‘I Could Make “Fart Fart Boobie Fart: The Game” and Maybe It Would Eventually Get Taken Down’ – Devs Reveal Why the Consoles Are Drowning in ‘Eslop’
‘I Could Make “Fart Fart Boobie Fart: The Game” and Maybe It Would Eventually Get Taken Down’ – Devs Reveal Why the Consoles Are Drowning in ‘Eslop’
by Turbostrider27
41 Comments
ncleiroh
I’d definitely buy Fart Fart Boobie Fart: The Game.
Simon_1892
I’m skeptical as to how well Fart Fart Boobie Fart would translate to a game. It just wasn’t created for that medium and I fear a lot of the lore and nuance would be lost.
gigglefarting
Finally, a game made just for me
ADifferentMachine
That’s a whole lotta words when “Nintendo and Sony need to deboost AI & asset swap slop games on their store” would have sufficed.
VampireHunterAlex
With how dumb the world is today, you know by this weekend you’ll be able to play ‘Fart Fart Boobie Fart: The Game’…..and it’ll probably be halfway decent.
iAmericA45
Ok so do it then
TheToddBarker
To be fair, the FFBF series really fell off after part three and the Gwimbly crossover.
HeyKid_HelpComputer
I rarely look at the eShop or PSN store as I like physical copies more. But was browsing the PSN shop a few days ago.. The amount of games where the cover was blatant AI and the game screenshots looked graphically worse than Roblox was easily a third or more of the games in New Releases
Zoombini22
Having read the article, I have to think there are some basic measures that could fix this pretty handle.
For one, if you charged a nominal but non-insignificant fee per game published, it would stop a lot of the current tactics cold. I’m sure these eslop titles don’t sell much at all, and they constantly get “rereleased” under different names to put them in the “new” category. Real indie devs would be willing to put a little real money on the line to get their game onto the storefront and would only publish a game once. If some of these stores already have a fee, maybe it needs adjusting.
This could then be paired with stronger algorithms on the storefronts to hide games that aren’t selling. While it’d be hard to enforce this on the New Releases page, all other pages should go pretty hard with excluding games that basically nobody has ever bought (most likely because it’s AI slop). I’d rather the Discount page be half empty than to be flooded with things that are obviously not real games.
Of course human review by staff would be best, but that’s expensive. The above steps could be done at a much lower cost.
Significant-Roll-138
I have a 5 year old kid who likes watching me play games and will be playing his own games soon, and it’s really a pain in the neck to go to the eShop when he’s with me with the floods of Hentai looking crap and just outright crap.
I really can’t understand why they haven’t put in a filtering system we can use.
Personally I think I would buy a lot more games if they made it easier to sort the crap from the quality.
tupe12
Nobody understood Fart Fart better then Kojima
EnclG4me
Up next on “Ow! My balls!” – Idiocracy
selphiestix
I’ve noticed this. Having to wade through pages and pages of junk trying to see deals and new games that are actually worth a crap.
They need to implement a user rating system where all this junk can be “downvoted” to the bottom of any results if they are going to allow it in shop.
YourMooseKing
I wish the marketplace was more transparent. I want to see “Average Time Played” and a “Rating from Buyers”
.
TheRealEzekielRage
Back in the Wii U days I sent a clearly unfinished game using placeholder graphics (sourced from other games) to the console manufacturer to get a response on what to expect for their check, since it was my first time devleloping a console game. Instead of sending it back, they published it, leaving me with a game filled with clearly copyrighted material and a lot of explaining to do.
Of course I changed everything, as I would have done so anyway but until that patch was live, I did not sleep well…
Long story short, yeah, console manufacturers do not care what you upload. As long as it doesn’t go against their rules/systems, you are free to do whatever. Sony is more into censorship than the other two these days, but overall, nobody cares. And bad actors abuse this system, of course.
Ok_Signature3413
Glad I’m not the only one who doesn’t like the eshop. I’m all for giving independent studios a chance but they really need some kind of better approval process. The fact is, for every great independent studio game, there are dozens of horrible ones. A lot of them seem to just be mobile games adapted to the Switch.
manontherun247
Nintendo has always been bad for shovelware
chiefrebelangel_
It’s always a race to the bottom when a machine does something a human can do better.
boopboopadoopity
Minor conspiracy theory:
The team behind the eShop at Nintendo Switch knows about the problem and is intentionally not doing anything about it for all the reasons people mentioned (it costs money to manually determine what is allowed to be sold by paying workers to phase out slop etc.) BUT also for these two reasons:
* They don’t WANT you to look at the New Releases page. Many large companies pay tons of money to Nintendo with the promise of their games getting better/more exposure and purchases than the rest – and Nintendo wants top billing too. The only one of these pages that they cannot reasonably control (through advertising dollars guiding them) what games you see is the New Releases page. Even the Search function can be tweaked if desired, but New Releases logically has to just be a chronological list of all new games or genuine game devs would notice and complain they aren’t showing up. This is a tactic used by mobile app stores (imo) – make the home page look flashy where companies pay thousands to show up, and make it as awkward as possible to find just pure “new releases” in chronological order, so you can get make that promise of “At least 15k impressions per 20k dollars!” true. Allow the New Releases page to be full of junk and drive people to the games you want them to see.
* They want to have it both ways – be a premiere video game platform, and be a mobile slop platform, on purpose. Mobile gaming as a market is absolutely bigger than it has ever been, and major gaming companies have been trying to stop the bleed from major titles/draw in casual gamers with releasing their own apps of major titles (Mario, Sonic, etc.). But that’s not enough. There is a large market of, especially children, who won’t recognize low-effort mobile games, and are willing to spend time/money on them. Guess who a big target audience of Nintendo is that they’d like to also capture? YouTube has done this way more explicitly with the release of its “games” area filled with low-effort titles – why go back to your mobile phone when you can just play loe effort games HERE and not leave YouTube, seeing YT as a one-stop place? Same principle – they don’t mind more slop filling New Releases because it gets them more money from this demo than it hurts the brand, in their opinion.
OddEyess_
It’s a problem on the eShop because it’s already slow and with so many slop games it’s hard to navigate.
lugdunum_burdigala
Well, I never use the eShop to discover new games. It is so unpractical and some days I even doubt it was ever the intended purpose. I use other sources to get games recommendations and price tracking, and then I buy the game on the eShop (usually through the browser version on my computer, much easier). I never really notice the existence of shovelware this way.
jgreg728
Honestly if it’s not a well known title or at the very least touted in a direct I won’t even consider looking at it in the eShop. Idk who’s actually buying any of these games.
Chaopolis
Allowing User Ratings in the Nintendo eShop *could* alleviate a lot of this garbage. They’d still be able to post their crappy game, but User Ratings would effectively call them out. Nintendo could even have a Sort filter that only shows games with a “4/5 or higher”.
It doesn’t completely KILL the problem. Obviously, the Coming Soon tab wouldn’t have any ratings. But it’s better than the current system of “find out the hard way”. By that point, the scammy developer already has your money. They don’t care if you hate it.
Monotonegent
With Nintendo I maintain that its revenge on all the weird carts that appeared during the NES times.
“Oh, we *tried* to filter out as much outright garbage as possible, but the courts said ‘no’. You people want garbage? Have garbage! BWAHAHAHA!”
jamthefourth
I imagine this gets posted every time there’s an eShop discussion, but it amazes me that anyone even uses it considering how good Deku Deals is. I understand there’s a casual audience that might not think to use a third party site, but for everyone else… Why do we care?
peeweeharmani
*runs to the Gaming Leaks and Rumors sub to post that Fart Fart Boobie Fart: The Game was just revealed in a new interview*
xxademasoulxx
Man, you guys should see Steam—it’s an ocean of porn, hentai, and shovelware. But I can customize my store settings to filter all that junk out. Can you do the same on the Switch? I’ve only owned five physical games for my Switch and downloaded two specific games from the eShop.
And honestly, I’ve never browsed the eShop at all—I only used it when I bought those two specific games, as 99.9% of the games I buy are on my PC.
ScherisMarie
I’m willing to bet someone is going to create a eShop shovelware game with that title now that it’s been spoken into existence. lol
WheredMyPiggyGo
I’d play it.
euling
When the Switch first released, I used to check the shop for new games every few days. Would genuinely at least scroll through every game released. That ended pretty quickly. It’s basically unusable now unless you know exactly what you want.
SharkMilk44
Anyone else remember a big focus of OUYA’s press conferences was about “getting indie games on the television,” and the the OUYA died because the store was filled with garbage?
Samurai_GorohGX
It has become far too easy to publish a game on all major platforms.
Nintendo in the past was known for the opposite issue, being too bossy and strict with 3rd parties, but this is not good either. When good games get drowned in the sea of low-effort slop, Nintendo loses, the legitimate indies devs lose, and gamers lose.
We need the Nintendo Seal of Quality to mean something again. And the other platforms should follow.
Rare_Hero
I don’t get why Nintendo allows Ai slop games on the eShop. Nintendo has an approvals process…so someone is saying “yes” to allowing these games up. They don’t have to.
LordBlackConvoy
The worst part is that it would be hidden behind the constant rereleases of Knights with Guns, Urban Flow and Sniper Hunter Scope.
platinumplantain
This is why I use Deku Deals and I check things like Metacritic scores, game length, and the publishers. Honestly, if you’re not using Deku Deals to track game deals, you’re wasting money. I have a big wishlist on that site and it lets me know if it’s an actually good discount or if it’s always discounted at that price.
HiddenCity
It’s atari quality control all over again.
Immediate-Comment-64
Would be nice if publishers could push Sony and Nintendo to do better. I used to enjoy browsing new releases, but I gave that up years ago because it’s so broken. As a result I often miss stuff I never would have before. Good quality releases just slip by with zero attention.
Spazza42
Do people really browse the eShop anymore anyway?
I only use it when I’m looking for specific games and if it’s not on sale I add to wish list and wait.
The experience on the eShop is utter dog which is probably why I don’t engage with it any other way.
wankthisway
It’s been the same with almost every digital storefront the past few years. I don’t bother opening the Apple App Store, the Google Play Store, the eShop, Steam Store – heck even Amazon. It’s unmoderated trash and you have to pick through hundreds of scams and borked apps to find a decent one.
Discovery is super dead, not just in storefronts but on the internet in general. I have to know what I am searching for to get real results now, instead of AI bullshit.
CryptoJeans
Nintendo must be missing out on so much revenue due their bad eshop. There have been many sales where I had to scroll past 100 shovelware/hentai/garbage games before it turned out there were even some 1st party games on sale, it’s ridiculous.
AristolteInABottle
Nintendo switch eshop is straight up garbage. Its actually embarrassing.
41 Comments
I’d definitely buy Fart Fart Boobie Fart: The Game.
I’m skeptical as to how well Fart Fart Boobie Fart would translate to a game. It just wasn’t created for that medium and I fear a lot of the lore and nuance would be lost.
Finally, a game made just for me
That’s a whole lotta words when “Nintendo and Sony need to deboost AI & asset swap slop games on their store” would have sufficed.
With how dumb the world is today, you know by this weekend you’ll be able to play ‘Fart Fart Boobie Fart: The Game’…..and it’ll probably be halfway decent.
Ok so do it then
To be fair, the FFBF series really fell off after part three and the Gwimbly crossover.
I rarely look at the eShop or PSN store as I like physical copies more. But was browsing the PSN shop a few days ago.. The amount of games where the cover was blatant AI and the game screenshots looked graphically worse than Roblox was easily a third or more of the games in New Releases
Having read the article, I have to think there are some basic measures that could fix this pretty handle.
For one, if you charged a nominal but non-insignificant fee per game published, it would stop a lot of the current tactics cold. I’m sure these eslop titles don’t sell much at all, and they constantly get “rereleased” under different names to put them in the “new” category. Real indie devs would be willing to put a little real money on the line to get their game onto the storefront and would only publish a game once. If some of these stores already have a fee, maybe it needs adjusting.
This could then be paired with stronger algorithms on the storefronts to hide games that aren’t selling. While it’d be hard to enforce this on the New Releases page, all other pages should go pretty hard with excluding games that basically nobody has ever bought (most likely because it’s AI slop). I’d rather the Discount page be half empty than to be flooded with things that are obviously not real games.
Of course human review by staff would be best, but that’s expensive. The above steps could be done at a much lower cost.
I have a 5 year old kid who likes watching me play games and will be playing his own games soon, and it’s really a pain in the neck to go to the eShop when he’s with me with the floods of Hentai looking crap and just outright crap.
I really can’t understand why they haven’t put in a filtering system we can use.
Personally I think I would buy a lot more games if they made it easier to sort the crap from the quality.
Nobody understood Fart Fart better then Kojima
Up next on “Ow! My balls!” – Idiocracy
I’ve noticed this. Having to wade through pages and pages of junk trying to see deals and new games that are actually worth a crap.
They need to implement a user rating system where all this junk can be “downvoted” to the bottom of any results if they are going to allow it in shop.
I wish the marketplace was more transparent. I want to see “Average Time Played” and a “Rating from Buyers”
.
Back in the Wii U days I sent a clearly unfinished game using placeholder graphics (sourced from other games) to the console manufacturer to get a response on what to expect for their check, since it was my first time devleloping a console game. Instead of sending it back, they published it, leaving me with a game filled with clearly copyrighted material and a lot of explaining to do.
Of course I changed everything, as I would have done so anyway but until that patch was live, I did not sleep well…
Long story short, yeah, console manufacturers do not care what you upload. As long as it doesn’t go against their rules/systems, you are free to do whatever. Sony is more into censorship than the other two these days, but overall, nobody cares. And bad actors abuse this system, of course.
Glad I’m not the only one who doesn’t like the eshop. I’m all for giving independent studios a chance but they really need some kind of better approval process. The fact is, for every great independent studio game, there are dozens of horrible ones. A lot of them seem to just be mobile games adapted to the Switch.
Nintendo has always been bad for shovelware
It’s always a race to the bottom when a machine does something a human can do better.
Minor conspiracy theory:
The team behind the eShop at Nintendo Switch knows about the problem and is intentionally not doing anything about it for all the reasons people mentioned (it costs money to manually determine what is allowed to be sold by paying workers to phase out slop etc.) BUT also for these two reasons:
* They don’t WANT you to look at the New Releases page. Many large companies pay tons of money to Nintendo with the promise of their games getting better/more exposure and purchases than the rest – and Nintendo wants top billing too. The only one of these pages that they cannot reasonably control (through advertising dollars guiding them) what games you see is the New Releases page. Even the Search function can be tweaked if desired, but New Releases logically has to just be a chronological list of all new games or genuine game devs would notice and complain they aren’t showing up. This is a tactic used by mobile app stores (imo) – make the home page look flashy where companies pay thousands to show up, and make it as awkward as possible to find just pure “new releases” in chronological order, so you can get make that promise of “At least 15k impressions per 20k dollars!” true. Allow the New Releases page to be full of junk and drive people to the games you want them to see.
* They want to have it both ways – be a premiere video game platform, and be a mobile slop platform, on purpose. Mobile gaming as a market is absolutely bigger than it has ever been, and major gaming companies have been trying to stop the bleed from major titles/draw in casual gamers with releasing their own apps of major titles (Mario, Sonic, etc.). But that’s not enough. There is a large market of, especially children, who won’t recognize low-effort mobile games, and are willing to spend time/money on them. Guess who a big target audience of Nintendo is that they’d like to also capture? YouTube has done this way more explicitly with the release of its “games” area filled with low-effort titles – why go back to your mobile phone when you can just play loe effort games HERE and not leave YouTube, seeing YT as a one-stop place? Same principle – they don’t mind more slop filling New Releases because it gets them more money from this demo than it hurts the brand, in their opinion.
It’s a problem on the eShop because it’s already slow and with so many slop games it’s hard to navigate.
Well, I never use the eShop to discover new games. It is so unpractical and some days I even doubt it was ever the intended purpose. I use other sources to get games recommendations and price tracking, and then I buy the game on the eShop (usually through the browser version on my computer, much easier). I never really notice the existence of shovelware this way.
Honestly if it’s not a well known title or at the very least touted in a direct I won’t even consider looking at it in the eShop. Idk who’s actually buying any of these games.
Allowing User Ratings in the Nintendo eShop *could* alleviate a lot of this garbage. They’d still be able to post their crappy game, but User Ratings would effectively call them out. Nintendo could even have a Sort filter that only shows games with a “4/5 or higher”.
It doesn’t completely KILL the problem. Obviously, the Coming Soon tab wouldn’t have any ratings. But it’s better than the current system of “find out the hard way”. By that point, the scammy developer already has your money. They don’t care if you hate it.
With Nintendo I maintain that its revenge on all the weird carts that appeared during the NES times.
“Oh, we *tried* to filter out as much outright garbage as possible, but the courts said ‘no’. You people want garbage? Have garbage! BWAHAHAHA!”
I imagine this gets posted every time there’s an eShop discussion, but it amazes me that anyone even uses it considering how good Deku Deals is. I understand there’s a casual audience that might not think to use a third party site, but for everyone else… Why do we care?
*runs to the Gaming Leaks and Rumors sub to post that Fart Fart Boobie Fart: The Game was just revealed in a new interview*
Man, you guys should see Steam—it’s an ocean of porn, hentai, and shovelware. But I can customize my store settings to filter all that junk out. Can you do the same on the Switch? I’ve only owned five physical games for my Switch and downloaded two specific games from the eShop.
And honestly, I’ve never browsed the eShop at all—I only used it when I bought those two specific games, as 99.9% of the games I buy are on my PC.
I’m willing to bet someone is going to create a eShop shovelware game with that title now that it’s been spoken into existence. lol
I’d play it.
When the Switch first released, I used to check the shop for new games every few days. Would genuinely at least scroll through every game released. That ended pretty quickly. It’s basically unusable now unless you know exactly what you want.
Anyone else remember a big focus of OUYA’s press conferences was about “getting indie games on the television,” and the the OUYA died because the store was filled with garbage?
It has become far too easy to publish a game on all major platforms.
Nintendo in the past was known for the opposite issue, being too bossy and strict with 3rd parties, but this is not good either. When good games get drowned in the sea of low-effort slop, Nintendo loses, the legitimate indies devs lose, and gamers lose.
We need the Nintendo Seal of Quality to mean something again. And the other platforms should follow.
I don’t get why Nintendo allows Ai slop games on the eShop. Nintendo has an approvals process…so someone is saying “yes” to allowing these games up. They don’t have to.
The worst part is that it would be hidden behind the constant rereleases of Knights with Guns, Urban Flow and Sniper Hunter Scope.
This is why I use Deku Deals and I check things like Metacritic scores, game length, and the publishers. Honestly, if you’re not using Deku Deals to track game deals, you’re wasting money. I have a big wishlist on that site and it lets me know if it’s an actually good discount or if it’s always discounted at that price.
It’s atari quality control all over again.
Would be nice if publishers could push Sony and Nintendo to do better. I used to enjoy browsing new releases, but I gave that up years ago because it’s so broken. As a result I often miss stuff I never would have before. Good quality releases just slip by with zero attention.
Do people really browse the eShop anymore anyway?
I only use it when I’m looking for specific games and if it’s not on sale I add to wish list and wait.
The experience on the eShop is utter dog which is probably why I don’t engage with it any other way.
It’s been the same with almost every digital storefront the past few years. I don’t bother opening the Apple App Store, the Google Play Store, the eShop, Steam Store – heck even Amazon. It’s unmoderated trash and you have to pick through hundreds of scams and borked apps to find a decent one.
Discovery is super dead, not just in storefronts but on the internet in general. I have to know what I am searching for to get real results now, instead of AI bullshit.
Nintendo must be missing out on so much revenue due their bad eshop. There have been many sales where I had to scroll past 100 shovelware/hentai/garbage games before it turned out there were even some 1st party games on sale, it’s ridiculous.
Nintendo switch eshop is straight up garbage. Its actually embarrassing.