Content Curation - Why Digital Game Stores Are So Selective - Extra Credits

Imagine heading down to GameStop to buy the hottest new game. You know, in a hypothetical world where we still shopped at GameStop. But when you walk through the doors, you only see stacks of boxes because GameStop now also sells footwear and appliances. The game you want is still in there somewhere, but you just have to wade through all that other junk to find it. How digital game retailers choose which content to allow on their platforms has become a rather hot button topic recently, again. But the purposes of curation and the ways it's performed aren't well understood by most people. So we felt it was time to dive in and shed some light on the subject. The discussion about content curation often revolves around ethics, i.e. whether content is deemed acceptable or not, or whether store owners are censoring developers by choosing what content they sell. But this discussion often misses the fact that curation of commercial products is a business decision as much, if not more than, a

moral one. So, we're going to leave ethics aside for later and just talk about curation as it pertains to design. So the question to ask is, how does curation affect your end user experience? The main effect is which content is going to be available to users. What games are on a storefront, or which user generated content to allow. And all the major game platform holders have different policies that are designed around the specific audience they want to cater to. Nintendo, for example, has historically been one of the most stringent curators because of their dedicated family-friendly image. Steam, by contrast, has decided that a hands-off approach is the best for their business, trusting that all the bad content will get buried by the good. Even just counting console ports, someone searching for games on the Switch is going to encounter a significantly different library to choose from than a Steam user, simply because of their different curation policies. So what goes into the decision on how companies do their curation? Well, you can curate for functionality, making sure the game actually, you know, works. And you might think that's a

given, but if you've kept up with Steam news, you won't be surprised to hear about how many games pop up that don't even run. Compare that with Sony or Microsoft stores, and you basically never hear of something that straight up won't boot on those platforms. Or you can curate for quality. Now, this goes beyond functionality, ensuring that the games are actually good, or at least passable. Remember the old Nintendo Seal of Quality? This is what that seal was about. Though Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde got one of those, so, you know, everything with a grain of salt, I guess. Then, there's also curating for content, filtering out games with potentially offensive messages, imagery, actions, etc. On one hand, it's nice to be able to claim you have an open platform where people can say and do anything. But on the other hand, it's also nice to not have your game or platform hijacked by extremists or inundated with lewd imagery. And finally, there's also curating content for relevance, i.e., making sure the content submitted is in line with everything else on your platform. Great examples of this type of curation are

places like GOG and itch.io. So, as a business, why would you or wouldn't you do any of these things? Well, let's talk about curation for functionality first. Doing this makes a ton of sense, because you don't want people coming to your platform to have the worst possible experience when buying a game. But, it also costs money. There is a degree to which you can automate this, but at the end of the day, to make sure that all of your games are truly functional, you have to have a human being boot up each one. Curating for quality is sort of the same thing, but exponentially more expensive to test for. Curating for content does make a lot of sense if you've got a specific brand image like Nintendo, but you also limit the amount of content on your platform and walk straight into the aforementioned debates about censorship. And curating for relevance makes you more appealing to a specific niche, but also somewhat limits you to only selling to that niche's audience. And finally, there's the legal side. Curation is necessary to avoid allowing age-inappropriate, copyrighted,

or illegal content to show up. And you can sink your store pretty quick if it ends up being a conduit for the sale of illegal goods. But as you've probably picked up from all of the above, one of the biggest drawbacks to curation is that it's expensive, but not just for the platform holders themselves. It's expensive for the content creators as well. Getting a game certified to be released on a console can be an especially long process, usually taking weeks or months. And when policies change, the developers have to change with them, sometimes reworking parts of their games to pass certification requirements. And for platform holders, manually checking everything that comes in to make sure it abides by your rules is no small feat. There's a lot of time and money involved in making a video game storefront that delivers only what the store owner wants it to deliver. And on that note, let's circle back to that whole censorship thing. People routinely cry out on the internet that content curation violates free speech. This is quite simply untrue. Free speech

means the government can't arrest you for what you say, and it doesn't force companies, groups, or individuals to sell you what you want. We wouldn't think to walk into a Foot Locker and demand they stock $3,000 Gucci pumps, or walk into an IKEA and expect them to sell us a car. Imagine if Petco had to sell every product anyone ever wanted them to sell at whatever price they wanted to sell it at. And while Zoe can daydream about that reality, it would be a disaster. The store owners own the store, so it's their call on what to sell based on the business they want to be in. And the same is true for any game store. But all of that isn't to say that content curation is always a perfect solution. Real problems with policing content arise when automated curation systems get out of control. But that's a bigger topic we should probably do an episode on another time. What? Demonetized on a video we haven't even put out yet? Algorithm, well played.