GAME DISCOVERY, or how a Hobby needs your elbow grease.

Recently on BlueSky, an interesting conversation emerged. One I had with my friends a few times. I decided to ponder it here because, at around the same time, STEAM revealed its new "innovation" that aligned well with the topics. What am I talking about? Hobby Discovery. See, I am a firm believer that for someone to claim they have a hobby, they should not be a passive partaker in said activity.

What does it mean? Sounds like elitist gatekeeping! How dare you, a nobody on the internet, voice an opinion about how anyone enjoys their hobby!?

Valid point. But let me make my case. See, the point isn't to bash people who enjoy things. I am a firm believer that anyone should be able to enjoy most anything to their heart's content. And in any way they see fit! But for me, enjoying something is only a part of the definition of a hobby. An activity that someone does for pleasure when they are not working. That's the textbook definition. In my eyes, however, Hobby is something more... involved. Otherwise, watching TV could be called a hobby, and yet most folks would nod in agreement that it doesn't count - somehow! Why, though?

Because hobby implies involvement. Some effort put into it, some tangible bit of elbow grease to 'get it'. It's not about mastering a skill. It's not about spending countless hours trying to 'perfect' the way you enjoy an activity. That would be too deep a bite, and a dangerous line to cross - turning something that should be a pleasurable, relaxing thing into a chore. If you enjoy drawing, your goal does not HAVE to be getting better. It can. But doesn't have to. The implication I am talking about here, the involvement, is more about mindfulness - a buzzword, sure, but it fits. It's about active and conscious participation in your chosen activity.

Too often I hear folks saying the jaded mantras of "Nowadays music sucks" or "All the recent movies are horrible." Then you ask them a question about what they listened to, what they watched, and it's always the most surface-level stuff imaginable. Recent Marvel shlock. Music on the radio. And again—nothing wrong with those products of popular media; they exist for a reason. But then you follow up with a question: Did you check out some new albums from new artists? Watched some niche movies? Browsed some cinematic festivals? In most cases, the answer I got is no. Not at all. Zero effort expecting maximum results.

Okay, okay, I got ahead of myself - what the heck does any of that have to do with gaming?

Game Discovery is a problem. A huge spine-chilling issue for any indie dev. You can make the coolest game ever. Fabricate a new genre. Create mind-boggling stories or impossibly fresh and unique mechanical features. You might have pure gold upon your hands and yet... You release your game and 5 people on the planet have seen it. That's a bit of a bummer, innit?

For me, this is one of the many reasons why the AAA industry still holds up, despite the many blunders and horrible practices. A vast number of players do not care for finding games. They want to be spoon-fed. And a single def on a budget similar to the cost of a high-end fridge is not going to compete in the marketing limelight with a giga-corporation shoving their next Assassin's Creed Dutyfield Maddenwatch or whatever grey goo slop they have cooked up.

Just recently on Twitter (I refuse to call it X) I saw angry comments from gamers about the new Top 100 PC Games of all time list made by PC Gamer. They are upset, fuming, malding, seething that something like DISCO ELYSIUM is so high on the pedestal. They say, "I never heard of it. Or what the frick is CAVES OF QUD? Nobody heard of such games!". But that's the core of the issue, right? You can clearly see that the editors of the PC Gamer site are dedicated to the hobby. They play dozens upon dozens of games every year. They search, they look under rocks, they try new things. Simply put, they invest their time into their work and hobby to find new gems to shine a spotlight on. And your average Joe? Clearly doesn't.

Now, I am not one to glaze any company, but credit when it is due - STEAM, not being a giga-corp governed by the whims of investors and shareholders - still is the prime gaming spot to help with this issue. We all know it, even if we might be miffed by its bone-crushing monopoly. NEXT FESTs are frequent enough and bring much-needed attention to a plethora of smaller games. The proliferation of game demos definitely helps players find something interesting to play. STEAM QUEUE is an old feature by now, and I know plenty of players who idly click through it, hoping to spot something to catch their eye.

And now we have a new toy in town to aid Indies - the greatest invention of our time!

A Calendar.

STEAM Personal Calendar is the brainchild of their Labs Experiments department. A devilishly simple idea that, if made well, can be quite a game-changer for players and devs alike. It works on a simple premise - giving you, the player, a personalised calendar showing you games that hopefully catch your attention. You can see games released recently as well as titles coming in the following months. All neatly organised and editable to a degree. Letting you hide games you have already wishlisted, skip on Early Access titles if that's not your piece of bread, and filter by tags. It's a nifty idea.

My experience with it was stellar. The moment they introduced it, I found and added to my wishlist over 10 new games. Games I had never heard about before. This is what I am talking about! If not for this simple tool, it would be quite likely that I would never hear of these titles unless by a random chance of seeing something about them on the wide internet.

But I am equally aware that the tool is only as good as we allow it to be. I checked with my buddies if it works nicely for them to, and the results were, ah... mixed. Some of them barely buy any games. Do not partake in the Steam Queue fun. Do not ignore titles they do not like. Do not follow curators, and do not write reviews. And so, for all intents and purposes, they are a bit of a ghost for the STEAM systems and algorithms. Obviously, without data to crunch and mangle, the Calendar and all the clever coding behind it have no way to guess what kind of games you might be into.

And this harkens back to the initial point of this whole diatribe. For this fancy new thing to work well, it sort of assumes you - the Player - have already put in some work. Help it help you. Feed it enough info to work its magic. As I mentioned, for me it worked like a charm. Every game it recommended was in genres I enjoy. Most of the games were more curated to experiences similar to what I played in the past. The mosaic of titles on display held promise, and I was happy to click through them to see if anything could win my attention - and some titles absolutely did.

I want to finish this jumbled mess of a text with a little call to action - Research your Hobby, folks. Dig a little deeper. Scratch under the surface. We often bash AI and the Algorithms, becuse in hellish landscapes we are living in they bring lots of pain and suffering, yeah... But they can be leashed to our will, to. Use them. Crack'em open. Let the machine serve your purpose and crunch the info you give it to help you find your next musical discovery. Your next superb book to dig into.

And your next favorite game of all time.