Valve has announced a new project from the Steam Labs. That is called "Query Expansion" and it wants to make the game tags smarter. Valve talks about handling tags in the future as a human would do: with logic. The project is currently in a public test phase before it will be regularly integrated into Steam in the future.
The problems of the old tags: Steam tags are currently very static. For example, if a game has the tag "RTS" but not "Real Time" and "Strategy" individually, it will not appear when searching for the last two terms.
Query Expansion wants to do better: The new function goes one step further and is therefore much more dynamic. When searching, it not only uses the given tags, but also those that are logically implied.
Established relationships make it possible
The new result is not caused by artificial intelligence, but by human handwork. So they examined a large number of terms and defined relationships that should make sense for a majority of users.
The goal is, above all identify complicated tags. For example, »FPS« can be broken down into »first-person« and »shooter«. Every FPS game is a shooter at the same time and is played from the first person perspective. The other way around, however, it is not possible because not every first-person game is a shooter and not every shooter necessarily has a first-person perspective.
Accordingly, any search for shooters will automatically show FPS titles in the future, but a request for FPS games will still not list any third-person shooters. The same applies to other tag combinations. It will benefit those titles that can be assigned to more than one genre. Because they will be listed in more searches in the future.
However, the system knows limits: Too broad conclusions are left out. For example, terms such as »Dark« and »Lovecraftian« or »Fantasy« and »Magic« can often be found in combination. Even the new search function will not automatically show you fantasy games just because you are looking for magic.
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Further improvements should come
Valve himself only describes these changes as the beginning of the improvements to the tag system. For the future you think about it, this system too to expand to other areas within Steam and possibly include a number of metadata in the search.
It was only in March 2020 that Valve released a feature previously tested via Steam Labs: Game recommendations using an AI. Since then you can use an interactive recommendation guide on the store side of the distribution platform, which tries to recommend a new one based on your most played titles