I knew before I opened the article that this was going to be about or at least include the Jumping <Food> entries. Happy to be right, and for them to be gone.
It's much older than that. We'd call low-effort licensed games from no-name companies that were primarily designed to trick Grandma at Christmas "shovelware" as far back as the GC/PS2/XBX era, and that's just as far as I can remember seeing it in print.
Even older than that, they are the root cause of 1983 games crash on the US market, and why Nintendo's approach to a walled garden was welcomed with open arms.
I knew before I opened the article that this was going to be about or at least include the Jumping <Food> entries. Happy to be right, and for them to be gone.
Watching the embedded "gameplay" video, I can see why. It's a pretty obvious "pay us a couple dollars and we'll inflate your trophies".
I haven't heard the term "shovelware" before though.
It's an old term from the 90s for a high volume of low effort, low quality software. Unsurprisingly, the LLM era has resurrected the term.
I've been hearing the term since Unity made easy (easier?) to create low effort assets flips.
It's much older than that. We'd call low-effort licensed games from no-name companies that were primarily designed to trick Grandma at Christmas "shovelware" as far back as the GC/PS2/XBX era, and that's just as far as I can remember seeing it in print.
Even older than that, they are the root cause of 1983 games crash on the US market, and why Nintendo's approach to a walled garden was welcomed with open arms.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_crash_of_1983