Steam Labs offers new ways to search, teases a 'Deep Dive' recommender

News
By published

And even more micro trailers.

(Image credit: Valve)

Ahead of the launch of Steam's new library design, Steam Labs has been updated with a new experiment, a tweak to an existing one, and an announcement of another forthcoming experiment. 

First of all there's "Experiment 004", a new way to search Steam with a lot more filters. It includes a price slider, options to hide games you own or have wishlisted or that aren't on sale, and more. This new version of search has infinite scrolling as well.

The next Steam Labs experiment will be "Deep Dive", based on the Steam Diving Bell by Lars Doucet, and created in collaboration with him. Diving Bell is a recommender, but unlike the kind that examine your preferences and figure out what to suggest based on that (as the existing Steam Labs Recommender does), this one works by taking a game you suggest to it and then bringing up more things like it. Doucet compares it to a Wikipedia binge, the idea that once you have a topic you're interested in what you want are similar, related topics to explore.

The Deep Dive experiment isn't active yet, but you can mess around with the others over at the Steam Labs page. The updated library will release on September 17 if you've opted into the beta client.

TOPICS
Jody Macgregor
Jody Macgregor
Weekend/AU Editor

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.