As usual, I can't say I agree with everything that talagby says but I am at least extremely sympathetic to many of the issues. My point would be that I feel some people in this topic are getting at least three things that should be different issues a little muddled.
The first issue is backlogs. Now I don't consider myself a game collector - I rarely use my points here and I've given away more games here than I actually own. I only enter giveaways for games I intend playing. I've won games here that I've spent hundreds of hours playing. I've won games here that I have 100% achievements in. I've played more games offline while working away from home with only internet on my mobile. My backlog is still something to be ashamed of.
My problem isn't that I don't play games it is that is I spend too much time on my favourite games. I intend giving every game that I own that much love otherwise I wouldn't own it but it clearly isn't ever going to happen. I have a spreadsheet to get it under control and make sure I play a wider range of games and I'm a month behind schedule. Steam may have exaggerated the problem but it isn't new and it isn't an issue with this website. I have PS2 games that are still new and unopened in their shrinkwrap. It's a problem as old as gaming.
The second issue is +1 culture. There have always been game collectors but people hoarding thousands of games that they have no intention of playing is new. It's independent of gaming backlogs - it's a new metagame of acquiring keys instead of gaming. People looking for deals to get keys cheap enough to make a profit farming cards that can then be spent on more keys, organised groups shaking down developers for free keys, shady developers profiting from game-like objects instead of games, a support structure of bots and scripts and a support industry built on fraud and intimidation.
Now I don't really want to criticise game collectors in general. Some of my best friends are game collectors. But the increasing need for +1s is clearly having an growing effect on the gaming industry and gaming communities and it probably isn't unreasonable to suggest that this community is especially vulnerable to such changes - being built as it is entirely around the transfer of keys rather than any aspect of actually playing games. In this environment why would many users even see such changes as detrimental or the new metagame as a negative?
Anyone who participated in my recent half-assed 'event' may have seen me mention that it was originally meant to come with a certain amount of venting about things that had happened to me recently relating to Steam. One of those things was a discussion with a developer who had contacted me about acquiring some art assets from a failed project for use in a new game. He had a lot of interesting things to say about things that people often do in the name of +1 and attempt to justify as 'supporting developers' and how they were actually having completely the opposite effect. He had some surprisingly uncomplimentary things to say about steam gifts.
I was going to finish with a story about an old panini football trading sticker album I found in my loft. About how when I was at school peoples attempts to complete such albums had turned into a shitfest of theft, fraud, bullying and general drama that would scar people for years after. But at least I still had the damn book while Valve could just wipe all the +1s of everybody on Steam tomorrow for no reason. I'd intended putting it out there in the hope that people might think about what they were actually doing but decided I'd just be disappointed with the results.
So then the third issue would be why people make giveaways and what their expectations are and should be. And this again is separate from the first two issues because clearly not every gifter here cares about their gifts being played. In fact it is in even possible that gifters who care might be the minority. If that is the case should it be up to everybody else to mend their ways or for gifters to plan their giveaways accordingly? That isn't a rhetorical question - I'd actually be interested in possible answers.
Myself I give away surplus bundle games because making art is more profitable to me than mucking about trying to trade keys and getting scammed. When I have spare cash I try and give away nice games regardless of the price and for me that is an apology to developers for 'testing' games without paying for them when I was younger and poorer. It is nice when sometimes somebody contacts me and says they enjoyed a game and ideally it would happen more often - but I'm not going to worry if it doesn't get played as that isn't why I'm gifting.
I have a great ratio but I do not claim it is because I am trying to be generous or in any way benevolent to the users of this site. I fortunately expect very little in return. It is why I have gotten tetchy in the past when people have tried telling me what steam gifts is 'for' and what the 'spirit' of the site is and who I shouldn't exclude in order to be generous. It is simply a platform for making giveaways according to a variety of options. I personally experiment with those options as I am disappointed with various results that I find troublesome.
Many other people use the platform for entirely selfish reasons - only for what they can get in return. Many people clearly don't expect the things they farm for CV to be played any more than they intend playing their wins. Many of those don't read topics in discussions. If I read in a giveaway description that a gifter hopes a game is played within a certain timeframe and I can't commit to that then I won't enter, but many people wouldn't even read the description. The only options for people who would like their games to be played would appear to be the relevant groups or disappointment.
Everything should be better than it is but it isn't. Plan accordingly. I'm sorry for this wall of text but it could easily have been a lot longer.
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"gifter hopes a game is played within a certain timeframe and I can't commit to that then I won't enter"
That is something I can agree with, I do not enter a game giveaway if someone says in the text that they expect it to be played asap. But then I do not use scripts, so I tend to see and read all giveaway texts (tiredness notwithstanding for a few genuine mistaken enterings)
- other people I am led to believe use scripts that simply show an enter button, thus bypassing the text that many put in their giveaways (thus they would not be able to read it even if they wanted to !!); can someone confirm if that is true?
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Many people do indeed completely bypass any text in giveaways. I have had differences of opinion with several individuals in the past that are open about using such scripts and defend their use.
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oh dear, I was kinda hoping that was not the case, but someone else said it to me recently as well. I might not play all my wins immediately, though I intend to (life is busy), but I read every giveaway text box, just in case there are issues, or some specific reason behind their giveaway etc... - Never want to mess up a mods day with a ticket that could have been avoided after all :P
thanks for the heads up though, appreciated :)
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I don't think I ever saw that happening in small groups or whitelists, that's super weird to do in my opinion. And counter productive at least, as such person will automatically destroy own future chances at creator's GAs :)
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I know I've left one small group over people being open about using scripts and not reading giveaways so it does happen.
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Though yeah, now I remembered one good example!
There were a few people who were asking questions and opinions in the description of their whitelist GAs warning that if you enter without commenting, you'll be removed. And there were still such people who were entering without saying a word :D
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I try not to do such experiments myself but I've seen plenty of other people try such things and the results haven't been hugely optimistic.
I'm not even fundamentally against autojoiners, etc. I know I have people on my whitelist that use them because they otherwise seem pretty decent. My original point was simply that experience has led me to believe that just asking nicely for people to play games isn't going to work.
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Joining silently (or autojoining) a GA in which creator openly asks you about something is simply rude in my opinion.
I partly agree about asking nicely. If it's in public GA it will most likely be ignored. If it's invite-only GA on forums, chances are 50-50 that the game is played. If it's some nice not so big group or whitelist, chances are close to 100% but still not guaranteed. That's how it was for my not so many GAs.
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Maybe your suggested odds are slightly optimistic, but I'd mostly agree with all of that!
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My current giveaway has a "shout if you're human". And as expected very few responses.
:(
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I agree with you on many spots. Particularly the flooding of the market with collection "games" is something I frown upon. Everyone is free to collect the stuff they find interesting but I still consider this to be harmful for the whole gaming economy.
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Initially the flood of Greenlight trash didn't actually bother me. I figured it was just a case of supply and demand and if that's what people wanted then that was what they were going to get.
It's only now that I think it is really becoming the apparent the impact that the trash (and I'm referring to the asset flips and 'game-like objects' rather than just games that aren't very good) is having on the game industry in terms of direct competition (for attention and resources) and the expectations and behaviour of gamers.
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Aye. Fill the market with garbage and it stains everyone regardless of whether you touch it or not. Too much noise and it becomes hard to find the stuff you are looking for even if you try.
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I want to whitelist you one more time :) Yes, I agree almost 100% with it, except a few things and a part about nobody - we all know that there are some people (and not just a few) who have 100% (or close to) played/finished wins.
I am not saying that I am good myself, I am still far from playing all the wins, but well. The system encourages you to spend points. It's the nice feeling of win, the greed and many other factors. Plus there are different mindsets about the whole winning thing. No wonder so many people end up not playing majority of their wins. And bots, and idle farmers. This is all sad of course. Unfortunately I don't think that you can change behavior of the majority by posting on the forums only. Not everyone reads forums after all. It's the system and human nature combined.
I can talk for myself that to limit my own winning rate and to make fighting backlog better, I made a resolution for myself to enter not more than 12 GAs this year, all of which I already successfully entered. It helped to improve my own play stats a bit.
P.S. And to be honest I expected way more complaints about "they are stealing my precious points". Maybe I didn't see all the posts and comments though.
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"I spent an average of 100 USD monthly to buy games to give away on this site." - Jeesh... and I thought spending around $5 on giveaways at my good months was already a lot... :P
The "instead of wasting time on entering, play them" can be refuted very easily because it doesn't take enough time to try them. But I'm like... 95% sure that it was meant more as a symbolic statement, not as an actual suggestion. As a symbolic one, I agree.
So... I'm conflicted with this.
For me, I think people should have at least 50% games with any playtime on their account (41.3% for me, so I still need to work on it)
and 25% with at least one achievement. (26.6% for me)
Now, the reason why I won't be going for the high moral "100% for everyone" is because I genuinely don't think that users should force gaming. They should play their wins when they really want to play them. If it's over 30%, then I'd say that they've given it thought, but they've never actually prioritized Steamgifts wins.
The reason why I say this whole thing is because I want certain games, but I don't necessarily want to play them at any moment. Of course, there are some like that, but in most cases, I need to be in a mood for them. I love XCOM, but even so, I don't want to play XCOM 2 yet. There will be a point in time where I will want to play it and when I do, I'll be having so much fun with it. It's not a win, but just an example.
So, if I say that you need to get in a mood, how long should one be given to play their wins on average. For me, it's up to a year. More reasonably, most likely 6 months or so. Yes, it seems like a long time, but time moves fast and that 6 months does creep up. I wanted The Witcher, badly. So, I won it from a whitelist giveaway from a user that I really respected. I won it... and I didn't play it. I wanted to be in the mood and around 15 months had passed when I finally said "Damn... I'd love to play some Witcher". And so I did. Sadly, I didn't enjoy it too much because of the clunky combat, but once I get over the frustration, I'll try and continue it. If I were to force it though, I'd have a bad time and I'd consider that to be a waste of a win then and a waste of the GA creator's resources.
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I think that this has been a problem since the start, but these days the thing is, pretty much anyone who wants to play games can do it. There are lots of good games available for next to nothing, or even for free. On the other hand, most of the games on SG are games which are also available for next to nothing, and not necessarily the good ones.
So for most games on SG, there's pretty much nothing to do with them but collect and farm. For most other games on SG, those who wanted to play them already bought them, or bought other games which are just as attractive to them (or won them). And these users continue to buy and win, and the new games might trump old ones.
I don't think there's much that can be done about that. It's certainly what happened to me. Unless one takes a deliberate stance to play won games, there's a good chance they won't get played. I stopped entering giveaways because I realised that I won't play them, but for most users SG is a game in itself. Winning is a game, and CV is a game. SG isn't about charitable giving to those who lack for games, it's just, as I call it, a random trading site. You give games, you get games in return. Maybe not at the same time, not the same number, but still that's what it's about, just giving and receiving games, not giving to those who need and getting what you really want.
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Good post, and I think you struck on a great point which has always bothered me a little about Steamgifts. I mentioned in my other post in this thread that games are incredibly cheap nowadays and most gamers can certainly afford a lot more games than they actually play.
From an individual's point of view, it would make the most sense to acquire the games they most want to play through purchase or trading, and then their 'tier 2' games which they have an interest in playing but aren't desperate to play right now, they'll enter GAs for, or wait for a price drop etc.
The trouble is, as long as a person keeps buying new games on their 'tier 1' list and growing their backlog of 'tier 1' games, their 'tier 2' games will keep getting pushed further and further back to the point they may never get played. So there's an inherent weirdness in entering a GA for any games which is "I have an interest in this game but I don't care enough to play it right now, since if I did I would just buy it". This then clashes with the ideal of many gifters which is that they want their nice games given away to be played as a priority.
I find these two points hard to reconcile.
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It would be interesting if SG added some way to gift to people who intend to play and track whether they played. Sort of like CV but rewarding people who play their wins with a way to enter special giveaways for such people.
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The problem with me is that I try to buy every bundle, try to get all those shitty 50 cent games on Steam, buy games from kinguin, grab as many games from tremorgames as I can, and then I win 20 games on SG a month. So I'm probably getting on average at least 100 games a month, and I don't have time to play EVERY game I get. Right now I'm playing Pinball FX3 and Cuphead and Golf with your Friends and between those three games that's about all the gaming I can do. Just because I haven't played a won game yet doesn't mean I never will play it. So to be grouped with the "entitled" crowd or called out for not playing a game I won is really lame. I do think the points system was a bad change, simply because I'm used to the way things were for the past 5+ years, and obviously not being able to enter as many giveaways as before kinda sucks. I think any time you reduce the chance of people winning games, naturally a large portion of the members will be upset. At this point I can't even enter most of my group giveaways, let alone any of my wishlisted game giveaways.
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and I don't have time to play EVERY game I get.
.
At this point I can't even enter most of my group giveaways
-_-
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It wasn't like this for past 5+ years. In CG's post about point system change proposition it was clear that problem started around 1 year ago. And right now we have more points to spend than in first 4 years.
It was past year that gave us infinite number of points and encouraged +1 collectors and card farmers to enter in everything just to enter.
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That graph is of course almost identical in shape to the graph "the number of giveaways that have been created each month by our community" shown at https://www.steamgifts.com/stats/community/giveaways why not refer to that graph instead because at least I think it's more interesting?
More users making more GAs and/or just same users making more GAs than before. More crazy cheap bundle deals than before. More points are needed so people can actually enter the increased number of GAs. That's a huge increase, look at the numbers, they are in tens of thousands:
Before 2015: less than 20,000 GAs/month.
2015: average about 40,000 GAs/month (November: almost 70,000, December: almost 90,000)
2016: average about 80,000 GAs/month (May: over 100,000, December over 110,000).
2017 so far between 70,000-134,000 GAs/month (September: over 134,000)
I wonder what's this bundle deal's contribution to the new record of GAs in a month: https://www.steamgifts.com/discussion/Mhyp7/bundlestars-dollar-jumbo-bundle
2015 is also when more cheap trash games began appearing to Steam at accelerated rate: https://www.vg247.com/2017/09/12/the-number-of-games-released-on-steam-in-2017-is-set-to-overtake-the-number-of-releases-between-2006-and-2014/ it's interesting that number of GAs here have increased at very similar rate as number of games released in Steam. But perhaps we just hit the ceiling last month and this year in general? It's too early to tell how much the new point generation system affects giveaway creations habits.
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Overall, I agree with most of your points. I will look back and see if people played; if they did that's great. Not like I will whitelist or blacklist anyone for playing or not playing since I giveaway without that intent.
Although the one thing I slightly disagree on is if I can only play ~20 hours a week my completion/played % will be significantly lower than someone who is doing 100 hours a week and thus should not be looked at equally. Just my two cents.
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I try to play games ive won if i like the game i will keep playing it but as of right now i cannot really play any good game i have since my gpu will overheat till i get a new one
I also only try to enter games that i either want to try (on my wishlist) or games i know i want now
I won Just Cause 2 pack and i have like 60 hours on it because i liked this game and i plan to play it more sometime
Won some others but i dont think i have much time on most of them and the ones (if any i dont remember) that have no time played is because i have to many things going on right now (and again i cant really play games like just cause 2 right now with my gpu)
Since i cant really just buy games here and there wining them would be great as i have a ton of games on my wishlist that i still want to try/play and really this is the only way i could do that
I dont really comment on most giveaways cause i figure the person knows we are thankful because we got a free game
I wouldnt really expect people to play the game to 100% or after its beat anymore maybe they will come back to it someday but there are only so many hours and to many games
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Just some friendly advice: I've never seen someone bothered by someone expressing gratitude for a game they won.
Spamming "Thanks" in every giveaway you enter some might find annoying, but saying it for a game you won is something a lot of people will expect as a minimum of courtesy.
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I'm sure I will get a ton of blacklists for this but anyway:
Why do you even care? I give games away and I don't care if they get played or not.
I decide to give it away the moment I create the giveaway. For free. To anyone who wants it without any requierement exept level. Whether they say thank you or not.
People win the game its up to them what they to with it. Its theirs.
I give away games that I don't want to play and other people give away games they don't want to play. Simple.
Just idle the cards? I'm fine
Play it 1000 hours? I'm surprised you enjoy THAT game so much but I'm fine.
Just add 1+ to your steam library? I'm fine.
The only thing I care about is if they give the community something back. Trashy games I give away get a low level. The better the game the higher the level.
Join a steam group dedicated to this problem and you don't have to give away games to People who don't play them
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On the one hand, I agree with you, gaby. I haven't invested a huge portion of my money on this site like you have - I think I bought exactly two games to give away, and the rest of my gifts are games from various bundles that I don't want, while I keep the ones I do. While, yes, I would really like to see those games go to people who want them, and will play and enjoy them...
That's not up to me, because that's not what a gift is. Once you give a gift, it's not the fuck about you anymore. It's a gift. It's solely up to that person - that stranger, usually, on this site - to do precisely what they want with it. And if it's to just sit and be a +1, well, then they get to. It's theirs now.
I think if you're not getting enjoyment out of the giving, and you care this much about what people are or aren't doing with your gift, maybe it's time to stop giving, or give to more specific people (like your friends) or to donate those games or the money you'd spend on those games to charity, or, hell, spend that money on your own damn self.
Gifts given with strings attached, even otherwise reasonable ones like this, aren't really gifts.
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Over the course of roughly 25 months, I spent an average of 100 USD monthly to buy games to give away on this site. It is not a particularly high amount, but it was a little under the fifth of my monthly income.
My main reason was to try and find the most optimal way to game the CV level system, experimenting on the most optimal ways to reach the highest level with the lowest investment. (Keep in mind, this way before the time such ridiculous CV farms like Humble software bundles were this relatively commonplace, so my average was around 3.5 CV/USD.)
Over the course of roughly 30 months, I sent out 7,000 game keys to 6,500+ people, and the combined point value of these games is now exceeding 62,000. That is sixty-two thousand points only the winners spent during this time to enter giveaways.
Tens of thousands of those points hide bad games.
Tens of thousands of those points hide decent to good games.
A couple thousand of those points hide pretty damn good games.
To this day, I know absolutely surely about 1200-ish points worth of those games which were played by the winners. Some to completion, some to 100%, some only until they realised it was not really their cup of tea. Still, at least they tried.
Even if I interpolate it based on the average behaviour I see among the userbase thanks to that userscript that can check up on won game play stats, my best guestimate is maybe 5-6,000 points of those games were installed and played to some degree by those who won them.
That is at best 10% of the total and it also seems to be more or less the average of the global win ratio I see among active SG users.
Ever since the site's solitary owner, cg, introduced the new point system, we now have close to one thousand replies in its announcement thread complaining about how few giveaways people can enter now. I actually checked most of those users. The average ratio of played games was not even nearly 10%.
Still, it is not the thing that struck me. What really stuck out for me was that nobody, not a single soul among them ever thought about that maybe they could use this sudden excess time they are not spending on entering giveaways to actually try to play some of those video games they won here. Games other people paid for.
Yes, I know, SteamGifts is not a charity site. We had the discussions, the majority cast the vote on this. Still, people paid money for these games. Some more than me, some less than me. Some only a fraction of their sizeable wages, some a hefty portion of their pocket money.
But you guys… the thought to even try the games these people gifted to you… it never even crossed your mind, even for a second.
Lower point income is not the real issue on this site. The real issue is that you are a bunch of entitled little brats who cannot think about anything else but hoarding. Some for a +1 in their sizeable library, some for cards, some for the sake of winning something on the internet. But nobody, and I mean nobody to play video games.
This is the problem right now on SteamGifts. You. You and your approach on the gifts others gave you. Yes, some are genuinely crappy games. Yes, most of them are bundled games. But guess what, one of my personal favourite non-indie games in the recent years is on the bundle list, I even spent a considerable amount on several packs of a Humble bundle to get ten keys for it, of which I now gave away eight. Only one of those people ever played it.
So, your problem may eventually be not the lack of points, but those who pump money into this site realising that people like you just take mindlessly whatever they can without any sort of gratefulness, and they just stop giving. Then you can start whining even more on the lack of giveaways to enter for.
And I bet none of you will think about playing any of your won games even then.
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