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Does anyone else feel like game recommendation engines are completely useless if you play older games?

7 days ago by YUART to c/patientgamers

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Every time I use Steam's discovery queue or any "what to play next" site, I get bombarded with stuff from the last 6 months. I get it - that's what generates clicks and sales - but it's genuinely unhelpful for how most of us here actually want to play.

I've been quietly working on a tool to change that. The core idea - your taste doesn't have an expiration date, so recommendations shouldn't either. Something from 2011 that fits exactly what you're looking for should surface just as easily as a 2024 release.

It's early and rough around the edges, but I'm at the point where I want to validate whether this is even a problem worth solving for other people or just a me.

If a recommendation algorithm for games like this existed - smarter discovery that actually respects older games - would you use it?

What features would make it genuinely useful vs just another thing you try once and forget about? I want it to be the tool someone actually recommends to a friend, not just upvotes and forgets.

Hond 23 points 7 days ago

Tbh, recommendations algos never really worked for me. Even before everything got enshittified. I always just used brute force and the filtering options which were given to me. But even the steam store page started to actively discourage my approach for discovery with ui/ux changes a few years back.

But my backlog grows and the time for gaming melts away as i get older. Sometimes i miss skimming through hundreds of games to find a hidden gem. But currently i'm not even in the mood for gaming since a half a year. I havent finished a single game i was excited about. Just stopped after playing them for 2-3 hours.

Would i use an algorithm which actually recommends games i like? Sure.

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YUART 3 points 7 days ago

Hi, I see, thanks for your thoughts. I often have similar feeling, but in my case it mainly caused by the fact that I like multiplayer/MMO games and current multiplayer/MMO games are trash, and old one I loved to play have servers offline for a long time now.

Maybe you should just relax for a little and switch to something else like tabletop games, or even to movies/series/books.

The only recommendation I can give you that worked for me a few years ago - try VR games if you still haven't. I guarantee that you will be positively shocked by experience even if you have just a headset (you don't need a west, a treadmill, etc.). The cons of that solution is the you need rather powerful PC (the best VR games now exist only on PC, games that run directly on a headset 90% of time are bad) + you need to buy a VR headset (but I recommend you to buy used one, Quest 3 for overall ok experience, Valve Index if you have money, Quest 2 or Pico 4 if you low on money) + there is only a bunch of VR games exist that are worth playing, so after a while you may be bored.

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Hond 4 points 6 days ago

Thanks, very thoughtful reply!

Agreed, VR is pretty awesome and owning a Pico 4 i can confirm its a pretty good headset on the budget side. With a bit of criminal energy even most of the quest exclusives like RE4 VR work on the Pico. With WiVRn it works even on Linux for PCVR which is pretty awesome. But atm i use it mostly for watching movies. I'm playing VR since 2019 and kinda seen almost every wortwhile game. Especially PCVR is imho in a pretty sad state nowadays when it comes to new titles. Meta bankrolled a few exclusive bangers in the last few years but even that seems to have come to an end sadly.

Last fall/winter i had a pretty good run with https://retroachievements.org/ and played through 6-8 classics. Titles are pretty well tagged so its easy to find something which speaks to you and they can be added to your "want to play" list. Never was a big fan of achievements but for this retro stuff it gave me the sometimes needed additional carrot on a stick. What helped me is to order the games to average completion times(not mastering times) and find games which take 5-10 hours. Having bit sized experiences felt less like a big commitment.

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YUART 3 points 6 days ago

Nice to see you tried VR already. Yeah, VR games are in hopeless condition unfortunately. I really hope I can return one day, maybe Steam Frame release will change anything, we will see.

Thanks for sharing that webpage with retro games, appreciated 👍

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village604 12 points 7 days ago

Similarly for H-games, steam likes to recommend the same 20 or so games even though there's thousands.

Although it might be because I block VNs from the results.

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justdaveisfine 8 points 7 days ago

As I recall, Steam has a tool in their labs that let's you specify games that released over 10 years ago, so you can get still get old and niche recommendations.

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YUART 5 points 7 days ago

Hi, yeah, I tried that, but unfortunately it does mediocre recommendations in my case

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pasdechance 8 points 7 days ago

Deku Deals has recommendations and rankings now. It might work better for you. In my case the recs are games I would like to play.

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YUART 4 points 7 days ago

Hi, interesting, thanks for sharing. I have never heard about this website before, but I will give it a try

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pasdechance 3 points 7 days ago

You can have a collection and a wishlist. If you rate your collection it will help with recommendations.

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veniasilente 6 points 7 days ago

If a recommendation algorithm for games like this existed - smarter discovery that actually respects older games - would you use it?

So long as it properly accounts for how needlessly inaccessible those older games tend to be. Which means, the algorithm has to also be good enough to recommend good pirate sources (and procedures), good tutorials for making stuff work, etc. There's no sense for me in getting recommended cool videogames from the 80s or 90s I can't play, the same way there's no sense for me in getting recommended cool TV shows from the 80s or 90s that are not even airing in the designated eternal-syndications channels in TV cable.

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YUART 5 points 7 days ago

Hi, that's true. I thought to focus on games from GOG's library, because their support for a bunch of old games allows to play those games even on modern computers.

But yeah, there is a lot of good old games that will require shenanigans to play them nowadays

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over_clox 3 points 7 days ago

Okay, sounds good to me 👍

Curious though, if I start out with Tetris, what else might your recommendation system lead me to next?

Tetris > Dr. Mario > Bejeweled > Candy Crush ...

🤔

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YUART 8 points 7 days ago

Hi, if an algorithm will only have info that you like Tetris, in current state it will lead you to different tetris "clones" or "modern tetris" stuff 😅

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over_clox 4 points 7 days ago

In my universe, it would be Tetris > Emlith

https://www.myabandonware.com/game/emlith-fmf

Also there's Tetris 2 - The New Blood, but that's a homebrew game that for whatever reason only runs in the QuickBasic interpreter, it refuses to compile for some reason.

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YUART 4 points 7 days ago

Thanks for sharing that webpage, I see some cool games present there

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over_clox 3 points 7 days ago

Oh man, my actual favorite game of all time is Descent 1 and 2...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ed_78HTkRbQ

The proper spiritual successor to that (looking past Descent 3, for reasons), is Overload...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQ5RFBo0L_U

The catch with Overload (which was actually developed by the two lead developers of Descent), is that it really will overload your system and push it to the max.

Overload is like 20 years newer than Descent, and I can only get like 3 frames per second on my potato laptop. ☹️

So, with that thought in mind, even though both Descent and Overload are both exactly the same genre of game, they are two decades apart in system requirements..

Take that information however you will, but yeah I'd probably have some sort of toggle option to limit suggestions to similar games to other games released +/- 5 years or so...

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Nytefyre 3 points 5 days ago

I feel that all and any recommendations or even the wheelhaus thing doesn't work for me. It doesn't work for me because I'm going to end up disagreeing with what the choice made for me is going to be. I don't know, I'd like for there to actually be a more engaging method in how games are decided for me than just giving me this feeling on my shoulders that I HAVE to play something just because some random decider thing told me to.

It's a furious cycle of its own.

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YUART 1 point 5 days ago

Hi, this is good feedback. I have a similar problem with algorithms like those on YouTube or Netflix because:

  1. I don’t know what the algorithm thinks I like.
  2. I don’t know how to influence it beyond liking or disliking things.

The same applies to Steam recommendations. I’ve noticed it tries to recommend games based on my wishlist, but the issue is that adding a game to my wishlist doesn’t necessarily mean I like it or want to play it, or want similar recommendations.

Would you be satisfied with a game recommendation algorithm if you could see what it thinks you like (e.g., your top 5 preferred genres or dislikes) and be able to fine-tune it to produce more personalized recommendations? For example, you could tell the algorithm that you like sci-fi and that it should prioritize sci-fi games.

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inlandempire 2 points 4 days ago

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YUART 1 point 4 days ago

Hi, I tried it a couple of times but unfortunately in my case recommendations were mediocre

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Pazintach 1 point 4 days ago

I stumped upon a site called Questlog. I'm using it to keep track of the games I've been playing, but it also has recomendations. Looks like it's just basic algorithms based on what you've played. Maybe worth a try?

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YUART 1 point 4 days ago

Hi, thanks for sharing this website, I will take a look

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