Tendo City

1,234.

So, recently I checked the Switch eshop, as I do regularly.  And, as of a day or two ago, 1,234 games are on sale on the Switch.  The Switch has a truly insanely large library of digital software, so much that just about any past console's library looks tiny, but here is the question: are there too many games?   There certainly are too many games for any one person to play all of the interesting ones.  That did not used to be nearly as true as it is now; in the past there were fewer games, but games are easier to develop and easier to distribute than ever.  And clearly, enough of them sell well for people to keep flooding out indie games, particularly on Steam and the Switch.  The PS4 and Xbox don't have the same volume of indie software as Switch or PC.

That's all fine, really, it's just a bit overwhelming, you know?  I like trying to find the good games that are on the Switch, but it's a bit hard when you have a constant flood of new titles releasing, and over a thousand games on sale on a random non-holiday week.  I doubt that any one person actually can follow all of the good, or bad, releases.  The democratization of videogame releases is certainly an overall good thing but the cost is that a lot of games are simply going to be overlooked and forgotten, including some good ones.  Remember when IGN reviewed every Game Boy Color game, even the random licensed stuff?  No one source does that anymore for Switch game releases, there are too many.  And that's mostly good, I just liked having a better sense of what was actually releasing than we have now.

Of course, the decline of the videogame journalism business doesn't help here at all.  A lot of titles are only covered by random people on Youtube, not anything professional, but considering everything, from the decline in game journalism revenues to the growth in releases, I get it.  It's just kind of unfortunate... there are more games than ever now, but fewer reliable, trustworthy ways than ever to judge their quality.

Games journalism isn't exactly on a "decline", it only ever went to the top company's releases in the first place.  It was always bad in a lot of ways, at least in professional spheres.  If anything, it's better than it used to be in a lot of ways.  Opinions on games are a lot more informed than they used to be and don't consist of statements like "Too many notes".  Reviewers can, for the first time, actually put to voice in game design particulars WHY they thought this or that collectathon was "too much".  We have a far more vast vocabulary of terms that encompass a deeper understanding of games such as "emergent gameplay".

But yes, IGN is still utter trash.

More worrying when it comes to the Switch is the rise of shovelware and asset flips.  Nintendo opened the flood gates, and in came the trash.  There's just certain games that by all rights shouldn't exist and aren't worth preserving.

How are opinions on games "more informed than they used to be" when we have fewer professional journalists than ever and have to rely on Youtuber "influencers" and such, many of whom are being paid by the companies they are making videos about in a much more direct way than would happen in traditional journalism?  Journalism's had a steep decline in the last few decades, thanks to the internet, and game journalism is no exception.

Sure, it's nice that you can look up footage of just about any game ever on the internet, but if you want review coverage of those games that tries to objectively cover them... well, you'd better be looking for a major title because those are the only ones that get that.  As I pointed out an overwhelmingly huge number of games release all the time, but most are never noticed at all, there aren't anywhere remotely near enough legitimate game journalists to cover even a tiny fraction of the total.  So you instead need to rely on random people on the internet and hope they're legit, or just judge for yourself based on gameplay footage you find.

Quote: More worrying when it comes to the Switch is the rise of shovelware and asset flips.  Nintendo opened the flood gates, and in came the trash.  There's just certain games that by all rights shouldn't exist and aren't worth preserving.

Yeah, Nintendo has basically dropped almost all quality regulations when it comes to releasing on their platform, no question.  That's a major cause of why the Switch has such an insane number of games, it's dramatically easier to get on Switch than Xbox or Playstation.  Is this good or bad, well, it's kind of both; having an insane number of options is nice because there are always dozens of potentially interesting games to try that you've surely never heard of, but on the other hand, as you say, many are pretty bad and aren't worth buying.  And of course it's hard to tell which ones are good and which are bad without playing them.

Video game journalists are ALSO "random people on the internet", and their reliability is hardly vetted.  There's no "AP" of reviewers, of any stripe gaming or movies or otherwise.

There have NEVER been enough paid journalists to cover in depth every single video game on the market, and there never will be. Further, their output is going to vary.  I highly recommend finding a number of more insightful reviewers even if their tastes don't line up with your own.

Here's the thing though.  Who cares if they're part of an "official" game reviewing company and web site?  Find your reviewers wherever you can get them and use some good sense in figuring out if their analysis is worth your time reading it.  My critical point is now, in the current era of the internet, is the FIRST time I've ever been able to find game reviews online that enter the level of depth I'm actually looking for.

https://www.youtube.com/c/MarkBrownGMT
https://www.youtube.com/c/ManyATrueNerd
https://www.youtube.com/user/JimSterling

Here's just a handful of insightful reviewers.  They each focus on things web sites like IGN won't even bother mentioning, and they actually KNOW about proper game design and what a good story really is (here's a hint, themes are critical, plot is actually the least important).  Sterling tends to criticize the industry as a whole more often than not.