Over 1,000 Developers Want To Bring Games To Switch Using GameMaker Studio 2 Engine

That's a lot of shovelware*.

Great! A flood of shovels

Great, now we will need to also skip over all the Home Brew games in the eShop To find that one actual AAA release.

We need separate tabs for all this incoming stuff

LOL Everyone thinks they can make an Undertale. All the wannabes should just play with Mario Maker.

Bring it. I have money to burn anyway.

How much it costs to get just the Switch Licence ?

If I remember good, the PS4 licence is 1500€ or something like that...

We go from just over a year ago that devs have less then like 5% games coming to the Switch to this ridiculous amount. I think they have learned it's an easy port and cost less to develop for then the other higher end consoles.

I for one just want to play a good to great game no matter how it looks. I haven't picked up Hollow Knight yet but I can tell I will love it. Give me that 10 times over and I'll be happy without any AAA games from 3rds.

More developers is always a good thing. You never know where the next hit will come from so I'll never complain about too many games being made for a console.

And as someone who wants to develop games, I know the only way to learn how to make good games is to make them, put them out, get feedback in the form of sales and player reviews, and improve as you go along.

As someone who play myself with these type of creation tools on a regular basis, it's cool that this opens the gate to smaller talented developpers, but like others mentionned before, this may mean a LOT of shovelware and other bad games done quickly by people who think they can create the new retro sensation or casual hit. Not everyone is able to create a Shovel Knight.

People who aren't able to critic themselves seriously (it's hard to be truly objective about your own work, it usually takes a lot of experience to be able to do so), should be cautious. You need the basic decency to know if your game is actually quality material, and if you're unable to do that, ask others before publishing, and require they be honest about it. No, your mother's or very good friend's opinion doesn't matter.

You know, there's a reason why I haven't published anything yet. lol!

I get a real Action 52 vibe from this article! “So! Many! Games!”

😐

I’ll convert my MARIO maker levels from 3ds and you’d have a deeper and better game than 990+ of them.

So much is gonna suck.

It’ll be like the android store.

Junk city.

This doesn't mean all 1000 developers will get their games on the eShop, just that there is a new development tool available that makes it easier for more people to attempt to develop games for the Switch. People need to chill out. It is bringing Hyper Light Drifter over, so it is worth it.

Will there be a cost? Curious because I’ll be going on a Media course which involves game development with Game Maker.

I do hope Nintendo puts some more effort into curation. We really do not want the Switch eshop becoming the next Steam, with hundreds, if not thousands of, at best, mediocre games.

I really hope that Nintendo is looking at greatly improving the e-shop to make it easier to find titles. Right now, unless you know EXACTLY what you like, it's rough to find similar titles.

Suggestions:
A list of games similar to titles you've already purchased.
A collaboration with MetaCritic to filter based on professional ratings.
The ability to block certain developers from appearing in your lists
A section curated by celebrity or pro gamers to surface " hidden gems"

Nintendo needs to work really hard to make this work or it'll be Steam all over again.

Quality over quantity is what i want i am sure shovelware will be the majority.

Oh waiter, might I get some quality with this quantity?

This is like how instagram makes the average rube think he's a photographer. There are only 3 2D games I personally find to not be complete rip-offs. Maybe even 2, since Axiom Verge might as well be Metroid: Side Story 05

edit: I really do love Axiom Verge, all the same

so about 900 of those devs produce shovelware?

thats a lot of crap

Yeah this sounds like alot of junk on the way for an already bloated Eshop, this will help nintendo with that trashy statement of wanting 20-30 indies per week lol

@Agramonte Agreed. The eShop was perfect at launch. A handful of AAA and indie games, curated a few a week to pick and present only a certain level of quality (Vroom notwithstanding.) I rarely visit the eShop, mostly just to download demos, and when I buy games I usully do it on the website by manually searching. I was looking for the Valkyria 4 demo. A pretty high profile AAA coming soon. And I had to sift through REAMS of garbage just to find it. It's useless.

I'm not understanding this internet obsession with indies and fly by night developers. Mobile loves that, but the whole point of Nintendo has always been that it's the opposite of that - Seal of Quality and all.

I've kind of set a new rule for myself when it comes to games: If it's not available in a retail box (somewhere in the world) I don't buy it. Even if I'm buying digitally, it's only a "real game" to me if it is physically available. Thus my current indie purchases/preorders are Steamworld Dig 2, Flipping Death, and Banner Saga. All real games by real studios, who managed to secure real releases. Not fly by night garage projects. Indie covers everything from one dude in a garage to Playtonic. The word is kind of meaningless now.

@NEStalgia if you look, Nintendo changed the "Seal of Quality" to "Official Nintendo Seal". I don't know when this changed as I skipped Wii and Wii U.

I definitely understand everyone’s negative reaction to the avalanche of shovelware possibly tumbling towards the eShop. I also agree that Nintendo should enforce that mythical “Seal of Quality” a little more proactively, but it’s not happening, at least for now.

If GameMaker Studio will allow games like Minit, Undertale, and Hyper Light Drifter to come to the Switch, then I’ll stomach the hundreds of other awful games. You can say it ruins the eShop, but the eShop was never in good shape to begin with. It just used to have fewer games to clog up the menus.

Until the eShop get a major update, I believe it is the last place to browse for games. I enjoy sifting through it, myself, but if I know I want a specific game, I use the Search function. Otherwise, it’s much easier to use this site or Metacritic to find what interests me before chaos and slowdown of the eShop menus.

More shovelware on top of an already shovelware heavy switch eshop

@NEStalgia exactly. It is like opening HBO NOW and having to go skip 20 "my pet cat" YouTube videos to get to the one movie worth watching. When you open the eShop it is just rolls of garbage.

You couldn't find the Dragon Ball Fighter Z beta demo... And iif you search DragonBall it did not pop up... It had to have a space. If all this stuff is flooding the eshop at least make a good search engine.

I do not care if people want to play some random stick figure game made in a basement. But organise the eshop so that they all not dumped in one place. Help the publishers that spending millions of dollars bringing real big games to Switch stand out!... Not the last random mobile endless runners!

@NEStalgia So games from studios without the resources to take on the risks of a physical print run are automatically fake? How utterly insulting.

More retro inspired metroidvania games please. We don't have enough. 16 - 8bit graphics too. 👍

@EasyDaRon First-try garage projects? Like Hollow Knight? Dust: An Elysian Tale? Golf Story? Lack of pedigree doesn't necessarily mean lack of quality. I'm happy for anyone to get a shot - but at the same time I won't buy anything from unless it's reviewed well or has great word of mouth.

@Wanjia So... if I’m understanding you correctly, it’s $250 or so for each platform?
I wonder what that is in £. :/

@Stocksy google play store, eat your heart out.

Can Risk of Rain be one of them... please

@Peace-Boy @Cobalt $799 a year per console, or $1500 a year for all supported consoles.

@thedicemaster

Thanx dude !

The Switch eShop is going to start looking like Apple's app store. They had better get a handle on how they plan to curate this thing, or they will have some real issues. Of course, Nintendo doesn't help when they say they would like 20-30 games releasing for the Switch every week.

@Trajan Yeah, the Seal of Quality is no more since the Wii era. And it shows

But this...this is kind of like a handheld 2600 all over again

@Yorumi Yeah, I honestly don't know what game development looks like in the "boxed engine" world. Last I delved into it you still had to handle the engine yourself, and "game" was inseparable from "engine" (well Quake existed but you still had to mess with the Quake engine at a source integration level.) Some of these games seem like you can just drag and drop games together these days.

Nintendo used to require at minimum a physical office for licensing. Not so much today....

And you thought the eshop was bad now, kids? ya'll haven't seen anything yet.

Nintendo has gradually shifted from quality to quantity when it comes to indies. Just watch as all of them get accepted without hiccups.

@PanurgeJr It's not the ideal but it's at least a usable gauge. The problem is, if there's a dozen games a month, you can filter through them and make decisions based on what you might like. if you look at the eShop today, or in a few years after this, well there's no way you're going to play all 5000+ games available. And you know a huge repository of that will be shovelware that you would have have bought hardware to play. So you have to filter them somehow. Filtering by studios that at least have the resources/confidence to publish physically is as good a starting point as any to at least subsample a group of a certain bar of quality. Maybe a few gems will be missed, but really how many of the unpublished group will end up being games for which time would have been better spent compared to playing the ones in the published group. Publishing in a box is a commitment that a company feels the risk is justified based on the quality and desirability of their product. Not publishing in a box doesn't guarantee the same confidence isn't there, but it so gives no indication that it is or isn't.

Ultimately, indies in a box: Shantae, Steamworld Dig 2, Banner Saga, Axiom Verge, Wonder Boy, Battle Chasers, Flipping Death, etc (plenty more, I'm just going off the top of my head.) How many unboxed games are going to be more worthwhile of time than that already large list? Some will I'm sure. But again you have too use something as a filter.

If only Nintendo were to curate and filter such things as they once did. Alas.

@Hikingguy Some people really love their homebrew style garage games. No idea why, but they do. I thought the whole point of a console was to filter things. I always assumed that was backlash for WiiU's thin library more than actual demand

@Agramonte It's worse than 20 "my pet cat" videos. It's 20 videos of someone's pet cat with great thumbnail artwork and titles that sound like trailers for Cannes films so you have to go into it to determine if it's really Gone with the Wind: Reborn of if it's just pictures of Mr. Whiskers...

@Wanjia Ouch, looks like I’ll be waiting a long time. Thanks for the info.

@Hikingguy Well, obviously somebody is buying the shovelware. on Switch, on iOS, on Steam....who loads Steam to play Shovelware? But someone apparently does....so I guess people really do like it?

It just reminds me that I simply don't understand the modern world

@Yorumi Not much indie is 3D (Unity has a fair amount of indies I guess, but they tend to be the boxed-type indies anyway.) So then we get back to these shovelware engines that I swear must be drag & drop game design. (Why not just sell games from RPG Maker? )

You know, for all the complaints about quality vs quantity with regards to the Switch eShop, I have yet to hear about indie developers who have made quality Switch games that have been disappointed with their sales on the Switch.

If the sheer amount of eShop content was an issue, then high-quality indie games wouldn't be selling like crazy on the Switch.

@Yorumi Don't worry, that sound is just me sobbing.

The license costs $800 per year and that's not counting the Switch dev kit you have to buy. Unity gives you exports for all platforms (mobile included) and costs half the price per year.

Personally i don't think it'll be much of an issue or worse than what already is with Unity. Most shovelwares on mobile and Steam uses Unity anyway.

@Varkster Exactly my thoughts. Sorry. Don't have more time, need to develop a Swith Game right now! LOL

1000+ developers have registered interest.
That doesn't mean 1000+ shovelware titles will suddenly appear on Switch.

Anyway, there are a lot of credible indie games made using GM2.
Examples already on/coming to the eShop, or generally well received are:
Undertale, Minit, Hyper Light Drifter, Hotline Miami, Gunpoint, Risk Of Rain, Uncanny Valley, Home, Nidhogg, Rivals Of Aether, Downwell etc.

@gordjscott
Yep.

The presumption that "a lot of interest from indies => a lot of shovelware" sounds more like concern trolling than actual concern.

I never understand the disdain towards devs excited to bring games to a console. Being backed by a company or being a large studio does not equate to amazing games any more than a small studio equates to bad games. Use your judgment (if all else fails use somebody else’s) buy what you want leave what you don’t.

I totally love AND hate it......

I have always been a huge supporter of Indie games, even back in the late 80's when there were floods of unlicensed "Intendo" game carts coming from China, Nintendo allowing and actually encouraging Indie programmers to make and publish games so much easier now is fantastic, but....

one biggie I have had a problem with is that it seems NO ONE is interested in trying to make quality games, sure there are some cool Indie/Nindie games, but 95% of the other available games are just cookie-cutter, thrown together cheaply with crap Atari-esque and NES-esque (the earlier titles) graphics and crappy gameplay and controls

well, with this software coming out, the flood of the crap games already on the eshop will multiply 10x+

I would like to get it myself, but if I do, i can guarantee I will not be making some P.o.S. game in a couple weeks, I'm going to be spending some major energy to put out a game I would love to play, not something that looks and plays like my 10 year old made