Valve has been hard at work on a variety of new apps and programs behind the scenes, and with the unveiling of the new Steam Labs online hub today, we can have a glimpse at what the developer has been experimenting with.
That's the idea behind Steam Labs at least. It's an online home for all works in progress Valve is tinkering with, such as features with codenames like The Peabody Recommender or Organize Your Steam Library Using Morse Code. Users can evaluate these different modules and share feedback. Should Valve continue development? That's your opinion to share, as well as thoughts on how each feature should change and evolve, if at all.
The first three Labs experiments are Micro Trailers, the Interactive Recommender and the Automated Show. Micro Trailers are a series of six-second game trailers arranged on a page for you to view all at once. You can peruse these new micro trailer collections for builder games, RPGs, adventure games and plenty of other genres.
The Automated Show is akin to in-store programming at GameStop, where a half-hour video showcases some of the latest Steam game launches. It's meant for you to take in and check out a few hundred games at a time, or leave on as background noise.
Finally, the Interactive Recommender uses machine learning to recommend new titles to you based on games you're currently into. Using a neural network trained to recommend games based on a user's playtime history and other collections of data, it analyzes various play patterns, preference and a wide variety of additional information about the games you gravitate toward.
Interactive Recommender doesn't require developer optimization. Instead, it works with information gleaned from the Steam community itself. The feature learns about games for itself during training. In fact, the only information it does get is the release date during the preliminary setup process. It's a hefty undertaking by Valve that's unlike anything the developer has tackled in the process just yet. You can give it a try here.
For additional Steam Labs experiments coming down the pipeline, you can join the Steam Labs Community Group and keep an eye on when new additions join the hub. For now, you can try out these three intriguing new experiments and share what you think with Valve. Meanwhile, we'll be watching to see where this all goes.
