Steam’s discovery algorithm killed my sales

Re:Steam’s discovery algorithm killed my sales by j-c-hewitt on Monday December 03, 2018 @01:05PM (#18591153)

Steam's discovery and categorization are pretty awful. Despite never having purchased an anime visual novel, played one, or even looked at a store page for one, Steam advertised them to me nonstop on the front page. I blacklisted anime. Problem solved. But then I just get lots of trash tier roguelikes. A couple years later, I realized that blacklisting anime actually blacklisted all Japanese games entirely -- even those without an anime art style, which is too bad.

My guess is that because those games are so inexpensive, they probably sell a ton of units irrespective of price and category, and if the system is optimized to show stuff that is moving a lot of units in a short period of time, it will bubble to the top.

The other day, the only good recommendation I've seen in a long time came up: Battle Brothers has a new DLC, even long after the devs said they were not going to make any. But that's the only one I can really think of.

I think most personalization features on marketplaces are kind of overrated. I care way, way, way more about sales than I care about 'personalization.' I am just about never going to buy something at full retail apart from daily essentials.

I think his problem more realistically is that his category is extremely weird. Adventure solitaire RPG? How would you even begin to SEO that product page in a way that didn't cause a ton of confusion?

Even something like Thronebreaker, which is basically a solo player card game RPG, does not try to distinguish itself on search. It promotes itself based on the strength of the Witcher brand and on Gwent.

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Re:Steam’s discovery algorithm killed my sales by saulrh on Monday December 03, 2018 @08:19PM (#18594956)

> Despite never having purchased an anime visual novel, played one, or even looked at a store page for one

I'm going to be honest, given this information I'm wondering how you know you hate them. Any individual recommendation is likely low-quality, but that's mostly thanks to Sturgeon's law - Steam certainly has a good enough grasp of what I'm looking for in a game to point me at the right genres.

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Re:Steam’s discovery algorithm killed my sales by bfrydl on Tuesday December 04, 2018 @10:17AM (#18600108)

Honestly man I don't need to play an anime visual novel to know I won't like it. I don't like visual novels and if it's anime it's probably about high schoolers.

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Re:Steam’s discovery algorithm killed my sales by saulrh on Tuesday December 04, 2018 @02:42PM (#18602963)

...Right. Okay. Stereotypes and a failure to do basic research is not a reason to disregard an entire genre. Go play Umineko and Steins;Gate. Have fun.

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Re:Steam’s discovery algorithm killed my sales by RugnirViking on Wednesday December 05, 2018 @06:34AM (#18607375)

You're missing the point here; If I wanted to block shooters, would you try to defend shooters - saying that they don't influence young kids to shoot up school etc.

You would be right of course, but thats not the point. It's not harming anybody, and nobody has to use such a feature.

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Re:Steam’s discovery algorithm killed my sales by saulrh on Thursday December 06, 2018 @04:19AM (#18616495)

If you'd told me you had a library of 3d action-adventure games and fighting games and hated shooters because they were plotless, mindless gorefests, I would recommend Portal, Half-Life 2, and Halo. They are dissimilar enough from genre's stereotypical dreck that I'd recommend them even assuming your statement was completely accurate, and good enough in absolute terms that I think you'd be likely to enjoy them. I agree that there are a ton of awful VNs out there, just like there are a ton of awful shooters, but I hate seeing people throwing the baby out with the bathwater based on sweeping generalizations that simply aren't correct.

If you want more specifics: You complained about VNs as being "anime" and then said that all anime was about high schoolers. I provided recommendations for high-quality VNs that were neither anime nor about high school.

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Re:Steam’s discovery algorithm killed my sales by j-c-hewitt on Tuesday December 04, 2018 @10:46AM (#18600409)

I have 344 games in my library accumulated since the day Steam came out over 10 years ago. They fit pretty neatly into RPG, action/FPS, strategy, and the occasional odd indie that is hard to categorize. Nothing there in my purchase or play history indicates that I want to buy a $0.99 high school drama. Chances are I will never buy one until I die at this point. One issue might also just be that I own everything I'm likely to buy, so it just runs out of stuff to suggest.

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Re:Steam’s discovery algorithm killed my sales by saulrh on Tuesday December 04, 2018 @02:37PM (#18602917)

Yeaaah, knowing you're into RPGs and random indies, I'd recommend JRPGs, and if you already have any JRPGs I'd add VNs. Certainly the options involving less high school relationship drama, which is why I say that the specifics are an issue and that 90% of everything is crap, but, well, there are some extraordinarily good non-teenage-relationship-drama stories out there in JRPG and VN land.

Some recs in that direction, based on what's presumably a collection of western RPGs and FPS games: Baten Kaitos (gamecube), Most Final Fantasy games in the single digits, Golden Sun I and II (gameboy advance), Umineko (PC), Steins;Gate (PC).

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