Steam’s Calendar View Is a Convenient and Personalized Way to Track New Games
One of my favorite tabs to check when looking at new PC games on the Steam Store is “Upcoming Popular”, but over the years it has become much less useful. Although it’s supposed to show me in advance what the next big game will be, the truth is that there are just too many games and too many types of players for it to keep up. My tastes probably aren’t the same as yours, and limiting the highlights to a small selection of popular choices might bury smaller titles that might interest some players more. That’s why I’m so excited about Steam’s new Personal Calendar page.
Released last night, it’s technically an experiment, but it already looks awesome. Essentially, rather than showing you a generic list of ten games like the Popular Upcoming tab (I have no idea how Valve selects these games, btw), it instead shows you a personal selection of recently released and upcoming games, organized on a daily schedule and up to the next eight weeks. The details depend on how you customize it, but already, it’s much more useful to me than the upcoming Popular tab.
To check it out, click here for the web version or open your Steam desktop client, and next to the search bar go to Special Sections > Steam Labs > Personal Calendar 016.
When you first open the calendar, you’ll see 100 games, split between titles released last month, titles released in the last seven days, and titles that haven’t been released yet. As of writing this article, I’m currently seeing games suggested through December 12th, which gives me a pretty good window on what to expect. If you’re eagle-eyed, you might notice that the Personal Calendar excludes weekends, which Valve says is because most games don’t release on weekends. If a game Valve wants to suggest comes out on a weekend, it will appear the following Monday.
Credit: Michelle Ehrhardt
As for the curation, I’m satisfied. Unlike the Upcoming Popular tab, the Personal Calendar uses a combination of your wishlist and your playing time in certain games to decide what to show you, creating a list tailored to your tastes. Lately I’ve been playing a lot of platformers and RPGs, and lo and behold, my personal calendar has opened up to suggestions like Final Fantasy Tactics: The Chronicles of Ivalice And Dragon Quest I and II HD-2D Remake. These are bigger titles, but there are smaller choices that I might have otherwise overlooked, and this already seems like a great way to make sure I don’t miss out on a game I’d like. I even enjoy information about recently released games, which are easy to think about once and then forget.
What do you think of it so far?
My only criticism is that the default of 100 games seems a bit overloaded to me. Fortunately, you can limit your suggestions to ten to fifty games (at the top of the page, under Number of games), which also has the benefit of fine-tuning the algorithm to only show you what it thinks you would like most. Or, if you want to see as many options as possible, you can also make the calendar show 250 or 500 games. There are also controls to only show games with specific tags, as well as exclude games you’ve added to your wishlist or already own.
Essentially, Personal Calendar is like a personalized, easy-to-check-out version of those “biggest game releases of the month” videos, except you don’t need to constantly rewind or relaunch the video every time you’re looking for what to play next. Valve says your calendar’s algorithm is retrained daily, so don’t expect to always see the same games every time you check it. If you see a game that interests you but you’re not yet ready to pull the trigger, wishlisting it is still your best bet.
