O’Reilly said that Small sites make up the bulk of the internet's content; narrow
niches make up the bulk of internet's the possible applications. With the
increasing usage of the search engine searching the small market niche became
easier. This made the, long tail possible.
The
theory of the long tail that our culture and economy start to shift from a
relatively small number of keyword hits at popular product (head of the curve)
and start moving to the large number of small keyword (the tail of the curve).
As cost for distribution and production became relatively cheap and the
optimization of searches there is no need to put the entire product in one
place anymore; it’s possible to spread the market to larger space.
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| Steam Logo |
For this topic I’m going to talk Steam. Steam is a
marketplace for online games. It revolutionizes the gaming marked by delivering
and storing the game digitally. The data of the game is also stored online so
the user can install a selected game only.
Steam has a big selection of big triple-A games and Indie
games. The head of the curve is created by the big games and the long tail is
created by the niche smaller indie developer, by inclusion of early access the
tail is getting longer. Early access is
a program by steam to include in development game to be purchased, played, and
tested by the user, effectively shaping the game and changing the form of the
tail. It can fulfil a niche or create a niche by the user feedback.
This is my post about the long tail. So what do you think
about the early access games? Does it have the potential of the longing the
long tail? Or to shape the long tail?
O’Reilly-What is Web 2.0
About the Long Tail
Steam
Hi Leonard,
ReplyDeleteSteam is really a very informative site for the game lovers, one can find variety of information in this site which includes, new game release, CD keys, and so on. I liked the way you linked the long tail and steam. It is a fact that new and top games has effect on the top of curve and the small games are the one to leverage long tail. The support section of this site provides with a lot of guidelines to the problems faced by the players.
As you mentioned, early access games can be played, tested and the feedback can be provided to the developers so that they can come up meeting the player's feedback have a great potential of extending the tail. When different people play the, different ideas emerges among people. Even if the game becomes older and new games come up, players can give the new ideas and the game can be again coded. Consequently, the long tail gets more longer.
Cheers!