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[jamesprimate]

I def thought steam curator pages were going to become a huge thing and totally change how people discovered games, but as far as I can tell... eh not so much. Those of you who might be more dialed into steam culture or know the numbers around it, any thoughts on this? Was it a "failure"? Or just an easy hands-off way of restructuring their front page?

[Impmaster]

I think it kinda just works for people who already watch youtubers or read gaming news. But if you've already seen the review for the game, why bother going to the curator page when you could just go straight to the game?

[Mittens]

I remember early on they proposed that curators would receive a sales cut or finders fee if customers purchased a game from a curators recommendation. Did they ever follow through with something like that?

If not, it seems like it's just another place to hear the opinion of those same people who were already internet famous

[Schoq]

to me it seems like a response to all those people apparently buying games completely at random complaining about too many low quality games on steam

[Nillo]

I basically use the curator system as one of a dozen different channels for discovering a title on Steam. So if you look at only the curators I'm subscribed to it doesn't have a huge impact by itself. It's a small feature that I appreciate and occasionally use. Kinda like the discovery queue, which is also useful but I use it maybe once a month or less.

I think the best way to discover games is to look at a variety of sources (close friends, curators, discovery queue, activity feed, Reddit, YouTube, TIGS...) and to compare and contrast what is happening in each of those sources. I've never thought of curators as the end-all solution to discovering games.

From a purely technical perspective, there are some limitations of curators which I think they need to work on - for example, the number of characters allowed in a curator recommendation is very low, which means that most of the content of a curator has to be off-site on YouTube or elsewhere. And that does skew the usefulness of the system towards YouTubers quite a bit.

[jamesprimate]

From a purely technical perspective, there are some limitations of curators which I think they need to work on - for example, the number of characters allowed in a curator recommendation is very low, which means that most of the content of a curator has to be off-site on YouTube or elsewhere.

whoa, i hadnt realized this. that sort of cripples it! i cant imagine what rationalization there would be for that, as as far as i know individual reviews can be as long as you want, right?

[Nillo]

whoa, i hadnt realized this. that sort of cripples it! i cant imagine what rationalization there would be for that, as as far as i know individual reviews can be as long as you want, right?

Yeah, user reviews can be pretty much as long as you want, but a recommendation from a curator has to be about as short as a tweet. I'm not sure why, but I assume they want to keep it brief so they can display the recommendation in places like the store page without cutting any part off.

Which brings me to another concern - I'd like the option to hide specific curators from showing up on store pages. Right now, one curator is displayed prominently on the page but you have little control over who that might be. I think it picks the most popular one but I'm not sure, and in that case there's a positive feedback loop that benefits the "big" curators at the expense of newer ones or curators that focus on niche titles.

[s0]

whoa, i hadnt realized this. that sort of cripples it! i cant imagine what rationalization there would be for that, as as far as i know individual reviews can be as long as you want, right?

Yeah, user reviews can be pretty much as long as you want, but a recommendation from a curator has to be about as short as a tweet. I'm not sure why, but I assume they want to keep it brief so they can display the recommendation in places like the store page without cutting any part off.

i used to be a member of sputnikmusic, an amateur music review site. on that site you had to write short blurbs for your reviews for displaying as previews and etc. maybe steam could do the same?

Which brings me to another concern - I'd like the option to hide specific curators from showing up on store pages. Right now, one curator is displayed prominently on the page but you have little control over who that might be. I think it picks the most popular one but I'm not sure, and in that case there's a positive feedback loop that benefits the "big" curators at the expense of newer ones or curators that focus on niche titles.

where is that? i just checked and im only seeing 6 recommended curators that seem like they're targeted to me based on my user data.

[Dacke]

I've had it repeatedly recommend Cynical Brit Gaming (aka Total Biscut, the prominent gamergater) which I'm not very happy about. It would be fine if I had the ability to permanently remove the recommendation, but as far as I can tell that's not possible.

[s0]

I've had it repeatedly recommend Cynical Brit Gaming (aka Total Biscut, the prominent gamergater) which I'm not very happy about. It would be fine if I had the ability to permanently remove the recommendation, but as far as I can tell that's not possible.

yeah lol it recommends totalbiscuit and yahtzee to me as well. im guessing its just because i play games these guys recommend (i wouldn't know, i haven't watched anything by them in a long time). doesn't bother me that much b/c i never look at curator pages anyway.

[Cobralad]

Total Biscut, the prominent gamergater

hoo boy

[MeshGearFox]

The curator pages I've seen pretty much... all recommend very similar stuff. Generally notable PC exclusives/crossplatform stuff that really shines on PC. In other words stuff you'd probably have anyway.