Can you discover games for yourself in the algorithmic age?
Back when I was 17, I took a chance on a CD single I found in a record shop where I'd wait for my bus home from sixth form. The song was called Birthday and it was by a band called The Julie Dolphin. No, you won't have heard of them.
I was an awful indie kid. The mid-90s was the golden age for kids like me. We were emboldened by the rise of grunge and Britpop was about to explode. I say 'we'. Truth is, I lived in the countryside outside Ipswich and few of my friends were into music, which meant that my music lived entirely between myself, what the NME told me to think, and the few CDs I could afford. But I was fiercely protective of a taste I'd cultivated for nearly a whole year. So, knowing The Julie Dolphin were extremely obscure and finding Birthday (an enthusiastic blend of My Bloody Valentine (who I'd yet to listen to) and Pixies (a friend wore their T-shirt)) pleasantly jangly, I ordered a copy of Lit, their first and as it turned out only album. I was so proud. I'd discovered a band. They got in the NME twice, enough to be affirmation of my discernment and not enough for them to be remotely popular. The Julie Dolphin were mine.
I got the same feeling the other day when, mistyping a search, I stumbled across a game on Steam called Scavenger SV-4. Steam is pitilessly effective at expressing how popular a game is, and this sci-fi roguelike hadn't attracted many reviews since its release at the end of January. None of my friends list had played it. But its trailer was promising and its pitch ended with, "It is not quite like any game you have played before". Music to my indie ears. Buy.
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