If I scheduled this correctly, the Steam Summer Sale of 2018 should have wrapped up about fifteen minutes before this post went live.
In its way it was the same thing we have come to expect over the years. The daily deals remain a thing of the past and hundreds… possibly thousands… of games are offered up at a discount. Also, there was a game to play and cards to collect. I collected cards via the event game and by browsing my queue three times daily. That, and some trading, let me craft the badge for the event. Go me.
Level 4 even…
Going through the queue as many times as I did, I could detect some patterns. I bought an Anime flagged title in the past… the Valkyria Chronicles… which seemed to make Steam believe that I wanted whole queues of nothing but Anime titles proffered for my inspection. Generally I flip past those, but this time around I decided to see if I could fix my queue, so I clicked the “not interested” button until the empire of Anime subsided.
That left my queue at least a little more on point. Not that it came up with gems I might have missed. Rather, it seemed to confirm the fact that there is a lot of derivative crap on Steam. I was not aware as to how many psuedo-Civilization knock-offs there were, all with titles that were something like World Civilization Conquest of the Ages.
I did find one possible gem in my queue, OGRE.
I put it on my wishlist, though I did not buy it yet. I played it, and its companion game GEV, back when they came in zip-lock bags at the hobby shop, but I wasn’t feeling the need to go quite that far back in time.
And, of course, I managed to screw up my queue on my own by putting other things I found funny on my wishlist. I use the wishlist not so much as a shopping list than as a way to find games later because… so many damn games on Steam, if I don’t remember the title just right I’ll never find it again.
So when I put Blockchain Tycoon on my wishlist for a laugh, I was rewarded on my next few passes through my queue with Bitcoin Tycoon and Bitcoin Mining Empire Tycoon and Bitcoin Trading Master and Bitcon Farm and Bitcoin Collector and Cryptocurrency Clicker and I am tired of linking them. There are more, including VR variations on the theme. And they all look like crap. I mean, I might laugh at something like EuroTruck Simulator now and again, but at least some effort went into that. What I was seeing was… and I keep using this phrase… cheap, derivative crap, meant only to cash in on a current fad and unlikely to succeed at even that.
But I am not here to get back onto the “you know what’s wrong with Steam…” train again. I am here to talk about what I bought during the Steam Summer Sale because I did indeed buy a few items this year.
The first item I picked up was Fallout 4.
I have been aware of the Fallout series since the original came out more than 20 years ago. Despite it being the so-called spiritual successor to the original Wasteland, which I played to death on the Apple II, I have somehow managed to avoid picking up a copy of any of the various versions of the games… until now. I am about four hours into it at this point. I’ve collected the big iron suit, killed that nasty monster, and have gone off into the world only to have the batteries on the suit run out.
The second item on the list was Hearts of Iron IV.
This was an after 8pm impulse buy last Friday night when I wanted something in the grand strategy vein to play. I am sure if I go back and check purchase dates and times, I would find that this is when I purchased most of the games from Paradox that I currently own.
I get all worked up for such a game and then end up defeated trying to pick up the basic flow of the game. Almost everything from Paradox loves to throw a ton of details at you straight away without necessarily helping you build that into anything like a coherent strategy.
I will admit that it is easier to get a hold of than Hearts of Iron III… or Crusader Kings II or most of the other Paradox titles that languishing in my Steam library… and I feel like I am almost there when it comes to enjoying it. I just have to find a good 4-6 hour stretch to focus on it.
And the third item was Oxygen Not Included.
I blame peer pressure for this one as several people in the MCats Slack channel have been going on and on about it.
And it is pretty fun. Of my three purchases I have spent the most time with this. It is a base building survival game which, I must admit, there are many variations of on Steam. In fact, I already own one of those in the form of RimWorld, which I wrote about previously.
Oxygen Not Included is done from a side scroll perspective and spends a lot of time dealing with very basic issues, like getting enough air to breath and toilets overflowing. Also you do a lot of digging up and down. RimWorld has a top down perspective and you spend more time constructing buildings, furnishing them, fighting off the locals, and recruiting passers by to join your colony. Also the weather plays into things a lot and you end up in the HVAC business eventually.
Overall I think I prefer RimWorld more… but I also think RimWorld is further along in its development. But both of them largely involve moving from one crises to the next until you hit some level of stability.
So those are my three purchases. I feel good that I have actually played all three. My vow with Steam is not to buy something unless I plan to play it TODAY.
Steam also had some info up about games overall so far in 2018. They had lists of the overall top sellers so far in 2018.
Top Sellers so far for 2018
They were divided into categories without any numbers attached. Interesting that Warframe is on the list. It has been out for ages, I’ve barely heard anything about it, but it seems to be doing well. Somebody on my Steam friend’s list played 100 hours of it over a 2 week period. Perhaps something to put on my list.
Comparing it to the Best of 2017 list that Steam had with the Winter sale, a lot of the titles are repeats.
Other categories were top sellers among games launched this year so far and top sellers among VR titles, which wouldn’t otherwise have a chance to make the first two lists.
The other interesting one for me was the top simultaneous players list, those games that had more that 100K at a time.
Most simultaneous players so far in 2018
Again, looks a bit like the December numbers as well as lining up with the best sellers.
Anyway, another Steam Summer Sale has come and gone. Time to go clean up my wish list so my queue isn’t full of Bitcoin games come the winter.
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