Inaccuracy of tags and the pain of browsing the store.

[goblin]

With the ever-expanding database of games on steam, there's a need for a proper tag system. The current system is absolutely horrible and personally i think they are hurting the sales as well as testing the patience of the user. Let me give an example:

Today i felt like it's time for a new survival game in the spirit of "the long dark" so i chose to filter the games by that tag. An overwhelming majority of the games displayed had nothing at all to do with the survival genre.
From flight sims to first person multiplayer shooters.
The reason for this is simple:

People are stupid.
You cannot leave the tagging system entirely in their hands.

At least raise the bar for how many votes it takes for a certain tag to be applied to a game.

For me, the outcome of the current system was that i can't be bothered to inspect 200+ titles that have nothing to do with what im looking for so i simply stopped browsing. And this has happened so many times now. I wonder how many sales steam loses because of this inefficiency in interacting with the store.

This post needs to be read by someone with influence within valve so that we can see a change. For everyones sake.

[wuddih]

there is a report button for wrong tags.

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

When the tag system started, I once suggested that only people who own a game should be able to tag it.

I still stand by that suggestion.

The only problem is how the community would tag an obscure new release, since it would have very few players. That might just be up to the dev doing a good tagging job.

[Start_Running]

There are Dev tags and user tas, just search by dev tags.

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

Originally posted by Start_Running:

There are Dev tags and user tas, just search by dev tags.

Oh, you can do this? That's nifty. How do you search by dev tags?

[Darren]

Part of the problem you seem to be having is that actually in a lot of cases the Survival tag is applied correctly to games with for example a single game mode (often multiplayer) where you have to survive against infinite waves of enemies the longer you survive the better. This mode exists in like nearly every single FPS one way or another.

Because any given tag has multiple meanings individual tags are almost never enough on their own to narrow down to specific games. The fact you only have to look through a few hundred is probably the best you are going to manage I'm afraid.

You might have better luck with the "Survival Horror" tag (only about 115 games with both Survival and Survival Horror on them like The Long Dark).

Throw on Open World as well and you get down to about 42 but that might be a bit over filtered for your needs.