Online Gaming Stores and Surfacing Relevant Games in Different Manners
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/24/discords-video-game-stores-secret-weapon-to-beat-giant-rival-steam.html
Online gaming stores and services, such as Steam or the Microsoft Store, introduce their content to users in different ways. The article linked here describes differing industry standards to surfacing relevant content to their consumers. With their tens of thousands of games available for sale, Steam relies heavily on algorithmic curation, where algorithms are utilized to figure out users’ preferences and show them games that they would most likely enjoy. Steam also draws upon the community for assistance with their human curators system, where people can become curators that serve as community authorities that recommend high quality (or what they believe to be high quality) games for their followers. But even so, Steam’s bloated gaming library makes it difficult to bring the right games to the right users.
Discord and Microsoft seem to be taking a “less is more” approach, where they instead are opting for a subscription based system that brings only about 100 or so games to those that subscribe. It’s much less variety sure, but from the point of view from Discord and Microsoft, consumers will far easier to choose which games to play amongst the newly restricted catalogue to select from.
In both situations, there’s a hub and authority partnership going on here. In order to more easily bring quality content to gamers, Steam utilizes curators, which serve as “authorities” that point consumers to high quality games to buy, which serve as “hubs” where a game’s fan base can congregate around via the Steam platform. People that follow the curator then go on to visit the game’s buying page, and if the consumer is satisfied with the game that they buy, they’ll grow to trust the curator more. This is much like an authority-hub network, where authorities benefit hubs and hubs likewise benefit authorities.
And in the case of Discord’s new service, Discord itself will act as the authority, and the games that it offers with its subscription based system will act as the hubs. Those that trust the authority or are giving it a shot will gain exposure to the new games. And just like with the Steam curator example, if consumers are satisfied with the games they receive, they’ll continue to remain on the subscription with Discord.