Statistically speaking most people can find new games in their library they bought and never touched for years. It’s a genius marketing strategy on steam’s part.

Front page of GOG and Steam + the steam next fest when it is on

SkillUp’s “This week in video games” videos are great both for news about the industry, and what’s coming up and worth keeping an eye out for. Listening to podcasts is another good one. I listen to MinnMax every week in particular.

One of my main tools has been SteamDB’s instant search - it’s basically a giant list of all steam games, sorted by review score, with a TON of different filters you can apply. Looking specifically for something released this year? You can filter for it. Looking specifically for a co-op action shooter, or a singleplayer 2d platformer? You can filter for those too. Wanting to exclude early access games or exclude games with a min/max number of reviews? You can do that too. Very handy tool

Steam’s storefront and various gaming communities on Lemmy.

Word of mouth. YouTube. Pretty much anything that isn’t an actual ad because the only games that I usually see ads for are games I do not give a shit about.

Steams discover queue + Splattercat on youtube for indie games.

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Browsing the deals section of the playstation store or reading about them on lemmy.

Honestly even though I don’t do torrents. I found 1337x website to be helpful because it doesn’t really seem to be biased and no company will invest into making there product on top there.

Gamescom, then I bookmark the trailer of games I’m interested at with their release date. A few months later I can just open the bookmarks and know what is releasing this month. Whenever I find out a game is delayed, I edit the bookmark with the new date. It’s very easy to keep track of new releases that way.

I do it this way, because I’ve had quite a few good games that I completely missed because of not checking the news in that week.

The bulk of my finds come from chat either on Lemmy communities (!jrpg@lemmy.zip, !patientgamers@sh.itjust.works, or this one) or a couple Discord servers I’m on. Sometimes a game will catch my eye unexpectedly while I’m on OpenCritic looking up something else, too.

Otherwise it’s generally gaming news. I get that from also Lemmy/Discord, my RSS feed, or showcases. I always end up wishlisting half a dozen games during the summer showcases. My RSS feed right now is DualShockers, Eurogamer, Gematsu, PCGamer, Rock Paper Shotgun, Siliconera, and Denfaminicogamer (Japanese site). Always open to more suggestions for the feed; the problem is not everyone does RSS these days.

Nowadays? If you want to get a game in my face, it has to be via word of mouth or be blown in by the winds of Steam.

I took a look through my game library and these are the broad categories of how a game ended up there.

• Friends (though I tend to be the recommender for my friends)
  • Path of Exile, Cobalt Core
• I liked the demo at Steam Next Fest
  • Moonlight Pulse, Laika: Aged Through Blood, Cassette Beasts
• Announcement through a game I already like
  • Jackbox series, Slayers X, Vertigo 2
• YouTube channels
  • Game Maker’s Toolkit: Neon White, Toodee and Topdee, Assault Android Cactus
  • From other channels, but I don’t remember which: Gunfire Reborn, A Short Hike, Bug Fables
• Sheer luck
  • I found Corn Kidz 64 from a tile at the bottom of a Steam store page, before it was released
  • I found Hypnospace Outlaw from Steam’s discovery queue…
  • …and following through the music credits got me to Queenjazz’s Bandcamp site, where I found an OST for a different game, Grapple Dog!

I think I’m on the cutting edge of game releases, mostly focused on indie games. I have a huge Steam collection. This is also my nerd hobby.

Im subscribed to a bunch of game sales (like isthereanydeal) and casually browse steam pages every few days. I often play a genre then search for “games like X”. Lately it was metroidvania games. I found a game called Rabi-Ribi, which looks really uncomfortable to play. But the reviewers said to skip the dialog and ignore the loli, because it has really strong game mechanics. (And it does!)

Searching for indie games using steamdb with under 5000 reviews (lately I’ve been searching for games under 500 reviews), and checking them out.

I also make indie games as a hobby (nothing fancy!), so I like to look for inspiration from other indie game developers.

Lastly, Rock Paper Shotgun or Giant Bomb covers any big budget games I should know about.

Honest truth? I have enough games to play, so I only really look into the few that are able to break through the noise. If a streamer/content creator I like isn’t interested in a game, it’s probably just not worth my time vs something I’m already playing.