Steam has gotten a bunch of updates that were quite neat. I love the “new” (it’s not that new anymore) library with the dynamic and static collections, the new home screen, the updates being shown there at the front page as well as the fact that it all looks like a shelf where you keep your games.
As far as shelves go, you can set up a view of your collections, your recent games, your favourite games all your games, recent friend activity, uncategorized games, and…. the new feature:
PLAY NEXT
And that’s something that I’d imagine would be rather neat for a lot of people. The algorithm that Steam is using tells you about the games that you should tackle next. Steam helps you with your backlog and gives you a recommendation of games that you haven’t played yet but that you own. It’s like the “explore”-feature that I frequently use… but for games that I already have and that I don’t need to buy!
My Play Next features quite a bunch of titles that I actually wanted to play for a while now but never got to or titles that I might want to play again as it’s been a while!
So, next time I’m not sure what I wanna play, I’ll hit up this feature and just check the recommendations. Endless Legend/Space are options especially as I love the universe and Dungeon of the Endless… but right now I’m quite busy with Assassin’s Creed 1 and Hollow Knight. If I feel like Indie Games, I might check out Omensight’s predecessor, “Stories: The Path of Destinies”, or maybe Aragami, which looked interesting… and then, of course, there’s XCOM2 which I’m lately seeing everywhere and which is going to break my heart next time I play it again!
And I feel like that’s the biggest problem with a big backlog of games: You are not under pressure due to the size of the backlog… You are under pressure as you cannot choose between the many games that you might want to play. You only have so much time and this one game might be worth more time than this other one. Sure, I could get back into Kingdom again and just replay the old games or check out the latest update but I also could potentially try out something new like Deponia or Dishonored, although I’m not sure if I’ll like these games all that much, as I barely know anything about the franchises!
Overall, I feel like this might become a feature that more people, other than me, use. I personally love the “new” library and stuff like the dynamic collections and the “unplayed”-category! I also love the “shelf”-look of things and how everything is in order now and how everything looks less dated. Again, this new feature might improve how I tackle games that I never played. Before, I used to scroll down with my eyes closed and stop at a random game! Usually, it lead to me playing something fun!…. or not! This might be the solution to that or rather a flat-out upgrade! Thus, I’m looking forward to that!
What are your thoughts on it? Is this something that you could see yourself using? What was your previous method of choosing what game to play next? Either way, that’s it for today’s post. Hope you enjoyed this one…
Cheers!
Indiecator 
For me, the “Play next” feature is almost completely useless. I have so many games and I play across the vegetable garden (I know that’s not an English saying, but you’ll understand) that the algorithm basically just recommends random games from my library.
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But even if it’s just random games that are getting recommended, that’s better than not having any clue on what to play next, isn’t it? :)
I mean, I completely forgot about Moon Hunters, Deponia and Wakfu! If that thing wouldn’t have recommended them to me, I wouldn’t have thought that I own these games!
But yeah, I guess it’s not that useful for everyone but it’s better than the “What’s New” feature that you can’t get rid off. You can get rid off “Play Next” if you want to. :)
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Well, I frequently look through my list, so I have enough random recommendations from myself :-)
What would be cool is a real recommendator: you put in some criteria (ie. “unplayed”, genres, lenght, starts with an H, rating, whatever), and the algorithm says: Based on your data, here are 5 games you could try out. THAT’S what I would try out.
I am playing with the idea of implementing something like that on my site, but I have no idea how to do it yet :-)
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As far as I know there is a feature just like that on Steam Labs already! There are the Deep Dive and the Community Recommendations, for instance. :) So, I’d say try those out. Steam -> Store -> Steam Labs, tadaa!
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But the SteamLabs have pretty few criteria, cannot be limited to your own library, and seems to only take recent reviews into account.
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Oh well, guess you need to send your feedback to them so they’ll know :)
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