Gamers Add Tags to Protest Ubisoft on Steam (Future of Steam Tags?)

[nomotog_v1legacy]

Gamestop though. They really can just burn. Lack of an actual legit games exclusive competitor with them is part of the reason the actual market is so jacked up to begin with.

I'm not sure that'll help. Instead, it'll put the ball in the courts of Amazon and Wally World (in the US, at least). Amazon's already wheeled and dealed for exclusive content (and maybe Wal-Mart has too, but I don't remember offhand). I'm not sure this becomes a better scenario, though I would rather order through Amazon than Gamestop.

Wallmart has obtained some exclusive per-order bonus. The neat thing about them though is they are a big box store. They don't need to offer just games. I have seen them offer gift cards or snacks as pre order bonuses. Kind of just a neat thing.

 

[Continuity]

Frankly, I find them annoyingly untrustworthy. "Glorious" tells me nothing about Half-Life 2 outside of the fact that somebody apparently liked it. No, users, Assassin's Creed III is not a sandbox title, and "Where is Charles Lee" is neither clever nor informative. And as amusing as it is for those familiar with the title to hear Team Fortress 2 referred to as a "Hat Simulator" that is NOT helpful for people looking at the title for the first time, nor is it something that anyone in their right mind would do a search string for. Nor are "Shepherd." and "Wrex." helpful tags for Mass Effect. And for all that there is some mechanical similarity between Darksiders and Ocarina of Time, it is not a "Zelda" title, nor is it a puzzle game.

Point being that user immaturity had long since compromised the potential benefit of user-defined tags and Steam would probably do well to drop the system.

I disagree, specific and individual examples of tags can be unhelpful but I think there is a sort of gestalt effect from these community tagging features that when taken with the right perspective is actually very useful. Steam's categorisation and filtering options have long been woefully inadequate and I for one find tags a much more powerful tool, they allow for effective broad searches and specific keyword searches, so for example with tags I can get a list of medieval themed games very easily which would be a hell of a task without tags. I'm not saying every game with a popular tag necessarily deserves that tag, but at least its decided by the community and not the arbitrary decision of some administrator at valve, or worse the publisher.

You're not supposed to "trust" tags, you're supposed to be informed by them. That is to say they are not consistent or reliable in any particular instance, but taken as a whole a statistical picture emerges that can tell you a lot about a game, directly or indirectly. To take your TF2 "Hat simulator" example, like it or not that is telling us something important about the game, that enough people have tagged the game "hat simulator" for that to be a popular tag acts as fair warning that there are some unusual mechanics in the game and its not a run of the mill shooter in that regard.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Whatever, they're buying their games anyway.

 

[Alfador_VII]

It would be interesting if we could look at the Steam game lists of people who apply these "protest" tags. Wouldn't be surprised if some have pre-ordered the games already, and even more will purchase them at launch or soon after...