NEWS ROUNDUP: Steam Curation, VR Dystopia

Steam Curation, VR Dystopia


Valve is asking gaming personalities for advice

We’ve known that Valve is working on a major update to Steam’s storefront for a while, as well as replacing the Steam Greenlight system with Steam Direct. Now we’ve got some very real information about how they want to improve things thanks to several gaming personalities being invited to Valve’s headquarters to discuss the issues directly with the team.

These lucky jerks got to see behind the scenes at the studio, including products in development or planning, but the main focus was on Steam’s services. Because these gaming personalities are each a “Curator” on Steam, they were asked what they’d like to see change with the curation system. I still think the curator system has the potential to completely fix the storefront (and kill off even more of the traditional gaming media) and it sounds like Valve wants to empower curators and their pages to be more compelling.

One of the most interesting solutions is to allow everyone to opt in to a curation-esque community of tastemakers who will have access to forums and will be able to recommend things to others. As part of this system — though perhaps only as a reward to the most popular curators — you’ll be able to refund a game for any reason whatsoever within a week of buying it, no questions asked. In other words, it’s a free review copy! You’d better believe I will try to take advantage of this system to write reviews more often.

Valve’s main approach to solving everything is to be transparent. They want to give Steam users a lot of raw data about why they’re being shown games. For example, if a game is getting a lot of coverage on social media because people are mocking it, you’ll see where the pageviews are coming from so you can trace the activity around a game to sources like Reddit or some NeoGaf page. Curators will get a lot of information about how people are using their curation page, too. Anyway, check out Total Biscuit’s very long video about it if you want to know it all.


VR will be photorealistic, let you have sex, and never need to be removed from your face

The rhetoric around Virtual Reality is continuing to get even more absurd, despite fizzling out in the marketplace so far. This article pushes the delusion to a new level, as Roy Taylor of AMD promises that they’re on the cusp of achieving “photo realism” using headsets that don’t have cables attached! This is thanks to “beamforming” chips, apparently, which begs the immediate question of how long we’ll all have to suffer with the garbage we’re currently being sold. Promising that some day they’ll make a good product is not a very good sales pitch for today, is it?

Of course, let’s not kid ourselves, the titans of technology (and therefore culture control) are hell bent on creating the dystopian VR dreamworld no matter what the cost. The investments will continue and the field will be pushed forward whether people really want any of this shit or not. Who knows how these illusory worlds will be utilized by those in power. For now, we’re supposed to get excited about having remote control “sex” with other “people” wearing VR gizmos attached to their genitals!

Yes, we’re living in the future. Don’t you want your dick being vigorously squeezed by a machine some guy programmed, which hopefully won’t malfunction? That’s basically all sex is anyway, right? Add in some audio-visual stuff and you’ve got everything you need and more. As Cultural Marxism continues to demolish the pillars of the family unit and turn the sexes against each other, masturbation options need to become increasingly appealing to prevent cultural revolution moving back to a healthy dynamic. Just keep paying them money and you’ll be free to escape reality into the bliss of synthetic delights.

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