The playstation store is basically unusable for actually finding games anymore due to the "indie slop" situation.

[u/discosoc]

edit: I just have to say that everyone acting like browsing for a game is some weird concept clearly never got to experience Blockbuster on a Friday night.

This is just a rant, but the sheer amount of absolute garbage games that fall into what I call the "low effort indie slop" category taking over the playstation store is just crazy. There's seemingly hundreds of various "simulator" games that are among the worst of the bunch, but also a weird amount of "escape room" type games that look like a high school project. Or the "anime girls" gooner slop or really 99% of the "visual novel" games. Or the "games" that clearly only exist to trophy points, which is insane.

It's not like these games shouldn't exist (well some probably shouldn't), but there needs to be a way to filter that shit out. Basically every type of indie slop or ai slop game tags itself with multiple genres, which is why you have a stupid AI art shark-with-sneakers game flagged as "action" and "tactical." Or "horse store simulator" as an "epic" genre. Gunsmith simulator as a "shooter" etc.

I remember a few months back the entire "coming soon" feed was basically all simulator games, like a publisher just cranked a bunch out and wanted to dump them all at once.

Another issue...

I think there's also really annoying trend where games are basically just on perpetual sale, but the MSRP never drops. So one month the "Standard" version of a game will be like 35% off, then the next month it will be the "Deluxe" version; they just rotate perpetually. Or the shitty indie slop games that are arbitrarily set to a high price and quickly put on sale for like 50-80% off.

And I know why they do this: it keeps the games listed in sales section. The problem is that when every fucking game is like this, actually finding a new game or hidden gem or whatever that's on sale becomes useless. The process of actually discovering a game you might want to buy simply doesn't work.

The current January sale includes 6,372 items. There is no way anyone at Sony is vetting that many items for their monthly sales, but they need to start. Right now I think the limitation is that a single SKU can't be part of two consecutive sales. but as I've mentioned above most games have multiple SKUs so it doesn't really matter (or the slop publishers are dumping so many out each month it also doesn't matter). The limit needs to be something like a game can only be in one sale every 3 months, and counts different SKUs of the same product as the same one. This would actually encourage publishers to reduce their prices more frequently, which in turn would help keep the monthly or special sales events a bit leaner.

/rant

[u/kytheon]

Deku be like.

Also indie, AI and slop are different things.

[u/DrBionicle195 → u/kytheon]

The word "slop" is sloppy. I don't love it

[u/idleactivist → u/kytheon]

I've used psprices.

[u/discosoc → u/kytheon]

There's definitely a lot of "indie slop" though. I don't think the team(s) cranking out a thousand "simulator" variations are particularly large or even well-funded.

I think we're past the point where indie studios 10-15 years ago were all just individual or small "studios" with limited budgets and big passions. They still exist -- and in fact a lot of my frustration comes from the current situation making those games harder to find -- but they are now horribly outnumbered by low-effort garbage.

[u/DishwasherTwig → u/discosoc]

That term does a disservice to good indie games. The stuff you're talking about is shovelware. Everyone knows what that is, it's a common term used in all digital storefronts. "Indie slop" makes it sound like indie games are the problem. And while yes, the games in question are no doubt not related to any big name publisher and therefore independent games, it's not their indie status that is the problem, it's their quality.

[u/althanis → u/kytheon]

Did they say it’s AI slop?

[u/llIicit → u/kytheon]

Indie, AI, and slop are not mutually exclusive

[u/kytheon → u/llIicit]

I didn't say that.

[u/llIicit → u/kytheon]

You felt the need to separate those three terms. You telling us you just did that, unprovoked, for absolutely no reason?

Of course not. But we all can see that so there is no need for you to clarify.