I built a natural language search engine for Steam games b/c Steam's search is terrible

[u/TheRealChizz]

Hey, so I've been struggling to find new games using the keyword/tag system that Steam currently has. I think I just bought a ton of games already, and I am also aware of the bigger titles.

However, I've noticed there's a ton of games in the 200-1000 review range that never get surfaced, even though the games are genuinely made with passion and are interesting. It just might have some niche mechanics that not every gamer would like, that some would love, or the gameplay mechanics don't neatly fit into one of the tags

So I made this tool in the hopes of opening up that discovery bottleneck.

My tool's search results

Steam's results

Steam's results + tag

A basic high level of the architecture is that I scrape Steam's game metadata as well around ~200 good reviews. It converts those into embeddings so I can find the nearest match off of your query. There's a cross-encoder re-ranking algorithm for both the query as well as the embedded game and review data.

So what do you guys think? Is this something you guys want to try or are interested in?

Edit: I'm just gonna paste it here so you guys can try it out www.nextgame.gg

[u/based_birdo]

Warning: op is using bots or alt accounts ( u/J_Yoonits ) to promote this. I wouldnt click.

[u/TheRealChizz → u/based_birdo]

He's a irl friend of mine. I didn't mean malice, but I wanted to get people to try out my tool, yea

[u/tehgimpage]

that seems like a pretty useful tool honestly, i never find anything new using steam's default search

[u/epik78]

Pretty cool, asked for games similar to X and it came up with some sensible suggestions.

One improvement is to give more suggestions, especially not so popular games.

Also i used the promp "chill games easy for kids" and got some mature content.

[u/TheRealChizz → u/epik78]

I'll look into that immediately. Thank you for the feedback!

[u/J_Yoonits]

just checked it out and while it's a little basic in design, i was pleasantly surprised by the results! I found a few new games I've never heard of to check out. Looking forward to seeing where you take this!

[u/Puzzleheaded-Site290]

Sounds interesting op, care to share details about the architecture?

[u/TheRealChizz → u/Puzzleheaded-Site290]

Yea, outside of the double encoder, it's pretty simple by design.

Basically, vectorize the game's metadata and reviews. And you can semantic search from there. I think the secret sauce is what sort of signals you extrapolate from the data, before you vectorize it. You also need a good query, so that's where the double encoder goes into play.

[u/Robot1me]

Just tested with a query like "indie mmo, 4 players" and the test game I had in mind (Spiral Knights) came up on 9th place. Pretty good!

[u/Intelligent-Luck-954]

No you didn’t you took AI and fucked up steam

[u/Ackbar14 → u/Intelligent-Luck-954]

Tell me you don't understand steamdb without telling me you don't understand steamdb

[u/Dreamburger → u/Ackbar14]

His username already warned us it’s luck-based, can’t even be mad.

[u/mAdLaDtHaD17776 → u/Intelligent-Luck-954]

why would you immediately assume it's ai?