
    of these options, is it an RPG? Yes? No? What's the minimum then? And
    that's just for RPGs.

    And so many games defy easy definitions. Is "Descent" (to use an oldie-but-a-goodie) an FPS? You are zooming about and shooting things
    in first-person, after all. Or is it a space-flight sim? It is in
    space, and you're piloting a space-fighter. And that's a thirty-year
    old game; modern games are much more diverse in their gameplay.

    Because there is no standard, everybody uses their own definitions,
    and applies them as they think are correct. And because Steam just
    applies /all/ the tags, there is no rhyme or reason to them.


    TL;DR: tags are useless unless you precisely define what the tags mean
    and when they can be used beforehand. Which requires a lot more (which
    is to say, any!) effort than Valve likes to put into curating their
    storefront.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Zaghadka@21:1/5 to All on Sat Sep 16 09:05:47 2023
    On Sat, 16 Sep 2023 10:11:01 +0100, in comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action, JAB
    wrote:

    This is something that's always bugged me with Steam Tags, users seem to
    add almost anything which diminishes the use of them. So I'm playing
    Shadow Gambit at the moment and some of the tags are, RPG - well you
    play a set of characters so kinda; RTS - nope it's has almost nothing in >common with Total Annihilation; Dark Fantasy - it's got supernatural
    pirates but hamming them up for humour hardly seems dark; Character >Customisation - I'm not sure I'd count the ability to upgrade a single
    skill for each character as much of a customisation.

    I could go on but won't as I think that's enough to get a mini rant out
    of my system!

    Yeah. That's crowdsourcing gone mad. Valve should only include tags that,
    say, 100 users apply to the game. Something like that. If they want to be
    this lazy that is.

    Useless in its current form, I agree.

    --
    Zag

    No one ever said on their deathbed, 'Gee, I wish I had
    spent more time alone with my computer.' ~Dan(i) Bunten

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Zaghadka@21:1/5 to Spalls Hurgenson on Sat Sep 16 09:03:58 2023
    On Sat, 16 Sep 2023 08:44:20 -0400, in comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action,
    Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

    What, exactly, makes an RPG?
    Is it character stats? Inventory management? The ability...

    Oh jesus fuck. Not this thread again. ;^P

    --
    Zag

    No one ever said on their deathbed, 'Gee, I wish I had
    spent more time alone with my computer.' ~Dan(i) Bunten

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Ross Ridge@21:1/5 to [email protected] on Sat Sep 16 15:06:42 2023
    Zaghadka <[email protected]> wrote:
    Yeah. That's crowdsourcing gone mad. Valve should only include tags that, >say, 100 users apply to the game. Something like that. If they want to be >this lazy that is.

    They already do. There's a threshold that needs to be met before a tag actually shows up on a game. I don't know what that threshold is, and
    it may be dynamic based on the popularity of the game, but I'd guess
    reasonably popular games already do need 100 people to apply a given
    tag before it shows up at all. Of course since Steam only shows the
    most popular tags for a game, for really popular games, it'll take a
    lot more than that threshold for it show up on the store pages. I think
    tags that don't make the cut to show up on the store page, but meet the threshold can still be used to find the game through tag searches though.

    Unfortunately, the problem is more fundamental, people are just bad
    at tagging games. Or at least the people bothering to do it are.
    Some are deliberately bad at it, like those who give children's games
    the "psycological horror" tag. But the biggest problem I think are the
    fanboys who are trying to give their favourite games every possible tag
    in order to attract more players to the game. The other way around is
    a probably also a factor, with fanboys applying their favourite tags to
    as many games as possible.

    If you do see a badly applied tag, you can flag it, and if enough
    people do that, it'll get removed, but that's meant for things like
    often deliberately misused psycological horror tag.

    Personally, I'd prefer a system were the publisher could pick up to
    three tags for their games, and these tags were completely segregated
    from the user defined tags. Right now publishers can only pick a single user-defined tag.

    --
    l/ // Ross Ridge -- The Great HTMU
    [oo][oo] [email protected]
    -()-/()/ http://www.csclub.uwaterloo.ca:11068/
    db //

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From candycanearter07@21:1/5 to Ross Ridge on Sat Sep 16 11:46:52 2023
    On 9/16/23 10:06, Ross Ridge wrote:
    Personally, I'd prefer a system were the publisher could pick up to
    three tags for their games, and these tags were completely segregated
    from the user defined tags. Right now publishers can only pick a single user-defined tag.


    Surprised that's not already a thing, doesn't every other service do that?

    --
    --
    user <candycane> is generated from /dev/urandom

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)