Search games by Genre in library

[shortfall23]

I have a pretty large library of around 560 things, and sometimes I just want to play some genre of a game. I dont care what it is I just want to play say a racing game, but because of how the search system for the library is set I have to search all the way through my library to see all my racing games. it would be nice if in that box you use to search for the name of a game if you could also put in the genre type.

[hous21]

i have a similar problem

[SSX_Hurma]

а
This everything on one big list by default crap in the steam library is just laziness on valve's part. The library needs more options, and I can't believe it has not evolved one bit over the years that steam has been around.
no

[Voluted]

Bumping for support! Please implement something like this. I'd really like the option to search for a game within my large library based on my mood.

[ᓚᘏᗢ Drunkle Shwanson]

This would be useful, I've been acquiring some local party games to play with friends so if I could just search for local multiplayer I wouldn't be having such a hard time remember which games support it.

[supertrooper225]

Originally posted by Heffro:

I would love to see something like this, I like to categorize my games, but the steam client only lets us put them into one category. I usually sort out the old from the new (old being before windows 7 was released), but I also want them sorted by genre too. Also, when you have over 200, 300 or even 500+ games in your library, it is a long and tedious process putting each game into a category.

This everything on one big list by default crap in the steam library is just laziness on valve's part. The library needs more options, and I can't believe it has not evolved one bit over the years that steam has been around.

There is a category system. You can organize the library in any way you want with however many caegories you want.

[waijee]

I made a post similar to this myself.
http://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/10/490123197939355866/

I found other threads requesting something similar. And in those threads I found that there is someone who keeps mentioning how categories is the solution. But the thing is that it isn't a great solution.

It takes a lot of time to categorize the games in a good manner. Assigning a game some categories of "single player" and "adventure" might be easy if you already know lots about the game, but for people like the original poster, there are hundreds of games to go through and importantly research. I think the original poster, like myself, probably picked up a bunch of games through Humble Bundle or sites similar. There are many games that we would not normally buy with prior knowledge, but we might like to try out if we are in the mood for it. Going through all the hundreds of game to manually categorize is not very efficient or straight forward.

In my thread, I suggested the use of the user defined tags that are already on the store pages. The tags have already been assigned by the community. If they are already there, might as well leverage them in the Steam client. Even if there is some technical/security reason that Valve is unable to share that data with the client, at least let us use them on our Games webpage on the Community site. They already kinda have this feature where you can search by a tag and if you own a game with that tag, it's marked as "In Library". But that's all mixed in with all other games that you don't own. So maybe a check box to filter to games you own?

I like a wide variety of games, so I hope that Valve can come up with something to help out. It'd help me discover more games for myself, but also help me discover some games I own that would be good for my kids to play.

Voluted and Nice Marmot make good points too. When you are in the mood for a certain game or you are in a circumstance where you are looking for some good party games, it'd be good to find them quickly without spending hours researching...

Thanks.

[supertrooper225]

So basically its "I want my library organized...but I don't want to be the one to organize it"?

[waijee]

I'd say it's more like the games are already organized, why not keep it organized when I buy the games ;)

[waijee]

I do want to add that I hear where you are coming from, but why not have a bit more. The tags are already there. It's not like I'm saying get rid of "Categories". I think they are useful too. I use Categories to separate games on my to-do list, my maybe list and games I don't ever plan to touch. Why not have both tags and categories together?

[supertrooper225]

Because most people would rather organize their own libraries rather than having everything organized by the standards of the community. I don't find tags are placed appropriately in a lot of instances nor do I find many tags helpful as organizational terms.

[cinedine]

Originally posted by waijee:

It takes a lot of time to categorize the games in a good manner. Assigning a game some categories of "single player" and "adventure" might be easy if you already know lots about the game, but for people like the original poster, there are hundreds of games to go through and importantly research. I think the original poster, like myself, probably picked up a bunch of games through Humble Bundle or sites similar. There are many games that we would not normally buy with prior knowledge, but we might like to try out if we are in the mood for it. Going through all the hundreds of game to manually categorize is not very efficient or straight forward.

Seriosuly, I laugh if someone mentions how his huge library takes too much time to organize. I made an inventory list for my games - 1000+ and growing - assigned genres and descriptions to nearly all of them. Several times over because I had to recategorize. Did the same with my music, movies and books. And I'm currently in the process of transferring them from a data sheet into a proper database - written by my own, just to keep things organized *as I want*.

Yes, it does take time. Bu what's done is done. And you don't have to do them on gunpoint at once but can take your time with it. It may take some months if you do 10 a day or so, but it will last for a lifetime (or until you want to change it completely).
If you don't know enough about a game - there are still user defined categories on Steam and the internet is also at your disposal. If you can't be bothered - chances are you wouldn't want to play them anyway, so you can just file them under "stuff I probably never play".

The answer stays the same:
Just do it already instead of sitting there and thinking about how great it was if someone else would do it.

In my thread, I suggested the use of the user defined tags that are already on the store pages. The tags have already been assigned by the community. If they are already there, might as well leverage them in the Steam client. Even if there is some technical/security reason that Valve is unable to share that data with the client, at least let us use them on our Games webpage on the Community site. They already kinda have this feature where you can search by a tag and if you own a game with that tag, it's marked as "In Library". But that's all mixed in with all other games that you don't own. So maybe a check box to filter to games you own?

There is also a thread on this very board about how games are wrongly tagges as "open world". The user tags are hilariously inaccurate at times, provide rather useless categorization information (ever thought you'd like to play a game with a "female protagonist" right now?) or are downright misleading (CounterStrike under "strategie"). And a game has more tags then just the three or four you see at the store page. Most are collapsed behind the [+], so either you take all and run a higher risk of false tags or you cap them and run the risk of missing the onces important for you.
So you can either go through them one by one and clean them of tags you find inappropriate or you can remove them as you encounter them. Which would be the very same as mentioned above.

---

So yes, categories are the go-to solution for the problem at hand.

[waijee]

But like I said, don't use them. I'm not saying to force all games in the library to be organized by tags. Sorry if I'm not clear, but I'm saying that it'd be great if you could search/filter your games by tags, but when you want to do that. By default, the games list should show your games organized by category as it does right now. It's when you want to dig deeper into your library that you can use tags. For gamers like yourself, it wouldn't change a thing. At least that's the what I'd like.

[supertrooper225]

The games in the store are organized by tags. Not the games in your library. It is easier for you to organize your own library than it is for Steam to attempt to write a system that would organize everyone's library in a way that would satisfy most people. This is why the categories system was created in the first place.

[waijee]

But there already exists a system, the tags.

I'm sorry, I don't understand the argument against this idea? I'm really trying to be fair and understanding. So what are the reasons against the idea?

I can think of one, which is you'd prefer that valve spend their resources focused on other things than this. I'm saying it shouldn't be a lot of work to do to at least add a small feature to the existing search screen on the Steam site, but I could be wrong.

Are there other reasons to consider?

[supertrooper225]

The fact that I don't want my library organized according to a system that is run by millions of other people. Games aren't even tagged correctly in a lot of cases. And yes, this is a pretty big piece of work to implement. Cinedine also posted a couple of paragraphs on the issue above.

And the tags aren't really already there. The games in the store are organized by the tags....not your library.

There is a reason Valve lets users organize their own libraries.