I'm sure other people will have interesting things to say about shovelware, but I think Chris is wrong when he slaps the label on The Bouncer. The Bouncer is a moderately flawed A-list title for Square. They threw a good development team at it, spent a big chunk of money, and are backing it heavily with advertisements. Shovelware, on the other hand, is Capcom putting out ports of Resident Evil 3 and Dino Crisis for Dreamcast. It's 3DO's Army Men series. It's Vatical Entertainment's entire product line. The difference between the two is something Chris said himself: "games that aren't great, but can help a system or a developer gain the market position to widely release other, better games." The Bouncer might not be great, but a better Square example of shovelware would actually be the stream of FF remakes, since they're cheaper to produce and likely to create more revenue for Square.

And speaking of those remakes: those projects, as well as Vatical Entertainment, serve to illustrate another point worth mentioning. Vatical's release of Bomberman Party Edition and Square's FF WSC remix are shovelware, but they're also quite fun. The Bouncer is wholeheartedly not shovelware, and many have complaints about it. So there's no direct link between a game's enjoyability and its "status," which should be self-evident, but I feel I should say it out loud anyway.

--Nich Maragos

Ah, how nice to see the GIA using the same proven money-making techniques used by bums and hobos for centuries. Whats next? Whoring out Larissa and Kelvin on street corners?

Sorry to say, but I gave you five bucks. You're not getting any more. Im sure that I'm not the only one who feels that this honor system thing should be a one-time donation. You want money? Start selling something. T-Shirts, mugs, mousepads, stickers, games, books, nude pictures of Andrea, action figures, anything.

Because $5 is $5 of my hard earned cash I can't use for something else, like food. When it ocmes down to it, am I going to a. eat lunch at work today or b. finance a gaming website. Its the lunch, no contest.

Another approach, if you don't feel comfortable selling stuff, would be to start posting some financial statements. Maybe its just me, but seeing "Uhm, we're broke" is less compelling than seeing some real numbers. (Our server bill was X dollars! We only got Y dollars from our income! We need money!)

If that doesnt work for you, why not a telethon? Id pay to see the GIA staffers humiliate themselves to keep the site online.

Oh well.

--Aaron, who thinks Andrea will probably kill him for that...

Ah, Shovelware.

While I don't like it, I realize it's necessary in many cases.

The American market is, I swear, driven by some ephemeral Top Ten list hidden away in a corner somewhere. 90% of all buyers only buy the big-name stuff they see on a store shelf. How does it get there? The companies get recognized, get big, get that "selling power" .... and shovelware's a legit (if not the best for a gamer) way to do it.

I mean, unless you're a big-name company with big-title games, chances are you aren't going to sell your 50,000 copies. So you try to get that big name.

But what about you, what are some games you think are serious shovelware? I can think of one, easily, just to get the ball rolling. Well, it's more of a family of titles. "ALL THESE STUPID HALF-LIFE ADDONS THEY KEEP SELLING" ..... Half-Life Counter-strike being my favorite example. Kids, Counter-Strike is avaliable as a free download, and an old, basic copy of Half-Life will cost you maybe $10 nowadays.

-Peter

Hey Drew, can you use your power and influence to get us Alan Milligan as the substitute letters guy?

-David

Let me just point out that Takeshi Kaneshiro isn't a voice actor, nor is he even Japanese. He's a half-Japanese film actor who hails from Hong Kong. He's a massive star in Asia - Western audiences might have seen him in Wong Kar-Wai's 'Chungking Express.'

Drew,

"Shovelware: Good or bad?" What a rockin' column this is going to be. Strap yourself in for some serious dissent, my friend, because the "shovelware" lovers are about to come out of the woodwork. I can hear them now: "Mediocrity is bliss!"

Since we can all agree that "shovelware" (come ON, it's got the name SHOVELWARE! Of COURSE it sucks!) makes babies cry, here's another thought about it: Shovelware exists to punish people who don't visit the GIA.

Seriously. If not the GIA, then at least gaming sites in general. Shovelware provides an incentive for consumer education. If you wander into Wal-Mart and buy the first thing you see and get burned, maybe, just maybe, you'll think to yourself: "Man, I wish there were some way to know what games were good without buying them first." Then, your little eye turns to the 1980's-era AMSTRAD sitting in the corner, and you realize: hey! The Internet! Game reviews and porn!

So, no bitching about how much shovelware sucks. The more of it exists, the more traffic comes to the GIA, the more people read this column, the better you feel when your letter gets printed, yada, yada, yada. Hooray for "shovelware."

-An Ian who is decidedly not Ian P.