Steam Trading Cards

http://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2013/05/15/gotta-catchem-all-steam-trading-cards-announced/

Holy crap.

Oh…ohh no…

Gamifying achievements, that’s a neat idea.

This is even less relevant to me than news about the latest MMOs, which I don’t play. I’m so far removed from what Valve is trying to do with hats and crafting and F2P and sale metagames. It doesn’t even vaguely concern me that it will seep into other things I enjoy, like a new DRM scheme might.

They are in their own little world that I am not a part of. shrug

Yeah, I’ve all but given up on trying to figure out what Valve is doing these days. There’s just so much crap involved with that service right now it kind of leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I still love the service for the accessibility and the library, but holy shit, they need to establish a direction soon, so I know what I’ve signed up for.

This seems like the sort of thing you could ignore if you didn’t like it. I’m not sure why the addition of virtual trading cards and badges brings the angst over “what you signed up for.”

I buy games from Gamersgate every now and then. Guess how much I pay attention to their Achievement system?

This news makes no sense to me. It’s especially confusing when they compare this to other things I know nothing about, like “other badges.” What badges? Maybe I would know what this is about if I used Steam for something other than playing games?

You “signed up” for the service and the accessibility and the library. Has that part changed? Yes it has – it’s gotten better in most respects I would say. And you can probably (hopefully) ignore the other parts you don’t care about.

PS: I’m not interested in this collectible cards and badges thing either.

The other badges are the ones they gave out during seasonal sales.

In other news, Klei must be ecstatic. Don’t Starve is the only non-Valve game in the Trading Cards beta so far. Collector nuts will get that game just to earn cards and badges.

Yeah, I view this sort of thing as inevitable and not particularly negative or consumer-unfriendly.

Ah. This must be the sort of thing for which they occasionally ask me to set up a profile.

Now this is something that always intrigued me. How do indies get on the cool list to be a part of these metagames? Indies try so hard to get on Steam for exposure and to accommodate modern buying habits. But I assume not everyone gets to participate in these events.

My “angst” is just a response to where Steam is heading. I usually prefer specialized services over bloated ones that do a bit of everything without really advertising why, or to what end. Half of the stuff that gets implemented feels like an afterthought and is just distracting. It’s not a problem per se. I can ignore it. But I’d appreciate a client that did a better job of letting me filter out all the noise and instead focus on the core of what the service actually does well.

What Steam does astoundingly well is make money for Valve. Steam doesn’t do a litle of everything. It’s as laser-focused as it can get for the goal of enticing users to keep buying stuff, get their friends to buy stuff, and getting devs to put stuff on it so more stuff can be bought.

I know what you’re saying and I can agree to a certain extent. As a fairly solitary gamer, I’d prefer Steam to be a little less in my face about collecting friends and whatnot, but I have to admire the sheer market savvy here. Valve knows exactly how to tweak things to keep Steam in the #1 position.

So Valve is gamifying gamification?

And I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals, and I heard, as it were the noise of thunder, one of the four beasts saying, Come and see.
And I saw, and behold a white horse: and he that sat on him had a bow; and steam trading cards were given unto him: and he went forth conquering, and to conquer.

For two millenia biblical scholars have puzzled over the meaning of this passage. Now we know! My God, now we know.

I own/lease 400 games on Steam. That’s going to count for something finally.

Gamifying gamification by gaming.

That was my first thought too, “Finally, my backlog is relevant!”. Then I realized that it’s likely they will only add trading cards to a handful of games, and probably not go into the back catalog much at all outside of Valve games, so it remains to be seen if this will spark a backlog revolution for me.

That said, anytime I can maybe get something for nothing just by playing games I already own I’m happy. I’m not OCD enough to have to have all the games that have cards, nor collect all the cards you can. I’ll be perfectly happy with the system if I can collect enough cards to make a badge at some point that I can cash in for a cool background on my profile or a 50% off King Arthur 3 or free DLC deal.

Oh I think you’re wrong there. This is an excellent way to get people to buy older games that they may have otherwise overlooked. I would even say that’s a primary purpose of the feature.

If you own something like Lost Planet 2, Alice: Madness Returns, Prototype, or LEGO Harry Potter, this is an opportunity to get consumers to take another look at your game for minimal effort.