The gamification of the games platform. People will buy games just for the trading cards. The more trading cards you have, the better your odds of completing a set and turning it in for XP and leveling up your Steam account, unlocking new profile and friends list features.
Yeah, I never got that. For a while I would just sell the trading cards as soon as they were awarded. I think I got some cheap DLC for free from that money... it probably wasn't even worth my time to do that.
There's probably an age demographic involved here. It's probably not worth your time because you're an adult and earn a good income. But most kids under a certain age don't have a job, don't think of their time in monetary terms, and might find collecting and trading cards to be fun.
Steam probably has a ton of such demographic information that would make for some really interesting articles and research.
Same here. The notifications are the most annoying part to me. I really don't care about that stuff, and I don't need a message in my inbox about some new thingy.
