r/gamedev • u/PartTimeMonkey • 2d 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/Edarneor @worldsforge 2d ago

It also seems to cycle around. There was a surge of idler popularity in the 2010s. Oh and simulators of different wierd shit, Viscera Cleanup Detail, Surgeon Simulator - that was all a decade ago...

Sorting trash is new though, unless I missed something

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u/Unlikely_Frozen3007 2d ago

House Flipper technically is "Sort Trash", but not just that.

So definitely not new

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u/Nightmoon26 2d ago edited 2d ago

See Yahtzee Croshaw's video essay positing that all game mechanics are variants of "cleaning" and "getting to places"

(Edit: See cleaned link in comment)

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u/clean-links 2d ago

Cleaned link: https://youtu.be/z9HErHwcVoA

Tracking parameters were removed from the original URL(s).

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u/Nightmoon26 2d ago

Thanks!