Topic: Shovelware.

I don't think the term shovelware exists and is just an excuse for you to brand it to games that you think suck and don't appeal to your target audience. No developer ever goes in to making a game to create something bad, if he was doing that he might as well not make the game since he knows that's not going to make them any money.

@Kaiser - You'd be surprised. I'm pretty sure a lot of lesser known developers that wish they could get hired by a big(ger) name publisher like Activision or EA, but for now are stuck doing the corporate grind in hopes of realizing their dreams. Even WayForward makes a ton of meh-ish garbage so they can make a Shantae or something else they truly want to.

Cute, but wrong. There's PLENTY of developers who go into it just to make money. That's not necessarily a bad thing (gotta put food on the table, right? It's not like everyone out there is doing their job simply because they love it), but it does result in games being made on a tiny budget purely for maximum profit. And when the games industry is such an unknown swamp for almost all of the people buying them, all you've gotta do is put an attractive cover on the box and boom, instant sales.

They are making it on a tiny budget but they don't have intentions to make it the worst game they can. Maybe cheap, but not bad.

I used to be a developer for Greenhouse games.

Oh cool. This debate has headed into a pretty awesome direction.

BTW Harry Potter is the "shovelware" of literature
BTW Twilight is the "shovelware" of the film industry (and books too, actually).

If you're going to use artistic merit and developer/ publisher intention as an argument for what shovelware is in the games industry ("just to make money"), then I hope to hell you're one of those elitists that only reads fine literature, drinks $1000 bottles of wine, attends chamber orchestras over rock concerts and considers the lowest form of entertainment to be the ballet.

Because otherwise you're being quite hypocritical to condescend over games developers that build "throwaway" quality games. They have their own place in the industry, and yes, like Twilight, Harry Potter and a typical action movie, can be a lot of fun in their own right.