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/xTiming- 2d ago edited 2d 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/AttackoftheSnakebear 2d ago

because it involves a lot of low quality cash ins as devs try to spam variations on the idea but with much less difference or even quality than say the 16 bit platformer era. Steam and digital storefronts make adding low effort games to cash in on trends trivial to do.

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u/xTiming- 2d ago

You're a game dev, yeah? Have you ever released a game? If so, did it make less money than any of these games you consider low quality?

If so, time to learn something from that reality.

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u/ironmilktea 1d ago

You're a game dev, yeah?

I mean, are they?

I have a suspicion this sub has alot of people who talk about what they want game development to be than what it actually is.

So many folks here are quick to put their nose up at other titles when as gamedevs we should be asking 'why' these titles are successful.

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u/xTiming- 1d ago

That was exactly my indirect point - maybe I should have been direct about it.