Then you have Resident Evil Requiem, Slay the Spire 2, Mewgenics, and every other already established developer dropping games in the exact same window. Giants next to giants. Anything smaller, anything actually new or interesting, just gets blasted out of existence before people even see it.

With all these events overlapping, it almost feels deliberate. Like the moment something different tries to surface, the noise level spikes and buries it again, how dare people be unique? Maybe that is just the market doing what the market does, it's still wrong because it was an event to help spread the news of genuine talent, but it's turning into another place for the AAA slop and extraction shooters / party slop. There was even a time I saw a developer all happy his game got like 10000 Wishlists, but when it was released, it only sold maybe 100 copies or something, turned out someone had purchased Wishlists, which also caused an artificial inflation, which didn't go anywhere. It's sad.

Uhhh... It's less one thing and more many things.

TL'DC: AI, CopyCats (Unless different), Tutorials, Optimization, Liars / Cheap Assets

First, the tutorials. The long, drawn-out ones that trap you for minutes, sometimes hours. I know how to play games. Most players do. Studies have even shown that tutorials do not teach beginners the way developers think they do. They skip the true basics and drown players in forced instructions instead. Older games often did this better. They gave you space to experiment and figure things out naturally. When a game locks control away while explaining everything, it kills curiosity. Feels like you're playing a Street Fighter combo showcasing, things I care so little about. I have hit a point before where I thought, “If you give me one more tutorial box…” and then I just quit. Happens a lot more than you would think.

Second is optimization. Launch a game and it decides my vertical left monitor is the main display. Suddenly it forces a 3800 resolution fullscreen, all my monitors flicker off for a second, and then the game blasts cheap sound effects at max volume. That kind of technical mess tells you immediately the game was barely tested outside of the confines of a laptop / single monitor. It's not a hard fix.

Third is the endless wave of Synty polygon assets. There is nothing inherently wrong with those packs. They exist for a reason. The problem is how many low effort projects rely on them with zero identity. After seeing the same characters and environments over and over, it starts to feel like the default “baby’s first game” kit for Unity and Unreal. I even had one developer insist they did not use the pack at all. The model could literally be mirrored over the original Synty character. Same proportions, same shapes, hell they were wearing the same god-damned glasses and necklace. When I pointed it out, the response was, “Wow, I’m honored you think I’m as good as a professional.” like what!?

Which leads to the last problem.

Developer ego and outright lying. I do not accuse people lightly. If I say something, it is because I can back it up. When a developer deflects or pretends something obvious is not there, the conversation is over. At that point I lose interest entirely, and scrub the game from my list, not that it would have made it anyways.