Joined 3 out of 5 ;) Thank you for the chance. Personally I join games GA's I would like to have without taking into account groups or no-groups. If I'm running out of points (and that was long, long time ago) I'm picking ones with better odds.
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I learnt two things with this thread.
That there are people actually using the "group" subset when browsing for giveaways.
That there is actually a "group" subset for browsing giveaways.
(I usually only check wishlist, recommended, and sometimes when i'm bored the first 3-5 pages for all giveaways)
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You check the first 3-5 pages when you are bored, I usually only have a total of 3 or 4 pages. I have over 6000 games blocked :)
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I'm not really into that blocking thing as my tastes can change a lot overtime, and I might block something that could interest me later.
I don't even know where to find the list of stuff I've blocked :/
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You can view the games here in the last option on the page.
https://www.steamgifts.com/account/settings/giveaways
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Thanks. Someone already told me that but I forgot. I'll probably forget you told me as well in a few months :/ It's kinda unintuitive to put that list here.
(There's currently only one game in that list, I remember adding a lot of games there a few years ago when there was this stupid 5x5000-keys-GAs-per-day craze but I probably deleted them once they were added to the free games list.)
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My tastes don't really change and I don't block anything until I am 100% sure I don't want it. Some games are easy, like tower defense, grand strategy, card games, those are some I don't like and will block right away. Other games I will start by watching the trailer and reading reviews. If I can't decide by that, I will leave the game alone until I have the time to watch some video reviews or at least gameplay footage if there are no reviews. I will only block it when I know for sure that I will never want to play it.
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Like Trump said, too tired of winning.
On the serious side, I doubt majority of people take care to estimate odds.
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For me I often enter giveaways just by clicking browse group giveaways link. Unless you mention there is a public giveaway in the description as well I won't know. I go through wishlisted giveaways, group giveaways, and then discussion giveaways with any points left. I rarely have enough to look at all giveaways.
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I only browse the group/whitelist section of giveaways. While I don't enter giveaways with hundred of entries, I'm sure many do.
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I've noticed that too. I think it's how group giveaways are highlighted with an extra icon in the gamelist, so they stand out. The number of entries is smaller, harder to see. But yes, surprising behavior. I've sometimes wondered if some of the giveaways here were a researcher running tests of that sort. There's whole branches of research both in psychology and economics that studies irrational decisions people make. Check out Dan Ariely's books or his free class on coursera. In economics it's called behavioral economics and Daniel Kahnemann's Thinking Fast and Slow is good overview.
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I'm not big on reading books, so I don't think I would be able to get far through those, but it is a very interesting subject. Maybe I will try to find a documentary or some kind of lecture.
After watching Experimenter (2015), I wanted to read Obedience To Authority, but I don't think I ever will. I think that deals with a similar subject.
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Isn't the autojoin script written in a way to favour group/regional giveaways first, then spend the rest of the points on public ones? Also, many people essentially never even look at public giveaways, especially since high-level ones are rare. (I wouldn't be surprised if I supplied over half of this year's level 10 keys so far.)
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I don't know how the script works, I knew it existed, but never looked it up until today. I originally started this thread because it looked like people were using a script that gave priority to group giveaways which was actually making group giveaway have 9 times as many entries as the public level 0, but I'm not sure now, it may just be people that have too many games on their main giveaway list and spend their points using the group filter thinking they have better odds and not even look at the public ones.
Either way, it's kind of funny. Whether people are using bots or just not paying attention to public giveaways, they are thinking they are getting better odds while actually getting many times worse.
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It is funny. And interesting. Truth is, a sociology student could actually write a thesis or thesises (thesi?… theses?) on the behaviour patterns of this site's user base.
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I'm sure there would be a chapter dedicated to blacklisting :)
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Updated the OP with this because I thought it was pretty funny. A game where completely unrestricted level 0 giveaways have 4-800 entries, but when you add whitelist and group, it is over 2700 :)
And this one. Level 0, public giveaways open for 24 hours only get around 800 entries while shorter ones get around 350-400 and yet this giveaway with whitelist and group gets 3276. Age of Steel: Recharge
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Here's what you came for, although most of you probably have it already.
I just thought these numbers were kind of funny. It seems that there are over 700 people that know nothing about odds or just automatically enter every group giveaway because they think they will have better odds of winning. The funny thing is that this game usually only gets like 4-600 entries in public level 0 giveaways and this group giveaway already has 900 entries (giveaways were at 105 and 900 entries when I started this thread).
It's like the people that entered were programmed to think group giveaways automatically mean better odds, but they don't bother to enter the giveaway with almost 9 times the chance of winning :)
https://www.steamgifts.com/giveaway/B6mzZ/precursors
https://www.steamgifts.com/giveaway/8S2yk/precursors
Edit:
I just started 2 giveaways of my own that start and end at the same time with no restrictions other than one has a bunch of major groups, lets see what happens. Here they are:
https://www.steamgifts.com/giveaway/f1Bsp/to-the-home
https://www.steamgifts.com/giveaway/fmlfk/to-the-home
I don't know what to think. I find it hard to believe that so many people would just enter the group giveaway while not entering the other with better odds, but I also find it hard to believe that a bot wouldn't do such a simple calculation and enter the giveaway with better odds. This certainly doesn't prove anything and I am not saying that these people are using bots, it just looks suspicious and I think it is funny that people enter giveaways with worse odds than all the other giveaways for the same game simply because it is a group giveaway. I see this with group giveaways all the time (when large public groups are added).
I also find it odd that when I noticed these giveaways yesterday and when I started this thread, there was a huge entry gap of about 9 to 1. They were at 105 and 900 when I started the thread, now they are at 171 and 963, only 5 1/2 to 1 instead of 9. I know giveaways get more entries as they get closer to ending, but it has only been 2 hours and it still has 18 hours remaining.
Here are some numbers I have been collecting on the two giveaways I started (yeah, I have too much free time). Doesn't mean much, but I thought it was interesting. I think the gradual increase in the ratio may be an indication that people are manually entering the giveaways as they come on SG by using the group filter rather than using bots like I initially thought.
I think I should of done my test without posting the links here. If the numbers really are because many people use the group filter and don't bother checking the entries on the public giveaways, I am inflating the public giveaway numbers here, but not the group numbers. This is because many of the people that only enter the group giveaway thinking they get better odds will also check the forums for giveaways and when they see the numbers here, they will now enter the public GA that I linked.
I think that is what happened with the giveaway for Precursors. I was not tracking the numbers on that, but it is possible to do at any time through the entry list (that is how I got the entry numbers for my GAs while I was sleeping). I noticed the group giveaway had over 9 times as many entries and it was that way for a while. Then after I posted the link here showing the better odds in the public GA, it shot up to almost double the entries in just 2 hours while it had barely been moving for the past day. This is not because the giveaway was ending because it still had another 18 hours remaining at that time.
Feb 19th
I was just looking through some giveaways and thought this one was pretty funny. This game usually gets around 400-800 entries in level 0 public giveaways and yet this one with whitelist and group currently has over 2700, Shu
And here's another. Level 0, public giveaways open for 24 hours only get around 800 entries while shorter ones get around 350-400 and yet this giveaway with whitelist and group gets 3276. Age of Steel: Recharge
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