It's the same problem as with KickStarter campaigns.
The idea of a curator: it's a person whom you would unequivocally trust to wade through the flood of new additions to the Steam store and pick out the games that you would actually be interested in. It could be a person with the same taste as you, it could be a person responsible for picking out games of a specific genre/theme/length/multiplayer mode/price range/etc., it could be a person with background in game design so that you could learn why exactly a particular newcomer is worth trying out. Something like that. Sounds fab on the paper.
The reality of curators on Steam: they're some blokes from YouTube or gaming websites, who actually are at the advantage of having access to all those new games - but because of that they are obliged to be too inclusive in compiling their lists, effectively forcing you to wade through those and have to pick out the interesting bits on your own (which kind of undermines the idea of a curated list in the first place). Not to mention the inherent biases that those blokes carry over from their websites to their lists ('Ooh, that dev said something bad about our journalistic integrity in the past, so I'm going to ignore his game, muahaha'). Or. Or a curator is a certain nobody who just happened to be a fan of a particular genre/theme/what-have-you, and decided to share a list of his recommendations with others - which is fine, but you've got to trust him to be actually knowledgeable in the topic he's covering, and to have enough resources to try out those new games on a regular basis.
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On a side note, it rubbed me up the wrong way that, for instance, both TB and Nerd^3 deemed it necessary to explicitly mention in their respective videos that they're not getting paid for curating their lists. Well, thank you, I've actually never assumed you were, but thank you for bringing that up anyway. I'm not entirely convinced this will remain the case, though: money aside, some curators could 'just happen to be' good friends with certain game developers, and include their games just as a 'nice gesture' without thinking that they're doing anything wrong or crony-like.
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Oh, but many Youtubers consider themselves not to be game journalists, so they are not bound by the same rules the professionals are. TB might be on the light side, but some are not and it's well known. Sadly, the same is true for some professional journalists.
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Aye. I would probably go as far as say that none of the big YT personalities considers himself to be a game journalist - whatever that label is supposed to mean and stand for, anyway. TB himself never fails to underline that he's a critic at most.
I'm fine with TB and Nerd^3 so far, their track record - disclosure-wise, and regarding most gaming-related scandals - has been to this point quite immaculate; and I'm not suggesting that they'll inevitably bollocks it up and give in to nepotism and shady remuneration. I just found it odd that they thought it was necessary to stress that they are aware that this is a genuine concern on our part - which almost implies that they themselves are fully cognisant that some people will take money for curation, and those paid curators may actually stomp all other curated lists into oblivion via the sheer numbers of their agenda-fed followers.
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But Greenlight and Early Access are shit.
We now have "vote for me get free key," and every game that does this is almost always shit. There's a few exceptions as there's some games that are actually decent, but Greenlight is terrible and there's no QC at all.
Early Access is just... just look at Towns and Starbound.
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I like that, when I visit a page of a certain game, together with metacritic score and steam users reviews there is now also a quote from a review and a link to the full review of my favorite media. I don't have to go around 10 websites to see who reviewed it, it's all linked directly from a steam page, just like the developer's website and steam forum dedicated to that specific game. So, whatever I need, it's all right there.
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If you want to see it, I am ok with it. But I hate everything related to social media as much as I hate cookies being used for recommendations, so I don't want to see it and want this optional. I just want a reputable game shop to spend my money and not being bothered by recommendations of some internet celebrities who I don't know and don't want to know. Furthermore I don't like that they try to mine my data. Doesn't work, won't work.
They should really stick to their last and take my money instead of trying to be ducking facebook.
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Who needs the fucking curators when you can always see a video review of the game on Youtube from respectable gamers or read the damn reviews on Steam under the game news - positive and negative ones. You know, the Steam reviews are the most important for me, because if something is wrong with the game like a "pay to win" crap, there always will be some guys who will blame and defile the game in the worst manner ! For exemple the negative ones made me to say "pass" to this game because of the "pay to win" scheme, which I dont like ! Once again, FUCK the curators !
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I am writing this because I am tired of seeing complaints about every new feature Steam comes out with. A few months ago people were complaining that Steam felt outdated and clunky compared to other digital distribution platforms, in terms of the layout and graphics. They updated the UI in order to make Steam appear more modern and almost right away people were asking how to change it back, how to skin it, who they could complain to and so on and so forth. Now I am seeing almost as backlash against Steam Curators, a feature that in my own opinion, was strongly needed.
In 2013, Steam introduced its Greenlight and Early Access Programs. Previously in order to get on Steam you had to be a major publisher or get a sizable amount of recognition for your indie game to ever get noticed and put on Steam. Effectively Steam was already curating it's entire platform: showcasing popular new releases, advertising large updates and DLC, and highlighting what you saw on it's front page. With the advent of Greenlight, games that would have never gotten the visibility that Steam offers were able to make their way on to the platform. There has been a problem with quality control in the past year however because of the now low barrier to entry to get a game listed on Steam. So they started giving us tools.
Community tagging, community reviews, and now Steam Curators are all there to help you make the decision to purchase a game. In my own personal case, I always do research before buying a game. Usually I wait for a review from TotalBiscuit or read an article on Rock, Paper, Shotgun, now both of those things are built into Steam. Curators do not get paid (directly, but they may see increased views to their YouTube videos or websites indirectly). It is merely a tool for you to use. It isn't social media bs, they aren't going to show you what your friend Greg thinks of the game from his Google+ post, you pick whose opinion you care about.
tl;dr Steam Curators is nothing more than a tool for you to use or not use. It is needed to prevent people buying crappy games. Curators are not paid
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