{"id":109,"date":"2026-10-30T01:09:16","date_gmt":"2026-10-30T05:09:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sambishop.com\/?p=109"},"modified":"2026-10-30T01:15:45","modified_gmt":"2026-10-30T05:15:45","slug":"on-backlogs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sambishop.com\/?p=109","title":{"rendered":"On Backlogs"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

One of the most damaging things the games industry does is create a sense of endless<\/em> FOMO. It’s not even something that’s done with intentionality at this point anymore; there are simply so many monkeys at so many typewriters that we’re getting a new tranche of Shakespeare multiple months out of the year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The part that is <\/em>very much intentional is that all of these things cost money, and for the last 30 or so years, that was never even a passing concern for me; I first got copies of games when I started my PSX2.com site back in 1997, and then was lucky enough to end up on a list where everything <\/em>that was released digitally (give or take).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My cup runneth over. But, like, for reals, y’all:
\"\"<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now there’s a powerful distinction between just having literally everything <\/em>barfed into your digital library every week and seeking out or having publishers offer you games for review; there’s a kind of natural curation that filters out the fact that that list you see above? It’s almost 99% shit<\/em><\/strong>. I’d venture my library is probably one of the most potent examples of what’s wrong with game development right now: it’s overwhelmingly<\/em> AI slop, clones of more popular games or asset flip dogshit – or literally genAI thumbnails of asset flip clones of other games. And there are DOZENS of them released WEEKLY.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Slop is Real<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

If you’re not really aware of just how bad it’s gotten, I cannot impress upon you enough that those big-budget AAA games everyone loves to bicker about destroying the industry (they are, but that’s a different rant) are noooooothing<\/em> next to the glut of absolute shit that is clogging the publishing systems of literally every platform where games are available.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If any game manages to rise to the measure of success that is getting featured on some random streamer’s account, it will be instantly cloned and barfed out into the ether on every available platform for which Unity or Unreal let you compile. It happens in nanoseconds<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Often this is damaging just to that small-time indie developer that saw some measure of success on one platform but obviously wasn’t trying to push their carefully-made game on everything all at once – for instance, something like The Exit 8, which got so popular there’s a goddamn movie about it, but that had clones on that very same PlayStation Store I screenshotted with the overflowing library up there for months with the same name “Exit 8” (no “The”).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Take, too, the later PlayStation release of the original Backrooms game that sorta kicked off the leap from Reddit creepypasta to full-blown worldbuilding thanks to youngin’ Kane Parsons’ YouTube videos. The number of zero-effort Backrooms games with incomprehensible SEO-friendly names being released on the PlayStation Store were (and still are) offensive as hell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Obviously this is not the first medium to have to deal with shitty copycats, but it at least took some effort before and now <\/em>we’re dealing with absolute insane vibe-coded ports and decomplications and cash grabs on a whole new level. It’s really, really bad how quickly this stuff has been made possible by literally anyone with a Claude account and some social media. We’re not entirely there yet, but what was already a 9000+ game shit deluge in those codes I used to get with everything released that week is about to become a tidal wave. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So… Should I Play ‘Em?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

All of this creates an interesting position for my current situation: I didn’t pay for ANY of this slop factory games. I don’t command an audience that can give a shitty clone developer any extra boost, and I am <\/em>curious about how detestibly bad or even unplayable these games are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But here’s the other thing: in those 10,700+ games I own, there’s a lot <\/em>of really good stuff – stuff I’ve finally been getting to now that I no longer feel (or can afford to feel) that same constant urge to play the next hot thing – and certainly not to give my take on it, though I think I might get into doing that for games that really grab me. That doesn’t leave a lot of time for dogshit clones and asset flips unless I somehow monetize the torture, and then we’re back to the issue of giving these assholes attention for biting someone’s else’s hard work, and I hate that idea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But this also brings up my original point: back when I was reviewing stuff, I didn’t have a choice; the game was thrust upon me and needed to get played through and scored sight-unseen (or at least never sampled in its released version). I didn’t know what I was going to play next because the fire hose never turned off – and that was back in the early 2010s, which is literally exponentially less than the number of games released every week now. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Power of a Pleasant Surprise<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps it was a consequence of having to weather so many bad games before<\/em> we got to this AI-assisted hellscape that we’re all in now, but that firehose was rarely an entirely unpleasant experience. Every once in a while, something would come along that just… worked. It might not have the giant budget or the past pedigree or even the full package of something that you spent months or years previewing and knew about, but some<\/em>thing made it stand out enough to be a beautiful counter to all the schlock you were made to power through. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was, and I’m not even joking, one of the reasons why I loved my job as a reviewer so much. A diamond in the rough is so much more shiny when you spend 90% of your time in the rough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For me, it doesn’t even have to be a total package thing (though I’m going to barf out a bunch of words soon about something I think is <\/strong>a total package and is tinged with absolute tragedy because this whole goddamn industry is in the process of shitting itself, but that’s another post). Sometimes a terrible game has amazing music: <\/p>\n\n\n\n