There's truth to what you're saying, but for some perspective: catalogers identify about 400 games published for the 2600 over its entire lifespan; Steam has about that many new releases every week.

That difference in volume, which improvements in AI workflow will keep accelerating, really does point towards personal curation being far more overwhelming than it had been.

With the 2600, you and your friends would probably have a ready working memory of pretty much most of the good stuff, most of the awful stuff, and some insight into the publishers and presentation/packaging cues that point one way or another for an unfamiliar title.

With Steam, if you want to be able to find very personal idiosyncratic gems, instead of just following social media buzz or AAA PR -- one of the most exciting benefits to today's massive catalog -- you have to wade through an increasingly unfathomable amount of slop.

90% of everything is crap; also Sturgeon might have been an hopeless optimist.

i am old enough to remember the atari games and their crap. i played the "legendary" E.T. game on atari and could never figure it out.

there has always been a lot of shit, but most of it was at the margins, and you could easily find the real flagship games.

now the slop is never ending and competes on the front page against real titles