point taken, some metrics are provided by steam and world of mouth exists. It is however not all encompassing, and allowing people who are less aware to be scammed (because thats what 2066 is, a scam) is not a good thing. People buying random crap are not hipsters, merely people who dont look around and just see the "recommended for you" section which works as arbitrary as any other recommendation section. "one single tag matching with game you liked, then you must like this game too!"Alterego-X said:First of all, Steam does have a best seller list on the front page. Currently, it's top 10 includes Dark Souls II, Portal II, DayZ, Portal Bundle, Watch Dogs, CS:GO, Rust, Trials Fusion, Space Engineers, and Skullgirls.
If your new claim about average gamers not checking any metrics such as popularity were true, then it's pretty srange that the bestsellers are still consistently games with particularly good press, rather than an entirely random sample of shoverware.
The very fact that games are able to get hugely popular, proves that the average gamer pays attention to popularity, and thus a positive feedback loop can form.
How else do you explain that Earth 2066 only has a maximum of 3 people playing it at the same time, as charted for it a a record?
It is not "the average gamer" buying Earth 2066, the average gamer is buying Dark Souls and Portal. It is a small fringe of contrarians and hipsters and reviewers and self-appointed greatness-seakers, who are willing to dig into unknown, unproven Early Access games for the sake of sampling random games.
Not necessarely. Minecraft alpha was fully palyable, worked and had all the core mechanics in it. Also, Minecraft alpha/beta wasnt on steam to begin with.With definitions that would also filter out early Minecraft. I'm not doubting that you can produce wider definitions of "playable", I'm just saying that such definitions would end up filtering out games that are playable according to one person and unplayable according to another.
your whole argument here is akin to "laws shouldn't exist because someone may think differently"
No, it would be a good business choice. it would bring back the sense of costumer trust that allwoed it to become almost untouchably popular in the first place.It's fine, but in Steam's case, it would be a bad business choice.
They are on their way to encompass the essence of PC gaming. Not just a specific high quality brand, but an universal super-brand inside of which you can find many solid groupings such as AAA games, viral games, or the soon to come user stores, that can serve as the inner quality "brands". The next Minecraft is going to happen inside of it, not outside.
When Rust makes a million sales and Earth 2066 makes hundreds, that right there is the difference between average gamers and people who blindly buy games just because they are on Steam.
snipped whatifs.
If they want to emcompass the essence of PC gaming, they are failing. they themselves admit it and want to close down the greenlight.
Worst case scenario is steam going bancrupt. you know, people who are hobbyist already consider Origin to be a better service now. Steam seems to be sleeping on its popularity, and if this continues they will get into obscurity.
i dont look at the frontpage but other people in this thread mentioned that. it did show up on my recommendation list though.C14N said:Was this actually featured on the front page? I don't check it every day but I've never seen anything like this shown on the front page. Some things haven't been great but even the alphas are usually only the most ambitious ones (stuff like Prison Architect, Day Z and Rust), not something like this which could scarcely be called a game.