The video game industry faces a serious discoverability challenge. Big releases — say, a new Call of Duty — are hard to miss, but smaller titles like Double Fine’s Keeper can go largely unnoticed. Steam player counts indicate relatively few people have discovered it, and it’s easy to see why: between roughly 1,300 and 1,700 games have been launched each month on Steam this year, not counting platform-exclusive releases on storefronts such as Nintendo’s eShop or the PlayStation Store. With that volume, choosing your next game can feel overwhelming.
To help cut through the noise, Steam is testing a new discovery tool. Announced on Tuesday, the Steam Personal Calendar surfaces recent releases and upcoming launch dates in a compact view. According to Valve’s announcement, the feature is “filtered down to the set of games we think you are most likely to be interested in.”
The Personal Calendar offers a quick overview of games released in the past month, highlights titles that arrived in the last seven days, and then lays out upcoming releases week-by-week for the next eight weeks.
Rather than promoting only the largest or most hyped launches, the calendar personalizes its suggestions based on the games you actually play. Valve says the system places greater weight on titles you invest the most time in (relative to other players). A short demo session won’t overly influence recommendations, but 100 hours in The Witcher 3 will.
Image: Valve via PolygonI mainly play PC games on a Steam Deck, which in recent years has become my go-to indie platform. As a result, my Personal Calendar highlights smaller titles I’ve been tracking, like Dispatch and The Lonesome Guild. It also introduced me to upcoming games I hadn’t encountered before — Hypogea, Ayasa: Shadows of Silence, and Unpetrified: Echoes of Nature — all of which immediately landed on my wishlist.
The calendar also includes titles already on your Steam wishlist, even if they weren’t algorithmically recommended. You can hide games you own and adjust how many upcoming releases are shown, giving you control over what appears in your feed.
Because the Personal Calendar is a Steam Labs experiment, Valve is soliciting feedback from users. Spend a little time with the feature and share your thoughts if you want to help shape its development.
Source: Polygon
