Every time I use Steam’s discovery queue or any “what to play next” site, I get bombarded with stuff from the last 6 months. I get it - that’s what generates clicks and sales - but it’s genuinely unhelpful for how most of us here actually want to play.
I’ve been quietly working on a tool to change that. The core idea - your taste doesn’t have an expiration date, so recommendations shouldn’t either. Something from 2011 that fits exactly what you’re looking for should surface just as easily as a 2024 release.
It’s early and rough around the edges, but I’m at the point where I want to validate whether this is even a problem worth solving for other people or just a me.
If a recommendation algorithm for games like this existed - smarter discovery that actually respects older games - would you use it?
What features would make it genuinely useful vs just another thing you try once and forget about? I want it to be the tool someone actually recommends to a friend, not just upvotes and forgets.
So long as it properly accounts for how needlessly inaccessible those older games tend to be. Which means, the algorithm has to also be good enough to recommend good pirate sources (and procedures), good tutorials for making stuff work, etc. There’s no sense for me in getting recommended cool videogames from the 80s or 90s I can’t play, the same way there’s no sense for me in getting recommended cool TV shows from the 80s or 90s that are not even airing in the designated eternal-syndications channels in TV cable.
Hi, that’s true. I thought to focus on games from GOG’s library, because their support for a bunch of old games allows to play those games even on modern computers.
But yeah, there is a lot of good old games that will require shenanigans to play them nowadays