Valve's Steam is one of the most popular platforms for PC gaming, so there's a wealth of data on there about games and user preferences. And one new indie game dev has decided to compile that.
"Driven by curiosity and a passion for exploring data and game development," the creator of the video below scraped Steam's whole catalogue using scripts that gathered data ranging from the titles of games to tags, prices, ratings, review counts and release dates.
The resulting data can be used to glean insights on the highest-rated games, the most commonly used words in titles and potentially underused combinations of genres. It could help research the perfect new game, be it for PC or for the best games consoles.
I Scraped the Entire Steam Catalog, Here’s the Data - YouTube
YouTube user Newbie Indie Game Devran the scripts for almost a week and then cleaned the data manually to create a vast collection of around 8 million data points covering 140,000 games, each with 40 attributes. He's made the data available in a series of charts focusing on different data subsets, such a 'top themes' and 'most common words'. These are linked the in description on YouTube.
The data shows that the most-used words in game titles are 'VR,' 'simulator,' 'world,' 'space,' 'dungeon,' 'game,' 'adventure,' and 'puzzle'. While this gives an insight into what developers think works, it could also provide words to steer clear of if you want a unique title.
In terms of ratings, the indie game Terraria is the top-rated game on Steam. Moreover, around half of the games in the top 50 are indies. Interestingly, only 12 games have an overwhelmingly negative score. Some of the worst-rated games were accused of misleading or scamming players.
As for the potential for genre combinations, the dev found that apparently only one title on Steam blends farming simulation and battle royale mechanics. Who would have known?! Other combinations with largely unexplored potential include board game and platformer, with just ten games on the platform, and card game and rhythm, reflected in just five. And there are only four fighting games with a romantic theme.
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The developer continued with more insights in the comments on YouTube, offering observations on the most successful publishers, differences in the popularity of different genres between indie and AAA games and even how a game's review score corresponds with price.
Joe is a regular freelance journalist and editor at Creative Bloq. He writes news, features and buying guides and keeps track of the best equipment and software for creatives, from video editing programs to monitors and accessories. A veteran news writer and photographer, he now works as a project manager at the London and Buenos Aires-based design, production and branding agency Hermana Creatives. There he manages a team of designers, photographers and video editors who specialise in producing visual content and design assets for the hospitality sector. He also dances Argentine tango.
