Just out of curiosity, how many readers out there actually use the Steam Wishlist feature? What do you use it for?
I tend to wishlist games I want but can’t afford at the time, or want and don’t want to spend money on, or want and just.. want. Sometimes an incredibly generous friend gifts one to me and I try to return the favour as often as I can (which isn’t nearly as often as I want, I can tell you that). I try to keep the wishlist up to date and as recent as possible, weeding out games that I don’t REALLY want and that I can’t remember why I actually wishlisted (probably had something to do with a steam sale guiding my hand). My wishlist is a mixture of early access games I don’t want to forget about, and older games that I’m just waiting to go on sale.
If we’re not friends on steam yet, we should be! You can find me there as Stargrace.
I used to put all the games I was slightly interested in after reading their description or seeing the screenshots/videos in my wishlist, and it had grew for a long while to 100+ games in there.
I’m now way more strict in games I put there, but instead use the “Follow” feature for games I want to follow but don’t want to put in my wishlist (this feature is very badly implemented imho though). No Early Access title goes in my wishlist anymore unless I’m 200% sure I want it, and whenever a game on my wishlist is on sale for at least -60% and I see it and I’m still not buying it immediately, I just remove it from there, because if I don’t want to buy it at -60%, I’ll never want to buy it, basically.
Nowadays my wishlist is less than 30 titles, which is probably a lot for most people, but very small for me and my 800+ games on Steam already ;)
I rarely put games on my wishlist. If I do put it there, it’s because I’ve read something about it (usually from another gaming blogger) that piqued my interest and I am almost 100% sure I will like it. But I have too many games to play and not enough time & money, so then it just sits there until a Steam sale comes around and I get an e-mail that it’s discounted. Then I may buy it.
On some occasions, a friend bought and gifted a Steam game that was on my wishlist to me. This always makes me feel a bit bad, because I’m not in the habit of checking other friends’ lists. I don’t even use Steam that much.
I’m more or less in line with the other commenters: I use the wishlist to keep track of games I want…when they go on sale, or otherwise when I feel ready to play them.
What bugs me about the wishlist is that it seems you can only add the “basic” version of the game to it… If they are also offering a “special” or “deluxe” version there’s no option to add that one instead, so sometimes friends have generously bought a game for me but not the version I actually wanted. :(
I use it as above really, to bookmark a game I might be interested in for future play or to keep an eye on sales on something I definitely want but at a lower price point.
Ditto. Steam’s UI is not the greatest out there, so I just wishlist anything and everything that I may want to check out by buying in the future. Usually it turns into a list of “stuff I’m hoping will eventually get knocked down to 66% or 75% off before I look at it again two years later to figure out if I still want it then.”
Every major Steam sale, I go over the list and toss out those that I’ve permanently decided I don’t want (usually because their reviews have turned into a solid string of ‘Not Recommended’ a mile long) and leave everything else to simmer yet again. I’ve 5+ year old games on my wishlist that I haven’t moved on either way.
I use the wishlist to keep an eye on games that interest me because, while Steam’s UI isn’t the worst out there, it still isn’t very good at helping me find what I am looking for. So I often use it so I can find a game again, because I’ll forget the name or the game itself and it might never surface on the front page again. As above, it also makes sure I get notified when things are on sale.
I use it, in part as a “bookmark” but also because I get notified when things are released or on sale.