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!

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On Sat, 16 Sep 2023 10:11:01 +0100, JAB <noway@nochance.com> 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.

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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

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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

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Zaghadka <zaghadka@hotmail.com> 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] rridge@csclub.uwaterloo.ca
-()-/()/ http://www.csclub.uwaterloo.ca:11068/
db //

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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

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