Last update: 15 January 2024
As part of GOG’s goal of giving each user a personalized experience when visiting GOG and using GOG services, we use recommendation (‘recommender’) systems to show you the content we believe you might be most interested in.
In this article, we would like to explain where you can expect to see personalized content, what are the main types of information we use (and why), as well as how you can influence the content you see.
As of now, we optimize your experience in the following areas of GOG:
- In the GOG.COM store:
- On storefront: “Games for You” segment;
- On product pages: “You may like these products” segment.
- In GOG GALAXY:
- In Discover View: “Games for You”, “Recommended tag”, “New arrivals” segments;
- In Game View: “Similar to this” segment.
The main types of information (called ‘parameters’) that we use in our recommender systems are the following:
- Games you’ve bought on GOG and their tags. In our experience you are more likely to be interested in the titles that you do not yet own, but are similarly tagged as the games you’ve already bought. For example, if you have The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt in your library, which are tagged Fantasy on GOG then you would probably be interested in Baldur’s Gate 3, which is also tagged as Fantasy here (duh!).
- GOG GALAXY games playtime. This may sound obvious, but for the sake of transparency we’ll say it: we feel that you are more likely to be interested in games similar to those that you’ve played for a long time.
- [in development] Your activity. This one is simple - we look at how you engage with the content you see on GOG, for example: how you react to our recommendations, what games you review and how, what games you add to your Wishlist etc. It’s more likely you will be interested in the recommendation of a game similar to the one you clicked on, confirmed you are interested in, or gave a positive review to. On the other hand, it’s less likely that you will be interested in recommendations for things you reacted negatively to, did not react to, or games you negatively reviewed.
How you can influence the recommendations. Here are the best practices for how you can influence our recommendations to you:
- Buy games. The more games you buy, the more accurately we can say what you’d like to see on GOG. Titles in your library and the tags that are assigned to the games you’ve bought are the most important parameters we use in our recommendations.
- Play the games with GOG GALAXY (or not - you decide!). As we said above, only when you play your games with GOG GALAXY, we can track how long you play the games you’ve bought for and how much you enjoy them. GOG GALAXY is fully optional though - you decide if you want to use it.