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I think you could use Steam Achivements and playtime to recommend games to people. If I've played a game to completion on the highest difficulty presumably I l

I think you could use Steam Achivements and playtime to recommend games to people. If I've played a game to completion on the highest difficulty presumably I like it. Find me other games that people with the achievement also play and have the equivalent achievement on and you've got something basic.

vocatus_gate 10y ago
Max or close-to-max achievements for a game also is an indicator of skill, could be used to weight a games scores more towards "recommended by skilled players" vs. "recommended by casual players" ?
- JamesBaxter 10y ago
  Yep, you could use achievement rarity too. If 100% of all players get an achievement don't use it for recommending or 1% have it increase the weighting?
- falcolas 10y ago
  I would have a hard time equating achievement coimpletionism as skill, to me they are more of a measure of time spent in a game. Yes, some achievements in some games do require a mediocrum of skill, but most of them do not; they're used primarily as a form of feedback for the developer on how people play their game, and secondarily as a lure for completionists who want the points on their profile.
  - dkns 10y ago
    I agree. See for example achievement 'Astronomically Low Odds' from Faster Than Light: http://ftl.wikia.com/wiki/Achievements http://ftl.wikia.com/wiki/Achievements "Fail to evade 5 shots in a row with a full powered and upgraded engine." It's almost pure luck. Wiki mentions ways that you can increase odds for you but still it's mainly luck.
  - jon-wood 10y ago
    It only dawned on me today that achievements aren't really for the players, they're the gaming equivalent of Mixpanel, allowing developers to see which parts of the game players are actually experiencing.
smacktoward 10y ago
Yeah, that's the real weirdness here -- that Steam/Valve can't come up with some way to leverage the absolutely staggering amount of data they must have on how people play the games in their Steam library to filter the wheat from the chaff.
- psyc 10y ago
  Well, they could. They could have the slickest UI and the best search experience. But Steam brings in staggering profits as-is. Valve doesn't need to do much of anything, unless a serious competitor arises. This is the problem with "benevolent monopolies" like Valve and Google. All is well when they're making users happy. But when they aren't, there's no accountability, incentive, or alternative.
elcapitan 10y ago
Wouldn't that just motivate developers to hand out lots of achievements early and often (lets say with 4 levels, 75% in the first level, 15% in the second, 5% in the last two each), so that the people who play the game even just a few hours "recommend" the game by the high number of achievements?
- JamesBaxter 10y ago
  Yeah I thought about that, you could use the achievement rarity as I noted below. Whatever system you use developers will try and game it but I think there are ways of cutting out obviously bad achievements

vocatus_gate 10y ago

Max or close-to-max achievements for a game also is an indicator of skill, could be used to weight a games scores more towards "recommended by skilled players" vs. "recommended by casual players" ?

JamesBaxter 10y ago
Yep, you could use achievement rarity too. If 100% of all players get an achievement don't use it for recommending or 1% have it increase the weighting?
falcolas 10y ago
I would have a hard time equating achievement coimpletionism as skill, to me they are more of a measure of time spent in a game. Yes, some achievements in some games do require a mediocrum of skill, but most of them do not; they're used primarily as a form of feedback for the developer on how people play their game, and secondarily as a lure for completionists who want the points on their profile.
- dkns 10y ago
  I agree. See for example achievement 'Astronomically Low Odds' from Faster Than Light: http://ftl.wikia.com/wiki/Achievements http://ftl.wikia.com/wiki/Achievements "Fail to evade 5 shots in a row with a full powered and upgraded engine." It's almost pure luck. Wiki mentions ways that you can increase odds for you but still it's mainly luck.
- jon-wood 10y ago
  It only dawned on me today that achievements aren't really for the players, they're the gaming equivalent of Mixpanel, allowing developers to see which parts of the game players are actually experiencing.

smacktoward 10y ago

Yeah, that's the real weirdness here -- that Steam/Valve can't come up with some way to leverage the absolutely staggering amount of data they must have on how people play the games in their Steam library to filter the wheat from the chaff.

psyc 10y ago
Well, they could. They could have the slickest UI and the best search experience. But Steam brings in staggering profits as-is. Valve doesn't need to do much of anything, unless a serious competitor arises. This is the problem with "benevolent monopolies" like Valve and Google. All is well when they're making users happy. But when they aren't, there's no accountability, incentive, or alternative.

elcapitan 10y ago

Wouldn't that just motivate developers to hand out lots of achievements early and often (lets say with 4 levels, 75% in the first level, 15% in the second, 5% in the last two each), so that the people who play the game even just a few hours "recommend" the game by the high number of achievements?

JamesBaxter 10y ago
Yeah I thought about that, you could use the achievement rarity as I noted below. Whatever system you use developers will try and game it but I think there are ways of cutting out obviously bad achievements