http://gtm.steamproxy.vip/discussions/forum/10/2592234299563821497/

Complaining about the Female Protagonist tag is a thread topic that has come up a few times. Usually, someone asks at some point why there isn't a Male Protagonist tag, and someone else answers because people haven't been interested enough to make one. For what it's worth, I certainly wouldn't mind seeing a Male Protagonist tag, and I think it could be useful to help classify games by indicating traits.

So that got me thinking, what other similarly "useless" tags might there be, along the lines of pointing out traits that are very common among videogames (in ways that might very well be useful)?

For example, "Polygon Graphics". What about "Real-Time" and "Big Budget Publisher", even if that last one isn't that common, only because it's sort of the default and is contrasted with "Indie". Oh, and definitely "3D". Also, "Third-Party Publisher" vs. "Self-Published".

Originally posted by The Giving One:

Originally posted by BossGalaga:

It's a classic but should only be used in extreme cases of stupidity. :P

Exactly, and its not like those are in short supply in some cases, right ? LOL

Just kidding......

But yes, to keep the value of that one high, only to be used in extreme cases.

The internet has terrible, horrible, no good, very bad track record of doing things like properly using subtlety, appreciating understatement, and preserving the social value of strong reactions to things by not wasting them on inconsequentia.

REGARDING TRANSFERRING OR SELLING GAMES FROM ONE ACCOUNT TO ANOTHER

Steam currently allows Family Sharing for one account to play another account's games, once the second account has been set up properly for this to work. While doing so, playing a game owned by the other account will prevent that account from playing anything, just like if one person had shared their computer to someone else. This is to prevent Family Sharing from basically becoming unlimited game borrowing/renting.

Steam is highly unlikely to allow permanent transfers of games (or technically, game licenses) from one account to another. This is because:

1. A hijacker/scammer/etc. could take control of an account, then transfers the games without the proper owner's permission. If there is no recourse for this, then the owner has permanently lost some games. If there is a recourse for this, then the owner may be able to get their games back, but (so-to-speak) legitimate transfers could be affected by people abusing this recourse in order to get their games back or deny others their games, leading to a lot of he-said-she-said problems that Steam Support would not like to have to resolve.

2. Allowing permanent transfers of game licenses means that a secondary market for games will arise. (It will arise no matter whether Steam officially supports it, because there is demand for it.) The secondary market will of course be a way for people to get games for cheap. This now means that the primary market -- selling games directly from developer/publisher to customer -- will now have to compete with the secondary market. A lot of primary market sales that were people buying at these deep discounts that Steam is famous for, will instead go to the secondary market. This will make developers/publishers unhappy, and become almost like a legalized form of piracy, since they cannot get the revenue from these sales (and even if Steam limits this to financial transactions, and the publishers do get a cut of the revenue, the discounts won't be as good because now you have several sides all trying to get money for the copy of the game, and the publishers will get less of it.) And when publishers/developers are not happy, they will stop selling their games on Steam, and Valve will be unhappy since they make less money and so will many other customers be unhappy because Steam will have fewer new games for sale.

REGARDING REQUESTS THAT ACHIEVEMENTS PRODUCE STEAM USER XP:

No Steam user XP is awarded for achievements because:

1. Achievements can be cheated.
2. Adding XP for achievements would cause people to do other things, such as:
2a) bug devs to add chieves more than they already do.
2b) complain when chieves are too difficult, or make devs add easier chieves.
2c) incentivize devs to make chieve-spamming games, which in turn people buy and then spam the friend activity feed with chieves.
2d) disincentivize people from buying games without chieves.

MY OPINION ON THE MATTER:

I agree that it'd be nice for Steam to have better and more ways to display and showcase one's chieves, but Steam user XP is not the way to do it. Steam user XP is only a measure of the time/effort you've invested in using Steam itself -- not playing games on Steam.

Maybe a badge that shows number of achievements, or a separate chieve score that takes into account chieve rarity or something, might be a better idea?

Should probably be a list of "threads that keep on appearing": (NOTE: appearing on this list does NOT mean that the thread is meaningless, but just that it is common)

* attempting to transfer or sell "used" games from one account to another
* hating on a certain genre or tag or group of tags of games (e.g. anime, retro, indie, VR, etc.)
* "Steam needs to stop showing me so many [genre/tag] games!" (related to the above)
* asking for a neutral/mixed/middle/etc. review option, or even more gradations (with a resulting endless argument that puts me and Radene on one side and Start_Running, Gwarsbane, and I think Spawn of Totoro or was it Tito Shivan? on the other)
* objections to the 7 day CS:GO competitive mode cooldown, followed by responders observing that OP had to have screwed things up three other times before that
* objections to trade/market holds
* complaints about lackluster sales events
* threads lamenting the state of the industry
* dating advice threads
* PC vs. consoles
* "What game should I buy?" (bonus points if criteria are not provided, making it a generic rec thread for anything)

What others are there?

Just posting this here to see if anyone has comments. (I wrote up part of this post as a forum comment a few minutes ago so I expanded it to make it a whole topic.)

Here's what my experience tells me about how videogames are priced these days. Note, my experience with pricing has mostly been buying PC games digitally for the past six or seven years.

* base price $4.99 or $9.99 - small-ish game (indie or casual AAA)
* base price $19.99 - indie, niche, or older AAA game
* base price $29.99 - older AAA or niche AAA game
* base price $49.99 or $59.99 - recent AAA game
(currency is USD)

...I'm not actually sure what something like Wii Sports would retail for on the PC. I can think of big-name casual games but stuff like Farmville generally uses a microtransactions model, right? Maybe I could look at VR games but (1) I don't have VR so I haven't paid any attention them at all, and (2) it's a fledgeling market at this point so price points might not be very stable for now. I just did look up Plants vs. Zombies GOTY and its base price is $4.99 though. I can't imagine publishers going for people who don't see themselves as gamers with price points higher than a few bucks -- maybe $10 if it's fancy-looking. But I also don't know much about branded stuff.

Years ago, though, back in the 1990s (and in 1990s US dollars), I remember the following pricing for physical releases:
* major JRPG (e.g. Final Fantasy II (SNES), Final Fantasy III (SNES), Chrono Trigger) - $69.99 to $89.99
* major handheld game (e.g. Pokémon) - $24.99 to $35.99
I don't remember anything else from back then.

More recently I remember the following from checking out used GBA games at GameStop several years ago):
* obscure/unwanted game - $2.99
* somewhat desirable but common game - $4.99
* very desirable game (e.g. Fire Emblem) - $9.99