"Google Spotlight Stories: Special Delivery" is not a game. Games contain meaningful gamelike interaction and game loops, which are absent in this "art experience".
Instead of being a game, "Google Spotlight Stories: Special Delivery" is a VR video from Aardman (Wallace and Gromit) without any of their
famous characters, instead, we get a small, short CGI animation with some cartoon characters and a Christmas theme. Yes, a glorified Youtube video.
There was a video section on Steam, but it's deprecated and basically closed, so filmmakers seem to just try to abuse the Steam games section instead. Why is this good for gamers? It's not. Steam was never intended to compete with Youtube, and Google owns Youtube, so it's unclear why they can't work out how to upload videos to Youtube when they own the platform. So they're pushing Youtube videos to Steam???
For those unfamiliar with what actually makes something a game, a "game loop" describes the interaction and feedback a gamer has when playing a game.
Tetris, for example, has a game loop where a random block appears, the gamer interacts with the block to position it, and then the game decides if that finishes a row or not, increases the players score if any rows were completed, then gives the gamer another block to position. Counter-Strike has a game loop where a player seeks another player, tests their skill against that player by shooting them or being shot, the computer rewards the player if they win, and then if the player survives, they repeat that loop.
There's no loop here, no true interactive feedback. It simply is not a game, it cannot be "played".
This has misleadingly been launched in the "Games" section of Steam instead of the "Software" section. This is a common mistake for developers who are new to Steam, or don't understand the difference between games and software which isn't a game. It seems this software published incorrectly as a game is simply lack of experience/knowledge of the correct process.
Here's a link for the process to publish non-game software/non-game "art experiences" on Steam:
[url=https://help.steampowered.com/en/wizard/HelpWithPublishing?issueid=925]Steam Developer Help With Software Publishing[/url]
It's unfortunate this process was not known about/followed, resulting in a non-game "art experience"/Youtube video being published in the wrong place.
Publishing Youtube videos on Steam in the Games section as games is misleading to gamers and somewhat harmful, because it pollutes the Steam marketplace and takes away visibility and market exposure for genuine game developers who do the right thing and make games for gamers.
There are no gameplay loops in this rejected film school dropout exhibition, no "gameplay", no meaningful game like interaction. As such, this has no merit as a video game for gamers, and so I cannot recommend this non-game as a game to gamers.
Despite having no up-front cost, this failed to appeal to the 130 million+ gamers on Steam. SteamDB shows this peaked at just a dozen or so concurrent users, and now there's basically nobody using it. Even though it's free. This is a dismal public reception, but it's easy to see why gamers rejected it.
Google should perhaps consider using Bing to work out the difference between things which are games and things which aren't. Hint: Youtube videos aren't.
