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Exclude Tag System

A topic by MossMisfit created Oct 24, 2023 Views: 1,503 Replies: 3

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From what I've seen this has been a running issue for 3+ years now.

You can filter things so well with game length, platform, tags you want to include and more. Yet not an easy way to exclude tags? There are so, so many horror and visual novel games. I get it, I like em from time to time but not all the time. I want to exclude both tags so I can actually see something new but... the only way to do that is with ?exclude=tg.tag which you can only do with a one word tag, I believe, and you can only exclude one tag AND it's not even clear you can do this. I had to look into forum threads just to find out this existed at all... And it's very, very low effort and lazy.

Why is it you seem so deadset on not implementing this when it's obviously desired? And if you can make a robust filtering system then surely a single component to exclude tags would be easy. Why are you so determined to make hiding stuff you don't want to see even harder for people? I don't get it.

Please implement it, it's such an obvious feature with no downsides. Like seriously.

Edit: My bad, you can include multi-word tags. But everything else still stands. It needs to be properly implemented.

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redonihunter251 days ago

It needs to be properly implemented

It does. But to implement it properly, is not not a trivial task. Implementing filtering one tag was trivial. Multiple exclusion would not fit in the existing frame work and it would need a big overhaul.

Also, many games just tag horror or visual novel, but really are not. Since the genres are so popular, devs tag it, if the game even remotly could be called such.

Only by reading those discussion I realized, that steam does has a tag exclusion. I could not find such a feature on gog. Humblebundle does not seem to even have tags. Origin/ea seems to only have positve filtering. I could not find a filtering on epicgames. If google play has tagging and filtering, it is well hidden.

Seems to me, that tagging itself is a minority feature and I have yet to find a game store besides steam that offers negative filtering.

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somanygamesnotenoughtime251 days ago

The lack of decent search functions has led me to be less likely to come here in general, just because of how annoying it is to try and find something of interest. Lack of exclusion filters are a huge issue, and I agree with MossMisfit here. The lack of updates is hard to overlook.

To use a personal example, as someone under the LGBTQ+ umbrella, the appeal of itch is that, in theory, games that are interest to me are more embraced here. However, when it comes to actually find anything worthwhile (to me), the need to be able to narrow a search while filtering out stuff that seems so prevalent with that tag (i.e. visual novel), but not able to do so, makes having LGBTQ+ content almost meaningless.

The tag system definitely needs an overhaul, whether it's a streamlining of available tags, or expanding on current ones. Example: With the rise of games embracing a "retro" aesthetic, there needs to be the ability to filter between games that are just retro-inspired versus games that actually run on retro hardware. Expecting people to wade through the plethora of low-poly tech demos tagged "retro" in the hope of finding something that would actually run on a PS1 (or similar dilemma) is basically asking people to have a bad user experience.

I like the premise of itch, and really hope it continues to do well. However, there's no way I can recommend it in its current state.

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redonihunter250 days ago(+1)

Tags on itch are specified by the developer. Not by the users or itch or curators. There is a box to search for tags in browse, that is prefilled with some tags. But that is not an exhaustive list.

You can try any tag. Your topic of interest, and dislike of visual novels is problematic, tag-wise. To be blunt, not many platformer or ego shooters with the lgbt theme out there. Tags should reflect the core of the game, and being lgbt centric is often some kind of story being told with the game, the story being more important than gameplay - and such implementations tend to be visual novel like. Even worse, if your main character is under that umbrella, but the story does not revolve around that fact, it would not even warrant a tag imho.

And the problem for positive search about lgbt is the freedom of tags. There might be more than several dozen tags that would be considered lgbt. In contrast, there is one tag on steam for that. Exactly one and one only. If someone has a counter example, I would be curious.

So while you might want to search for transgender and exclude lesbian and gay on itch, on steam you could only search for lgbtq+ and exlude ... visual novels. That you could do.

One could say, the lack of tag exclusion also comes with a much wider range of possible tags to postivly search for.

Searching for tags, positve or negative has the limitation that you would have to agree with the developer, if any tag would be appropriate for the game in question. Some games are not even tagged at all.

I find stuff with related games button and recommendation page. I believe the algorithm for that looks at more than tags.

Bottom line, while a negative filtering might sound good, I have doubts, how good it would really be. I seen games being tagged visual novels that basically are point & click adventures or business management simulation, but being made in renpy, so maybe that is why they tagged it. Or because vn is popular.

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