Bad use of "SIMULATION" or "SIMULATOR" tag

[_??_]

Guys... please can you STOP using the "simulation" or "simulator" tag for every game out there? I want to clean my steam browsing by filtering tags and it happens that the simulation tag is everywhere!
City building games? BOOM! simulator tag!
Action shooter? BOOM! simulator tag!
Farming RPG? BOOM! simulator tag!
RTS old school? BOOM! now it is considered a f***ing SIMULATOR!!!!!

STOP USING THE SIMULATOR TAG FOR EVERYTING!! PLEASE LET IT BE USED FOR REAL SIMULATORS like flight simulators or some driving simulators.


EDIT:

If any Steam dev happens to read this thread (I doubt this) please I ask you to take action by:

A. Stop the people from creating tags and tagging. No more free will to create tags and use them to tag games.

B. Narrow down to the core tags, that is leaving only the basic tags e.g strategy, simulation, rpg... etc they should be available only for steam staff, store mantainers and devs to tag their own games (which MUST be approved by steam staff).

C. Create an internal set of rules defining how the tags will be used by devs and staff. Too diferent tags can´t be used in the same game (e.g Strategy, Sports) . Games should only have no more than one or two tags. Obviously they must make sense.






D. TAG RULES:

1 - Simulation tag should be used only for Flight Sims, Driving Sims and no more than that.

2 - FPS are just FPS (even if they are realistic like ARMA series).

3 - Strategy games are no more "simulation" games even if the name states so (e.g Simcity).

3B-Strategy games tags should use the criteria of "old school" strategy games. Chess games for example would fall into the "board game" tag. Management and city building tags dilute into Strategy.

4 - RPGs are just RPGs. Even if they are turn based with strategy elements or other elements. JRPGs (and many others that don´t come to my mind right now) dilute into the RPG tag.

5 - Visual novels (in my opinion should be wiped off the entire store) should be in the visual novel tag. No RPG or Adventure should be mixed in them. (hell they should be banned.. they are not even games!)

6 - Indie games. You can´t tag a game because it is indie. It MUST fall into one of the other main tags.

7 - "Living simulators" are not a genre. They are either RPGS (e.g Stardew Valley) or Sandbox (The sims series). For the curious: why the difference? in Stardew Valley you follow a history line. In The Sims, you don´t. Also RPG means Rol Playing Game if you didn´t know.

8 - Adult tagging. Adult games should only be used for explicit porn or erotic games (with "erotic" I mean a game that is based on nudity.
8B- Games that have some kind of erotic moments in it storyline (no porn intended) are OUT of this tag and are rated with conventional R ratings in the steam store. They must be tagged according to its main genre.
8C- Hentai tag (and alikes) is/are diluted into adult tag.
8D- Puzzle games with erotic/pornographic images go into the adult tag. Not Puzzle.

9 - Puzzle tag is strictly for puzzle games. No more puzzle tag in Zelda -esque games. THOSE ARE RPGS, REMEMBER.

10 - "Crafting" games are reserved to Minecraft clones in all their flavors. (yeah millions of them lately).

11 - "Survival" games could be mixed with "Horror" if the case happens.

12 - Zombie tag.
12B- If the game has zombies but you have to build a base to hold them in isometric view, it is a Strategy tag (thinking of Stronghold series here, something like that with zombies).
12C- If the game has zombies and you have to survive see point 11.
12D- If the game has zombies and you run like crazy with a gun top down view it is a shooter.
12E- You can figure out the rest

13 - Limit the "Adventure" tag. Remember, the plot should be used to tag only if the game cannot be tagged as any of the other primary tags. You will find that most of the now called "adventure" games are platformers disguised in 3D.

14 - Sports. Driving games should NOT be tagged as sports. This is purely to mantain order in the tagging system. (I totally know that car racing are sports in real life, but please erase that from your mind, we are NOT using real life thinking to tag, it is purely to make easier the sorting, filtering and searching of the store; this applies to all the rules above by the way)

15 - Users should STILL (yeah I know you can do it as it is now, thanks) be able to report bad tags.

[_??_]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von UnicumDeluxe:

Well the side scroller is just the way the game shows iteself to the user. (Could be First person, Third person or isometric too)

RPG is the kind of game (rule wise)

So its ok that its a Side Scroller + RPG

Think of a real case scenario here. When you search for RPGs... do you expect a side scroller?
again, not saying it doesn´t have RPG elements in it. But do you even care? or where you expecting the guy with the sword isometric view with potions and all the clichés?

I bet that you would let it pass.

In the other hand, if you like side scrollers, you could be really interested in this one, because you where already expecting this more or less.

[Count_Dandyman]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von El coso malo de la muerte:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Count_Dandyman:

Just because a game is on a side scrolling plane rather than an overhead or 3D one does not invalidate it being an RPG.

An RPG is not decided by its appearance and instead by its mechanics of growth, development, choice, consequences and resource management all of which are in Regions of Ruin.

I´m not saying it doesn´t have RPG elements in it or strategy or whatever. What I´m saying is that if I´m bored at home, want to check a new RPG game, the least thing I would want is a side scroller mechanic.

Let´s suppose this, in battlefield 3,4,1,5 you can level up, customize your character and get better weapons. I could say it has rpg elements because of that.
Put the game on steam as FPS, RPG.

You search for new RPG games. You get Battlefield and 40 more games that are not the thing you where expecting (you know, the little pixelated guy with a sword that grows in levels and talks to villagers).

Do you honestly think that is ok?

Yes I think it is perfectly normal that if your method of searching is to just lazily type in RPG you get all RPGs of every variety and again your personal prejudice is showing in assuming people will expect only a fantasy RPG especially when you have already tried using games being different from Final Fantasy as an example and 5 of its 15 main games including the most well known and newest ones are not that.

Learn not to blindly type in a ridiculously broad tag that applies to thousands of games and instead use narrower ones or combine them to get what you want.

[UnicumDeluxe]

The search engine allows now to exclude tags.

Means in this case you would search
+ RPG
- Sidescroller

And if in the results are too many Shooter
+ RPG
- Sidescroller
- FPS or - Shooter

What you expect for yourself is sadly not relevant. RPG means how a game works "it must be about role playing"

If thats a card game, a puzzle game, a Shooter,First person, Side scroller or whatever is not relevant.

The tag system can not force games to be developed so that they fit the tag system.
the tag system must be so "fluid" that it can describe every kind of game, at best without inventing new tags.

Well i must confess i have a hard time to imagine a "RPG Puzzler" but i guess its not impossible

[_??_]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von UnicumDeluxe:

The search engine allows now to exclude tags.

Meains in this case you would search
+ RPG
- Sidescroller

And if in the results are too many Shooter
+ RPG
- Sidescroller
- FPS or - Shooter

What you expect for yourself is sadly not relevant. RPG means how a game works "it must be about role playing"

If thats a card game, a puzzle game, a Shooter,First person, Side scroller or whatever is not relevant.

The tag system can not force games to be developed so that they fit the tag system.
the tag system must be so "fluid" that it can describe every kind of game, at best without inventing new tags.

Well i must confess i have a hard time to imagine a "RPG Puzzler" but i guess its not impossible

Ok, now real case scenario again:

I like stardew valley. Suppose I want a clone. I consider it an RPG. It is. It is tagged as that.
I search for RPG. I get TONs of games that are irrelevant which also have the tag SIMULATION in it.
I exclude the SIMULATION tag from it, naturally.
Stardew Valley and many many others are not in my search anymore. Why? they were tagged as simulation.
Steam filtered the simulation tag which is technically correct.

Sad face.

[UnicumDeluxe]

And you are right so far i can judge that on the fly (never cared about the simulation tag)

Thats why i i wrote above

Ursprünglich geschrieben von UnicumDeluxe:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Aachen:

And yet neither you nor the OP have.

Clear definitions
Shooter
FPS
RPG
Building
Crafting
Puzzle

Not so clear Definitions that need a guided definition
Survival
Simulation (what i would split in different tags like Piloting, Managment Simulation, Work simulation, Farm Simulation, ....)
... good question if there are more. I am only annoyed as hell that every idiot put the survival tag on nearly every game

[_??_]

I suppose that it all comes down on how people consumes the product.
There is people who actually knows what they like, and others that need to be taught what to like.

It´s like music. Some people know what genres and bands like, and others just consume what the mainstream gives them.

For those, the recommendation systems are great when they work "bad" because they get different stuff from what they "want" (they don´t really know what they want) in the first place and consider this as something actually "good".

And then, there is us. We think that it doesn´t work well, we rant, we get mad and refuse to buy what others give us just because they give it. We wonder why are they giving us Drake when we wanted Genesis.

Then we realize how this works and that those "errors" are planned.

The same applies here. People tags games as crazy, and there you have it. You search for fps and get puzzle. You search for rpg and get driving simulator.

Again, steam only lets you filter 5 genres in your profile.. that´s something to take into consideration.

They are smart, they let the people do the work for them.

And you even think they are sooo kind! ...they let you tag games... even create new tags, you feel part of the community.

[Crazy Tiger]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von El coso malo de la muerte:

I like stardew valley. Suppose I want a clone. I consider it an RPG. It is. It is tagged as that.
I search for RPG. I get TONs of games that are irrelevant which also have the tag SIMULATION in it.
I exclude the SIMULATION tag from it, naturally.
Stardew Valley and many many others are not in my search anymore. Why? they were tagged as simulation.
Steam filtered the simulation tag which is technically correct.

Sad face.

Because you search wrong. You search for RPG+Farming Sim and you find the Stardew Clones.

[Count_Dandyman]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von El coso malo de la muerte:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von UnicumDeluxe:

The search engine allows now to exclude tags.

Meains in this case you would search
+ RPG
- Sidescroller

And if in the results are too many Shooter
+ RPG
- Sidescroller
- FPS or - Shooter

What you expect for yourself is sadly not relevant. RPG means how a game works "it must be about role playing"

If thats a card game, a puzzle game, a Shooter,First person, Side scroller or whatever is not relevant.

The tag system can not force games to be developed so that they fit the tag system.
the tag system must be so "fluid" that it can describe every kind of game, at best without inventing new tags.

Well i must confess i have a hard time to imagine a "RPG Puzzler" but i guess its not impossible

Ok, now real case scenario again:

I like stardew valley. Suppose I want a clone. I consider it an RPG. It is. It is tagged as that.
I search for RPG. I get TONs of games that are irrelevant which also have the tag SIMULATION in it.
I exclude the SIMULATION tag from it, naturally.
Stardew Valley and many many others are not in my search anymore. Why? they were tagged as simulation.
Steam filtered the simulation tag which is technically correct.

Sad face.

Again the issue lies in you and your lazy method of searching instead of relying on a basic generic tag that rightfully applies to thousands of different games with vast differences between them to search and exclude when you are looking for something specific start using more focused tags and combos.

If I want a Stardew type game I will focus on its nature as a farming game not an rpg and when looking into things to exclude I will focus on things like driving not simulators.

Your issue is a pure case of GIGO not any examples of tags being wrongly applied.

[_??_]

Look what nintendo is doing. Two tags. Easier to filter no other crap shows up.

https://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/valkyria-chronicles-4-switch/

[Start_Running]

Yeah but that only works with a small library with few points of deviation. Role-Playing is rather vague as a tag, as is Strategy.

On steam that tag combination would bring up quite a plethora of games that could be very divergent from each other.

Is the Strategy Puzzle, Turn-based, or Real-Time? This makes a big difference.

These are some games that tick the same boxes.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/39540/SpellForce__Platinum_Edition/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/61500/Age_of_Wonders/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/228280/Baldurs_Gate_Enhanced_Edition/

And as you can see there's a rather big difference between them.

Nintendo has a very small libnrary (and not as much cvariation within that library) as Steam They can affor to use simple broad terms. STYeam has to take a more 'gropwn up' system of categorization. WHich actually works so long as one realizes that there's more to eacgh genre tag than you might think and the tags can apply to any number of independent aspects of a game.

[_??_]

BTS: Bad Tagging System!

If any Steam dev happens to read this thread (I doubt this) please I ask you to take action by:

A. Stop the people from creating tags and tagging games. No more free will to create tags and use them to tag games. People just don´t know how to use them and are messing the tagging system by tagging wrongly with waaaay to much tags for a single game, which leads to wrong recommendations and wrong results on search/filtering.

B. Narrow down to the core tags, that is leaving only the basic tags e.g strategy, simulation, rpg... etc they should be available only for steam staff, store mantainers and devs to tag their own games (which MUST be approved by steam staff).

C. Create an internal set of rules defining how the tags will be used by devs and staff. Games should only have no more than one or two tags. Obviously they must make sense.
Here is an example:



D. PROPOSED TAG RULES:

1 - Simulation tag should be used only for Flight Sims, Driving Sims and other similar games that can really be considered "true simulation" (like the Farming Simulator franchise). Tagging Stardew Valley as "simulation" is wrong since it doesn´t simulate anything, you are just in a role game, no realistic elements in it. RPG is more fitting for those kind of games. Goat simulator and other "games" like that are obviously not simulators.

2 - FPS are just FPS (even if they are realistic like ARMA series) the point of this system is to be able to tag easily by using the main mechanic of used by the game. When you think about any first person shooter you think of "FPS" not "simulator".

3 - Strategy games are NO MORE "simulation" games even if the name states so (e.g Simcity, which you understand its a commercial decision and not really a simulation by today standards). You can join "base building", "RTS" , "management" and "turn based" tags with "strategy" to name a few if you need to. Only two tags, we are trying to make this more "horizontal" for all games.

3B-Strategy games tags should use the criteria of "old school" strategy games. Chess games for example would fall into the "board game" tag. (I know chess can be considered strategy but remember! you don´t think of strategy when thinking of chess, you think its a "board game")

4 - RPGs are just RPGs. Even if they are turn based with strategy elements or other elements. JRPGs (and many others that don´t come to my mind right now) dilute into the RPG tag. Remember you can mix two tags if tagging just "rpg" isn´t totally accurate.

5 - Visual novels should be in the visual novel tag. No RPG or Adventure or whatever should be mixed in them.

6 - Indie games. You can´t tag a game because it is indie. It MUST fall into one of the other main tags.

7 - "Living simulators" are not a genre. They are either RPGS (e.g Stardew Valley) or Sandbox (The sims series). For the curious: why the difference? in Stardew Valley you follow a history line. In The Sims, you don´t.

8 - Adult tagging. Adult games should only be used for explicit porn or erotic games (with "erotic" I mean a game that is BASED on nudity or alikes.
8B- Games that have some kind of nudity moments in it storyline (no porn intended, like the Witcher 3) are OUT of this tag and are rated with conventional R ratings in the steam store. They must be tagged according to its main genre.
8C- Hentai tag (and alikes) is/are diluted into adult tag.
8D- Puzzle games with erotic/pornographic images go into the adult tag. Not Puzzle.

9 - Puzzle tag is strictly for puzzle games. No more "puzzle" tags in Zelda -esque games to name an example. To me Zelda games are RPGs but some people consider it Adventure; adding puzzle to the mix won´t be helping this.

10 - "Crafting" games are reserved to Minecraft clones in all their flavors. (yeah millions of them lately).

11 - You must think before applied "Survival", "is this game about surviving, or you survive to accomplish an objective that is not purely escaping/staying alive?" we have been flooded with this and the simulation tags lately.

12 - Zombie tag. Obliterated.
12B- If the game has zombies but you have to build a base to hold them in isometric view, it is a Strategy tag (thinking of Stronghold series here, something like that with zombies).
12C- If the game has zombies and you have to survive see point 11.
12D- If the game has zombies and you run like crazy with a gun top down view it is a shooter.
12E- You can figure out the rest

13 - Limit the "Adventure" tag. Remember, the plot should be used to tag only if the game cannot be tagged as any of the other primary tags. You will find that most of the now called "adventure" games are platformers.

14 - Sports. Driving games should NOT be tagged as sports. This is purely to mantain order in the tagging system. (I totally know that car racing are sports in real life, but please erase that from your mind, we are NOT using real life thinking to tag, it is purely to make easier the sorting, filtering and searching of the store; this applies to all the rules above by the way)

15 - Users must still be able to report bad tags.


Please if you are going to argue, have a good argument... because I´ve been assaulted in other thread by people simply saying "this would not work" and people thinking almost every game is a simulator of some sort.

[Aachen]

By “other thread,” here it is—and again: insisting that your personal definitions-of-words and understanding-of-genre is the one true way doesn’t make it so.

[_??_]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Aachen:

By “other thread,” here it is—and again: insisting that your personal definitions-of-words and understanding-of-genre is the one true way doesn’t make it so.

And by some people, there you have it. This is one.

[Mailer]

Tags are user-generated so there really shouldn't be a need to establish common rules about what some tags should stand for objectively. It's only really a concern if some titles are unable to fit into any of the categories, but that's more a problem with rules like these which practically demand the problem to happen if users follow them, rather than if you let users decide on their own.

The majority of people who think alike concerning what games belong with which tags are the ones that get their say, and that's really just that.
Personally I think the Steam community as a whole does a good job at distributing tags, at least what with the popular titles are concerned; of course whether you share their perspective on tag-distribution is ultimately down to you alone.

[AmsterdamHeavy]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von El coso malo de la muerte:

If you enter this forum, and you don´t agree with me then you automatically desagree that something is wrong with our behavior as a community...

To put it in other words: if you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem.

Only a Sith deals in absolutes.

...and this: https://store.steampowered.com/recommender/

Ursprünglich geschrieben von El coso malo de la muerte:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Count_Dandyman:

That is because my reality is based on discussion of the actual gameplay and mechanics in the game while your opinion is based on looking at a picture and ignoring the entirety of the game.

The game dev itself presented the game as a {side scroller} rpg.
If you think of an RPG you would think of something like final fantasy or something like that. Definetly NOT a side scroller.
When you search for an RPG, the least thing you would want, is a side scroller.

That is why I would tag it as side scroller.

But hey!, in the case you like that mechanic (side scroller), you clic the name and read the description.

So you get to just eliminate the entire genre of JRPGs then based on your personal thought processes?

Side scrolling RPGs, almost exclusively.