I recently discovered this article on GameSpot, “Four Ways You Can Make Steam Better Right Now,” and I strongly believe it’s worth reading. https://www.gamespot.com/articles/four-ways-you-can-make-steam-better-right-now/1100-6507521/
Steam is my dominant platform choice at the moment. I’m struggling to remember the last time I played a console game. It’s been long time! I have plenty of them lying around, but I’ve been exclusively focused on PC gaming for quite a while now. I’ve come to the conclusion that my console gaming ended with the Wii U.
I know little of current consoles, but I believe they are powerful and expensive. Well, that is except for the Switch, which is the only one I’m interested in. I get very disappointed seeing videos of non-Nintendo games on the Switch. They usually perform and look so much better on PC. However, Nintendo’s always been a favorite of mine and they still make great games I’m sadly missing out on. $300 is a price I’d rather spend on a new PC part, though.
I’m kind of a Steam snob, too, in that I want all of my games there. It’s nice having everything in one place, including your list of friends and just one application to run. But, Steam isn’t the only PC platform. There is also the Epic Game Store, GOG Galaxy, UPlay, Blizzard.net, Xbox companion app, and many more. There are many good things about not having everything exclusively centralized, though. One of my favorite things about having other platforms is that I have backups in case Steam ever goes down. I can easily hop over to EGS and play something I also got for free there. I haven’t spent any money on the EGS yet, but my library is huge!
Introducing categorizing your games
I haven’t been paying attention to Steam’s updates and exploring new features, so I enjoyed that this article pointing some out to me. The mention of categorizing the games in my library into lists is what I found to be most important.
Steam is certainly a top platform when it comes to PC gaming. Because of this, many of us have very large libraries, which makes it difficult to find a particular game we’re interested in playing. We can simply look through the list alphabetically, or add them to our “Favorites” list. This didn’t quite go far enough. Now we can organize them much easier into lists.
There are some recommended lists in the article. It’s a good idea to create lists for your level of enthusiasm for a game. So, create a list for the games you’re playing, the ones you want to play, and the ones you don’t want to play. Then, when you’re looking at your library on the left, you can hide the games in these lists, making your search much easier.
I created lists for what I want to “check out sometime,” or “play soon.” I have a list for games I’m waiting for an update. Terraria and The Witcher 3 are now on this list, the latter was supposed to get an HD update this year. I also have a “Windows 11” list for HDR games. My CPU isn’t compatible with Win11 and HDR looks terrible in Win10, so I’m waiting until I get my new PC build done.
One of the most important is my “Unknown/No Interest” list. I think this is something everyone needs. It helps remove a lot of games from my view, making it so much easier to find the games I am looking for more quickly. Free games and bundles are very good at adding to our library, but it’s easy to forget what some of them are. Plus, there are games we lose interest in.
I’ve also created other categories such as “Batman,” “TES,” “iD,” “Fallout,” “Square-Enix,” “Rockstar Games,” and so many more. Spending just a few minutes creating these lists and adding games to them was very much worth it. My library on the left-hand side looks so much better now! I strongly recommend everyone else on Steam to do this.
The article also mentions skins and apps that bring together our different platforms, which I didn’t see as interesting or necessary. I still very much strongly recommend reading the article, if you’re on Steam.
Let me know what you think about this article and the things it mentions. Are there other suggestions or features of Steam you’d like to point out?
Steam is my dominant platform choice at the moment. I’m struggling to remember the last time I played a console game. It’s been long time! I have plenty of them lying around, but I’ve been exclusively focused on PC gaming for quite a while now. I’ve come to the conclusion that my console gaming ended with the Wii U.
I know little of current consoles, but I believe they are powerful and expensive. Well, that is except for the Switch, which is the only one I’m interested in. I get very disappointed seeing videos of non-Nintendo games on the Switch. They usually perform and look so much better on PC. However, Nintendo’s always been a favorite of mine and they still make great games I’m sadly missing out on. $300 is a price I’d rather spend on a new PC part, though.
I’m kind of a Steam snob, too, in that I want all of my games there. It’s nice having everything in one place, including your list of friends and just one application to run. But, Steam isn’t the only PC platform. There is also the Epic Game Store, GOG Galaxy, UPlay, Blizzard.net, Xbox companion app, and many more. There are many good things about not having everything exclusively centralized, though. One of my favorite things about having other platforms is that I have backups in case Steam ever goes down. I can easily hop over to EGS and play something I also got for free there. I haven’t spent any money on the EGS yet, but my library is huge!
Introducing categorizing your games
I haven’t been paying attention to Steam’s updates and exploring new features, so I enjoyed that this article pointing some out to me. The mention of categorizing the games in my library into lists is what I found to be most important.
Steam is certainly a top platform when it comes to PC gaming. Because of this, many of us have very large libraries, which makes it difficult to find a particular game we’re interested in playing. We can simply look through the list alphabetically, or add them to our “Favorites” list. This didn’t quite go far enough. Now we can organize them much easier into lists.
There are some recommended lists in the article. It’s a good idea to create lists for your level of enthusiasm for a game. So, create a list for the games you’re playing, the ones you want to play, and the ones you don’t want to play. Then, when you’re looking at your library on the left, you can hide the games in these lists, making your search much easier.
I created lists for what I want to “check out sometime,” or “play soon.” I have a list for games I’m waiting for an update. Terraria and The Witcher 3 are now on this list, the latter was supposed to get an HD update this year. I also have a “Windows 11” list for HDR games. My CPU isn’t compatible with Win11 and HDR looks terrible in Win10, so I’m waiting until I get my new PC build done.
One of the most important is my “Unknown/No Interest” list. I think this is something everyone needs. It helps remove a lot of games from my view, making it so much easier to find the games I am looking for more quickly. Free games and bundles are very good at adding to our library, but it’s easy to forget what some of them are. Plus, there are games we lose interest in.
I’ve also created other categories such as “Batman,” “TES,” “iD,” “Fallout,” “Square-Enix,” “Rockstar Games,” and so many more. Spending just a few minutes creating these lists and adding games to them was very much worth it. My library on the left-hand side looks so much better now! I strongly recommend everyone else on Steam to do this.
The article also mentions skins and apps that bring together our different platforms, which I didn’t see as interesting or necessary. I still very much strongly recommend reading the article, if you’re on Steam.
Let me know what you think about this article and the things it mentions. Are there other suggestions or features of Steam you’d like to point out?
