If I’m honest, I really want to write more articles about how awesome Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn is. That, or more laughing at Microsoft, or possibly how much fun I’m having playing Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney. The latter is one of those games that I’ve owned for far too long without having played all the way through and I’m not letting it stay unfinished any longer. I have been loving every second of it and I both never want it to stop and desperately want to see the ending. I’m pretty sure that’s the sign of an amazing game.

But since I’ve written enough (probably too much) about FFXIV and I’ve only just done an article on the Xbone, I suppose something else is in order. There’s still nothing in particular to be writing about of course, so until something interesting happens, I’ll fall back on that limitless fount of content that dwells ever at the forefront of my mind: bile.

Here are a few of the things about gaming in general that have been pissing me off lately. If you don’t like what I’m saying, remember that they’re just my opinions and unless you’re going to enter into a reasonable debate with me, I won’t be feeding the trolls.

First up is shovelware. Go on Steam right now and have a look at the latest releases. Scroll down a few pages. How many names do you recognise? I, too, have been eagerly awaiting the Steam release of Putt-Putt and Fatty Bear’s Activity Pack. I imagine it was game of the fucking year back in 1994, when it was actually bloody released. Thanks to Steam’s inability to provide any sort of quality control – except when it comes to flagrant lying to customers – we’re getting bombarded with endless amounts of shit. Every single bargain bin special from the last two decades is getting unleashed, clogging up the storefront and detracting from 90% of gamers are looking for.

Valve’s solution to this so far seems to be patching Steam to show the “Top Sellers” list by default on the front page. Obviously, it doesn’t put any of this crap in the slider at the top, either. But this hasn’t stemmed the flow. Shit continues to stream in like some unstoppable flood. Someone, somewhere twigged onto this whole digital sales thing and has been telling all of his mates. “SOMEONE’S bound to buy this shit, guys!”

Some people say that Valve shouldn’t be curating or judging what is available via their store. If that’s the way of things, we’re going to end up with a similar clusterfuck to the Google Play Store, which currently consists of about 40% actual content, 60% copies and shitware and 300% hyperbole / made up statistics. My point being that for every legitimate app, you’re looking at a dozen shitty copies. Do you want a situation where browsing for a new game to play (by, say, selecting a genre) turns into a desperate attempt to find anything remotely playable? Hell, say what you want about Metacritic – at least if a game HAS a Metascore, you can probably rest assured it’s better than most of this dross.

Somewhat related is my general distaste towards indie gaming at the moment. There are a handful of studios doing things well: Kickstarter or otherwise, they’re making some quality games that may or may not see the light of day. Still more have seen full releases and have been OK, good or excellent. But right now, there seems to be far too many developers and games that fall into the category of generic “pixel-art rogue-like RPG brawler platformer action” title.

Hey, developers: let me go out on a limb here and just say stop. Stop now. Don’t waste any more money. Unless your game literally revolutionises one or all of the genres you plastered all over your pixellated abomination, you’re going to get lost amid the noise. There’s just too much being released right now that it’s like static. You’ve arrived too late. It’s like one of those stupid “Simulator” games that no-one pays attention to. I’m not talking about gems like Goat or Surgeon Simulator; no, I refer to things like “Ski Region Simulator” or “Warehouse and Logistics Simulator”. Clearly more Game of the Fucking Year material right there.

Just stop. You’re not different and you’re not special. You’re only pissing into a sea of piss. Make something original and stop jumping on this stupidest of bandwagons. Not everything needs to be a 2D pixel-art carbon copy of nearly every other indie title. You’re making my head hurt.

Then again, I’m always complaining about having too many games to play, aren’t I? Fuck it, keep on going. You’ll bankrupt yourselves and maybe you’ll learn something from it.

Let’s stay with the Steam theme, but widen the aperture a bit: pre-orders. Time was that pre-ordering was something you did because you knew you wanted the game in question. Sure, there was a benefit to the developer, publisher and retailer – they were all getting maximum profit. But the benefits to the player were fair as well. You got to play the game on release day (or night, if you queued at a store) and were sometimes rewarded with a bit of loot. Sometimes this was physical, sometimes it was in-game. It was a bonus, an added perk. A little extra from the developer, costing them comparatively nothing and gaining the player about the same.

But now, people are pre-ordering just for these bonuses. The most banal and insignificant shit is being touted as a reason to buy a game. A special colour of jacket! A hat! Minor stat adjustment items! It’s been happening for some time, but it’s only getting worse. What happens if the game you’re paying full price for isn’t all it’s hyped up to be? Look at The Amazing Spider-Man 2, for example. Its price has plummeted from £45 to something stupid like £16 on PC (if not on Steam directly). But hey, at least you got the value from those unique Spider-Suits, right?

I could go on. I want to go on, but chances are that most of you have stopped reading by now. I dare say I’ll be back with more bile as the weeks go on, but we’ll leave it at that for the time being. Rant paused.

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