Description

Hi there!

Let me use this opportunity to start a discussion on a rising annoyance I have been having with steamgifts. I really like the philosophy steamgifts embodies. You can bring joy to other gamers by giving them a game that you like, you can share your duplicate keys or even promote your own indie project. Whilst also having a chance to win some cool games or discovering hidden gems that you would not have encountered in any other way. Obviously I’ve spread the word and shared my enthusiasm among my gaming friends. Most of them liked this idea, joined steamgifts and started sharing some of their cool games, oddly enough, none of them ever won anything. By now they have all left steamgifts and that is not just because they weren’t patient enough to wait for a win. For some reason it is kind of stomach turning when gifting games to people that have already harvested hundreds of titles, but only gifted a hand full of games 3 years ago. Ok, you increase the minimum contributor level to avoid this type of users, but as soon as you do the second type appears: the kind of user that has received hundreds of public giveaways, but have created all of their own giveaways for closed steam groups with a very limited amount of members.

I fully emphasize with people that do not have the means to give back to the community. Yet in most cases people just seem to stuff as many games in their backlog of which 95% remains un-played anyway. When too many people do this, more and more people who are actually willing to give back to the community get annoyed and will abandon the platform. Which in turn will lead to a further imbalance of the community and thus strengthen the effect until the community collapses and no one who is willing to give remains on the platform. This is actually a well-studied process known from social science, ecology and economics also known as the tragedy of the commons. Any community can only handle a limited amount of social cheaters and will collapse (tragedy of the commons) unless the community has sufficient means to protect itself against this behavior.

I’d like to ask you some questions to initiate the discussion. What are your experiences, did you notice this type of user to? Are you bothered/annoyed by this type of winners? Have you considered stopping with steamgifts or did you change what games you give because of this? Would you give more games back if you would win more often? Should we have more means to select against people that are not willing to give back to the community? And finally how would you reward or promote philanthropic sg users?

edit: I just created a poll (https://www.steamgifts.com/discussion/7L88U/tragedy-of-the-commons#SpUcjVU) for those who'd like to voice their opinion without having to type a message ;)

Friendly suggestion: please do not make an example out of yourself by joining this giveaway with a greatly imbalanced won/send ratio.

30 Comments

yepp

Lara Croft I love you forever !!! ...
masterpiece game Tomb Raider

6 years ago