Steam lets users discover new games through experiments

Valve has opened Steam Labs, where users can try out the company’s experiments. The first three experiments revolve around game discovery, including through microtrailers.

Valve indicates that many experimental features are working and by releasing them through Steam Labs, the company hopes to get feedback for a possible later release on the game platform. Valve is starting three experiments, all three of which are intended to introduce players to games that they may not have known before.

For example, Valve offers Microtrailers an overview with short videos of six seconds that should give an impression of a game. The company offers different views for different genres such as adventure games, RPGs, popular and “dragon games”. In one overview, the videos play when hovering over them with the mouse, in another when scrolling, and yet another overview shows four views of the same game in a frame.

Valve is also testing an interactive recommendation system. This service offers suggestions based on games that the player has often played. With sliders, players can indicate whether they are recommended more popular or more niche games and whether the list should contain older or newer games. In addition, the category can be set or excluded on the basis of tags.

The last experiment involves a daily video of about 25 minutes that automatically offers a video showcase of lists of games, such as new and popular games. The format is that the display shows blocks each containing four videos of a single game, mainly gameplay footage. Next to the ‘show’ is a link to the game on Steam.