Arresting to have been using a thing so clearly designed to have gamelike features and never quite noticing it. I tend to credit myself as being fairly media literate and conscious about games, I guess either I'm wrong about that or they did an amazing job at it. I'll have to think carefully about that.

i mean yeah?

i've never really used that part, other than running a script every year to sell cards that accumulate by themselves for a little bit of credit. don't really seem like a big part of it.

then again i'm not a gambler. i guess people could get stuck in that sort of thing.

10-15 years ago, I knew a guy that bought games and traded cards just to level up his account. I remember asking him why he did it - since the levels are pretty much just cosmetic after the initial levels - and he straight up just said he liked to see the number go up

Ahh jeez, fuck I hate it

It is in no way an MMO, so don't feel bad.

It's a community-focussed store, bordering on being a social media network.

The crap they talk about with "levelling-up" and decorating your profile have nothing to do with gamifying the experience - they're just a way to add more microtransactions for yacht money.

A friend of mine told me you get some additional discounts during Steam sales if you craft badges with cards. Never tried it or cared enough to do it, but if it's true that might be another motivation.

Do those trading cards still have any value (a few cents are ok) and are people really buying those? I never noticed that you could sell them. I do nothing with them. And having a very small "discount" on my next game would probably be worth more for me than some NFT like things that collect the digital equivalent of dust in my account.

There's a bevy of "idle" games that are all about that. One if the most popular is literally called Numbers Go Up Idle

Pray tell, what script?

At least out of all the yacht money on the planet, his goes to science yachts as well.

In no way is he altruistic or he'd not be a billionaire, but he's farther from the evil than the rest of the public billionaires.

“You level up your account. You get things for playing games.“ Trading cards, profile page decorations, and the like are all tools for self-expression. "There's all of these elements that let you express who you are as a person as well as then MMO-ing the entire experience and leveling up," he says. "Then you have things that you can give to other people, and awards, and all of that."

So… like… all the least used features of the software? That’s what he’s saying people like best?

Yes, they do, a few cents. It's a pain to sell them, since you seemingly have to do it one at a time. But some of them are even like 1$/€ so those are worth it

it's one of those greasemonkey ones, i need to look it up every time because i always remove it after.

Just checked - I got over two hundred trading cards. On one hand, that's a pita to sell individually, on the other hand that's probably a free game in the next sale...

But I can do it over time and sell them bit by bit, no hurry...

It's a community-focussed rental shop, bordering on being a social media network.

No it isn't.

It is not a game.

A game is a form of art, Steam exists to make Gabe money it is not a work of art and has no artistic relationship with its players and the fact that Gabe doesn't understand that as CEO of a gaming company is fucking embarassing.

I am tired of this lazy conflation of attaching superficial, lazy carrots on sticks to things and calling it "gamification" it is such an empty, cynical condescending way of looking at the world.

Why is everyone so condescending about games? No Gabe Steam is not an MMO because it isn't fun, there is no actual core experience other than numbers going up. Therefor it is NOT a game.

Now if you wanted to argue Steam was a shitty multiplayer idle game sure, but it has to be the shittiest idle game in the world then and Gabe even worse your multiplayer idle game is full of Nazis and extremely toxic behavior none of you give any shit about moderating....

I haven't checked in a while, but IIRC, there are scripts that can quickly sell your cards without you having to do it manually.

Steam isn't a game.

That'd be cool if so!

Intriguing.... I'll say, clearly most people don't use the platform that way. But to those who do engage with Steam that much, folks like CS2 case addicts, I can certainly see it. Stuff like cosmetically building out a profile, making sure you have an impressive inventory, the freebies they always give out during sales and events.... yeah. It's reminiscent of endgame MMO behaviour, when you've beaten all the content and just run around looking for rare stuff to show off to your guild.

That's pretty much the whole point of the incremental genre.

Hunh. So, my library of unplayed games is not unlike my health/magic/stamina/et al potion stock after completing a game.

Not all games are a work of art actually. Especially Asian grinder MMOs are not, such as Silkroad online.

There are many that treat Steam's achievement system kind of like a game, so maybe it can be considered a pseudo game, just barely.

A feature like this only needs to attract a tiny percentage of rich whales to be worth it.

even look at tf2 addicts that don't spend money but instead trade the free stuff the game gives you

Its the game I like to play, but also a bit of a fun challenge to unlock the various badges for a game and compare your rank globally in steam.

This is the one I use:
https://steaminventoryhelper.com/

So a billionaire can just build a school or something and they're out of the woods? idk

Not by today's standards no.