Feature Request: Better Game Organization

[mvalle]

This is something I was wishing to ask Valve since a long time: why do Steam App is so bad at game organization?

So far, I have 615 games in my library. I didn't play them all, I just like the promotions and when the game seems worth a try and has a good price, I usually buy it to play later.

However, lately I have been changing my mind, as sometimes I quit working and when open Steam to find a good game to play, it's always a nightmare to decide. It's like "something I am wishing to play a simulator game, an airplane one"... So I need to go though the entire game list search for the games I have. After 1 h looking, I was tired again and gave up playing.

I tried to organize my games with categories, but I have steam installed in several computers. Result: the categories mixed up, don't know what happened but they disappeared. And honestly, they were horrible, there is no cool interface to give games you own (or even games in the store) a TAG.

What would be great? If I could do the following:

1 - filter the games in my library by genre, by community markers, etc.
2 - Be able to check a game and see "similar games in the store" - or something like "people who liked / finished this game also liked these others: ...".
3 - Have a drag and drop interface where I could associate games and personal TAGs (like e-mail markers), so it would be easy to tag "games I already finished" for instance
4 - Be able to filter games in my library by using searchs as "adventure games not tagged 'games I already finished' ", for instance
5 - It's very important that all of that become available in the team interface or whatever I have access to when I am going to choose a game I own to play.

If steam had a better interface, I would probably fell more confortable in buying more games. I have the weird feeling today that I already own too many games, but when it's time to play I feel I have few. I have no control of the amount of games I already finished, the ones I bought but will never play, etc.

Steam has millions of users. Creating a good interface should not be something so hard. I think Valve should invest a bit more on it, as it would affect greatly the user experience of it's users.

I for some reason I can't understand now Valve doesn't want to spend money on that, you should at least make available an API similar to other social networks (using open auth or something like it) that would allow independent developers to be able to offer to your users applications that run on top of steam (like a web site that allows you to log in using your steam user) and query the user's game information, games in the store, etc. I would love to create an "organization app" if Valve is not willing to do it.

I wonder also how many users think like me about it in these forum.

[Chichi]

Hi mvalle!

Well I think this has a lot to do with the categories and the way you use this feature. I am sorry if it messed up once but I think you should still try to use it. I also have steam installed on several computers with different OS but I don't have any problem. I set the games I like as favorites. Then it is easy to find them in the list and they are always on top. I created a category "finished" in order to filter the games I finished. I agree the tags would give you more flexibility if you could set several because unfortunately you can only set one category per game.

If you want to see similar games you just have to go to the store page of the game and you find the "more like this" banner.

[Zyro]

I agree with you, mvalle. Categories just don't do it, because they're one-dimensional. You can't put a game in categroy "Not yet played" AND "Show to girlfriend" AND "Airplanes" AND [You name it]. That's where your tags would jump in. And while Valve is experimenting with users tagging games publicly, I'd like to have my personal tags, not other people's.

[mvalle]

Multi-dimensional markers are one of the things missing, indeed, but it's more than it, I don't think the interface is intuitive and things are not available at the time you want to play. Why not being able to search by genre? Why do I need to go to the store to do it, if I want this information when I am going to play? This is my main point...

Giving search options on a interface to the user should be something REALLY easy to a company so big as Valve, I just don't get it, why let us with a limited interface like that?

I understand Valve's priority today is Steam machine, but they should not forget the users who still use the PC to play...

[Zyro]

I imagine when they created the interface, they didn't think of hundreds of games for a single user...

[mvalle]

Indeed, makes sense... But now it's time to change. Steam is the biggest application store today and all indicates they will grow more and more.
Now we have not only games, but any OS application as well...

[R3450N]

You can create your own categories. That's what I did and now everytime I buy a game I categorise it by genre. I personally think it's redundant that Valve won't do this but it might be a problem with marketing a game wrongly under a certain genre and the fact many games have many genres. To be complacent it's understandable why Valve wouldn't categorise the games themselves since they don't own them and it's down to the publisher or developer to decide. The current system is fine, but I wouldn't mind an automated system whereby games are categorised according to a publisher's marketing tactics.

[mvalle]

About creating own categories... I saw the messages here and tried it. I created categories inside steam to check if the categories I created in the first computer would appear in the second computer.

Result: Some categories I created were in the second computer, some weren´t.

I wrote to steam support, thinking this would be something happening just to me. Here is the answer:

"Hello Marcelo,

Steam Cloud keeps track of changes made in Steam Cloud enabled games. Any user changes to their game options will propagate to the Cloud by default. Upon logging into Steam from another PC, these settings will be brought down from the Cloud and automatically leveraged by the game. Any configuration changes on this second machine are then synced to the Cloud for future sessions. The information stored and accessible through the Steam Cloud includes keyboard, mouse, and gamepad configurations, as well as multiplayer settings such as spraypaint images.

Some games also synchronize save games, statistics and other game-specific data using the Steam Cloud.

Steam Cloud enabled games can be found in the following page:

http://store.steampowered.com/search/?adv=0&term=&category1=&developer=&publisher=&category2=23

Please let us know if you have any further questions."


Apparently, some games, which are steam cloud enable, save the categories in the cloud. Some other don´t.

It´s worse than I imagined. Steam was the first online game app, but in a near future may not be the best one anymore.

[R3450N]

That's weird. Across Windows and Linux all my games are categorised according to my preferences.

[Chichi]

Автор сообщения: L87| pile I 'o N bones! U |21 X

That's weird. Across Windows and Linux all my games are categorised according to my preferences.

For me it works fine as well between my two sessions. I think they did a pretty good job even though there could be some improvements.

[mvalle]

But does anyone have games which are NOT listed in this page? http://store.steampowered.com/search/?adv=0&term=&category1=&developer=&publisher=&category2=23

Do these games, not listed, sync categories for you?

[R3450N]

I think you are misunderstood; the games are not automatically categorised: you have to manually categorise them.

[mvalle]

I did. But when I log in to other computer, the category of some games, like assassins creed, do not sync to the other computer.

[Turambar]

I don't remember having any problem either with my categories.

And when reading the reply you've received it looks like the steam support just misunderstood your question for a regular "my game options supposed to be stored in the cloud don't work" question. Hence the premade answer with the list.
The categories however are customization of Steam itself, not the game (it's therefore not their job -and they cannot anyway- to store that category information and propagate it). As far as I understand it.

Did you try setting the categories in one session (with the other closed) and then quit the session (I don't know when the change is saved on the cloud by the Steam client but on exit seems a probable guess). After which point any further session opened should feature the change.. hopefuly.

[DrMcCoy]

Автор сообщения: mvalle

why do Steam App is so bad at game organization?

Yes, this. A custom tagging system would be very useful.

But it is more than that. Right now, the whole main window is nearly completely use to me. There's the list of games, I click on one, and then I have no idea what game this is. The main window just shows "Game Info: To install $GAME, click the install button", some achievements and recent news.

Why is that one not showing the blurb, tags, and screenshots from the store page? It's tiring having to click the "Community Hub" link and then the "Store" button on every single game to see what it actually is.

I also have frequent problems with the category: often, it doesn't sync them. I have Steam running on my desktop, change a few things (or more often add new games to categories), play a bit, then quit Steam. Later, on my laptop, I fire up Steam and the changes are not there. I've acrually started just rsync'ing the directory containing the categories over, like I do with my Firefox profile (because Firefox Sync is another half-broken thing).

[Zyro]

They did one thing now...
"Games can now be assigned to more than one category at a time"
And what I wanted for a long time:
"Add "Hide this game in my library" functionality"!