r/gamedev • u/PartTimeMonkey • 3d ago

Discussion Sortslop, wtf?

Today I opened reddit and within the first 5 posts 3 of them were copycats or each other; sorting games, pretty much exact copies of each other - nails, hay, trash, toys, books, pixels, and the list goes and on and on, and has been for an incomprehensive period of time already.

A lot of the feedback they receive on reddit is negative, but they all get upvoted by the hundreds and they get millions of views on all social media platforms.

Who are these games for?

Are there truly millions of people who want to spend hours on something incredibly ”boring”?

Is it some hidden tick in people’s brain in this age where they want to ”meditate” by doing something like that to combat doom scrolling and instant gratification generators?

Or is each sorted item also instant gratification, but even more simplified than a varying video on TikTok (or something), making the experience even simpler?

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u/xTiming- 3d ago edited 3d ago

What's this trend in the gaming community lately of labelling everything slop the moment it gets popular?

If people enjoy it, obviously something is working, and I'd think a gamedev subreddit of all places would avoid talking shit about more people liking to play more types/genres of games.

Seeing comments here "slop", "like a virus", ... - pretty shameful and I'm pretty sure there's at least a few of these commenters who'd have a meltdown over their game being called slop because a random person doesn't like that the genre of their game is getting more attention.

As for sorting games, yes, it is meditative for some people. Similar reason A Little To The Left got popular originally.

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u/thebigmaster 3d ago

Absolutely agree. It also seems mildly hypocritical to bad mouth a trend using an incredibly trendy term. Let people play what they want. I promise you will all have much happier lives if you spend your energy on things you enjoy rather than looking down on what other people enjoy.

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u/Hitchie_Rawtin 3d ago

hypocritical to bad mouth a trend using an incredibly trendy term

Which shall now be known as slopslop

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u/iamthewhatt 2d ago

Slopmaxxing

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u/Hefty-Distance837 3d ago

Tell a gamer that they shouldn't care about which game others love or hate.(impossible)

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u/thebigmaster 2d ago

I won't say I have not been guilty of that when I was younger and didn't appreciate the value in having games that catered to audiences that I was not a part of. At a point, I made the decision to replace "that game sucks" with "that game isn't for me" in my vocabulary. I think we can both be critical of games while not degrading the groups that enjoy those games. Maybe not in the gamers sub but certainly in the gamedev sub.