Entry 00 : Hello. Let's talk about the games industry.(July 07 2026)

Let's get some things out of the way first.

• I'm a game developer for a living.
• I've been making and releasing games for the past 13 years.
• You probably haven't played anything I've made.
• Please don't take anything you read here to heart. This is just me venting.
• Never believe anything you read on the internet.

Phew! That wasn't so hard.

What's going on with GAMES???

I'm actually not against "friendslop" games at all, I love playing them with my friends and absolutely can see why there's such a huge market for it. You won't see me here saying stuff like "friendslops are killing the industry!" because, well, it simply isn't true. I also kinda loathe the term "friendslop", but unfortunately that's what caught on, so we'll use it here.

Now, while I put on my tinfoil hat, I'll say this - The real truth is that big developers and publishers can't grasp the concept of "friendslop" games because they can't think of a proper way to keep milking the game after it's launch, and that has been a big issue for them. The truth is that even for the most famous of these games, they get a little tiring and people stop playing them, sometimes, altogether. This isn't true for all friendslop games of course, games like Peak still get 20k players daily - but it used to get 170k players daily.

If you haven't noticed, big developers and publishers usually don't just make a single game that gets released and that's it anymore (unless it's something HUGE like Bethesda's Oblivion remake, but even then they get layoffs after that, another topic for another time) - the developers are expected to keep making updates for the game, years after it's initial release, to keep consumer interest up. It's simple really, if you push an update for your game, you get more marketing after it's initial release. So if you push one update every 3 months, it's like releasing a new game every 3 months, without having to do much work.

You might see where I'm going with this. This means that, instead of having developers make new and interesting games, the entire market is focused on re-using the same game as long as they can, or even the same concept if it does well. Where before you used to get Game 1, Game 2 : The Sequel and Game 3 : The Final Act, now you get Game 1, Game 1 Update 2, Game 1 DLC 3, etc. And publishers are very keen on this - they don't usually publish games anymore unless it has tons of replayability and gameplay hours on it. You'll have a hard time finding a short game by a big publisher these days.

This gets me to my main point...

I want shorter games with worse graphics made by people who are paid more to work less and I'm not kidding.

This is a such a great image (courtesy of Lilith Walther), I keep seeing it being posted around. The issue is that even people who think this usually don't get out of their comfort zone to actually search - yes, search, because the algorithm won't ever show these to you - these kind of games.

Think to yourself, when was the last time you played a short game with bad graphics that really got to you?

Or even better, when was the last time you actually spent money on a smaller game, that had bad graphics as a style choice, made by an unknown developer?

So what?

Well, I've made it a personal goal to stop spending money on AAA games (not that I bought many anyway, I usually just waited for sales like every sane, non-rich person on this planet) and focus on actually buying smaller games by unknown developers. I usually do that by scavenging this website

Well, this is one of the reasons I decided to start this blog. I've seen people using that other website to create mailing lists and such, but I really don't consider myself a writer or anything, I'm more of a "ranter".

Anyway, welcome! I'll be adding some games to the Game Recommendations page soon. Be sure to check in later! :)