What makes Valve so successful with Steam? Is it the sales, the trading cards, other forms of gamified methods they use?

[Costa]

Are there statistics that show the success of Steam from the sales, or trading cards etc? I intend to write my disseration on Gamifcation and Steam, and was wondering about the success of Valve/Steam. But what brought it success to to what it is now?
why do we, as gamers, need more encouragement to buy games on a gaming platform?

[Darren]

Mostly it is because they were first. And therefore have the largest collection. Most people don't want to have multiple accounts for games having them all under one roof is easier.

[Pheace]

Mostly because they were first, secondly because they did it better and kept expanding on it. (Unlike the EA downloader (now Origin) which was created not long after Steam)

[Merzbow]

Because its convenient and fairly easy to have all your games in one place, ready to play. Makes many thing easier, like switching to a different pc

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

Originally posted by Costa:

Are there statistics that show the success of Steam from the sales, or trading cards etc? I intend to write my disseration on Gamifcation and Steam, and was wondering about the success of Valve/Steam. But what brought it success to to what it is now?
why do we, as gamers, need more encouragement to buy games on a gaming platform?

1. reputation for sales
2. market dominance

Originally posted by Coolieli:

Because its convenient and fairly easy to have all your games in one place, ready to play. Makes many thing easier, like switching to a different pc

Some days I curse how people are lazy about managing their installations and simply want convenience rather than actually setting things up and having that viscerally-satisfying feeling of double-clicking the executable.

[Manny]

I think what makes Steam successful is the huge library of games, big user-base, sales and trading cards.

[Korusho]

You should email Valve, asking for interviews. I am postivie there are many who would love to answer any number of your questions. Such information would make a lovely basis for a few pages at least.

[Costa]

Originally posted by Paladin Doge:

You should email Valve, asking for interviews. I am postivie there are many who would love to answer any number of your questions. Such information would make a lovely basis for a few pages at least.

This is going to sound really stupid...but is this sarcasm? If not, then who would I email? Pretty sure I wont get a reply for months, or wont get a reply at all. They recieve thousands probably?

[Betty Boop]

I red a little bit about their corporate strategy and I guess the reasons are...


1.Valve attaches great importance to its employees. It results in happy employees which make good work.
Pretty simple concept and still rare nowadays.

2. Hard work and luck.
They came up with the right idea, to the right time.
Everybody is playing video games... The School kids, Housewives, Manager, Men, Women, granny....

I think the mix of many factors make it.
Valve have taken all the right ingredients.

But that is just my opinion.

[cinedine]

Originally posted by Costa:

This is going to sound really stupid...but is this sarcasm? If not, then who would I email? Pretty sure I wont get a reply for months, or wont get a reply at all. They recieve thousands probably?

General contact or press/public relations. Write a meaningful subject line and state your intention in the first few lines. And FFS use a normal or even better your university-/college address and not [e-mail].
If you're about to write your dissertation you really should know that.

[Tom]

Alot of people like myself only took up steam due to CS moving from 1.5 to source and later 1.6/ TF2/Day of Defeat being moved onto the steam platform. Honestly alot of steams success in the early days i would say is more to do with Half life 1 and 2 and the various mods/game modes that came with it rather than the steam store or trading. Of course its grown beyond i think anyones dreams since those days.

[SniperWolfMGS]

The sales are a huge part of it for me. I miss the flash sales though. The summer/winter sales were amazing up to 2014. Then they started a bunch of gimmicky things that replaced the flash sales and now its lost its appeal. But in the end thats what made me a happy steam user. While i dont think Origin "SUUUUUCKS!!!1" EAs business practices have pretty much ruined any chance of them becoming the next steam.

[Merzbow]

Originally posted by Quint the Island Fox:

Some days I curse how people are lazy about managing their installations and simply want convenience rather than actually setting things up and having that viscerally-satisfying feeling of double-clicking the executable.

I don't see why you have a problem with it, sorry it bothers you that I don't like my desktop being cluttered with the 200+ games I own

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

Originally posted by Coolieli:

Originally posted by Quint the Island Fox:

Some days I curse how people are lazy about managing their installations and simply want convenience rather than actually setting things up and having that viscerally-satisfying feeling of double-clicking the executable.

I don't see why you have a problem with it, sorry it bothers you that I don't like my desktop being cluttered with the 200+ games I own

Why do you let your desktop fill up with shortcuts in the first place? :p

[Merzbow]

Originally posted by Quint the Island Fox:

Originally posted by Coolieli:

I don't see why you have a problem with it, sorry it bothers you that I don't like my desktop being cluttered with the 200+ games I own

Why do you let your desktop fill up with shortcuts in the first place? :p

I don't, that's why I just launch them through Steam

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

Originally posted by Coolieli:

Originally posted by Quint the Island Fox:

Why do you let your desktop fill up with shortcuts in the first place? :p

I don't, that's why I just launch them through Steam

That's functionally no different from stuffing a bunch of shortcuts in a dedicated folder.

Alternatively, I could just open up my games folder, start typing the name of the game I want to play, press enter, then start typing the name of the game again, press enter again, and start playing. No shortcuts even needed.