HappySqurriel said:
But both points are heavily connected ... Shovelware games are low budget games which tend to have low sales, low review scores, sell based on the ignorance of a segment of the gaming population, and flood the library of systems which sell (particularly) well. Your argument is that people will feel duped by buying one of these games because they are so awful which is (generally speaking) not true ... Games like Carnival Games, Boogie, Bomberman Land, and Bust-A-Move Bash! all fall into this category of "Crummy" games and could be considered shovelware but there is still a lot of enjoyment to be had in each of these games depending on what you're looking for. Certainly, there are lots of games that fall into this range of "quality" which are absolutely awful; and in my opinion these tend to be games that are trying to be a game where their budget will work against them. |
The reason I say not to confuse the two is that my definition of shovelware is different from the article's. If it's fun, it's not shovelware IMO irrespective of other factors. Fun is subjective however so you can't just point to a couple numbers and make a judgment call on it.
As for people feeling bad when they buy a bad game, it happens. Believe it. When I was younger, I got to pick out the 3rd game for my SNES at a store. I picked Rocketeer. I was crushed by how bad that game was especially coming from Super Mario World and Super Mario Kart. Luckily it was back during the time where you could return opened games and I exchanged it for Gradius III which I absolutely love. I didn't know what shovelware was back then, I had never read a game review in my life either, but I knew Rocketeer was a bad game that made me really sad.
Children are more forgiving about problems in some ways, but they aren't so dumb that they will think bad games are good.
