the sexualized

The oldest MyAnimeList top anime list that was registered (november 2006)

The indie game scene should have been the pinnacle of artistic experimentation with video games-as-a-medium. Instead, we’ve mostly got a plethora of co-op slop, boomer-shooter slop, roguelike slop, and horror/low-poly PS1-style slop.

Why "The TikTok For Games" concept is doomed It's been about a year since vibe coding gametech emerged and while it is still in its infancy, it is also a glimpse into the future of symbiotic co-creation with AI in games First, it attracted indie hackers racing for $10k by Pieter Levels vibejam contest. Many early founders have seen an emerging market of creators and tried to somehow mold this into a product. Now pioneering professionals have entered the game. I get it, from a technical POV one can conclude that everytime the tools to create content in a specific medium (and broader internet access/bandwidth) brought us another format of social media. However, it wasn't purely technical, it was also about matching the (mass) desire to connect in specific ways: At first, nobody was online, so forums and chatrooms emerged. 
Then people wanted identity and permanence, so profiles and social graphs emerged. 
Then we wanted frictionless self expression, so photos and short videos emerged. The "TikTok for games" existed for a loong time! Newgrounds had it, it was novel and the barrier to create games was already very low with the flash technology. What desire is this format supposed to fill? The infinitely complex roblox engine editor shows that you can add an endless amount of friction to the UX, and still have 14 year olds figure it out in no time. 
Games require investment, interaction, attention, learning, progression and emotional attachment. Successful gametech UGC platforms do this by deliberately constraining the developers in many ways instead of building an infinite canvas and general purpose engines. Fortnite educated the playerbase for years about character capabilities, world features and creating a wide variety of games is VERY easy, no AI needed. For complex sophisticated games, there's UEFN. Same for roblox, GTA online. What we can learn from this is that filling a meta-engine with technologies or simply lowering the barrier for creation with AI will likely not lead to great games, even less pull players to the platform. People don't open a game hoping to instantly swipe through hundreds of unfinished prototypes.
Most players are looking for something they can understand, return to and spend time with.
They want some sense of continuity, progression or social connection. A good platform needs to solve an incredibly difficult coordination problem: aligned creators, players, identity, distribution and incentives inside one persistent ecosystem. So far, without a single exception, all web AI gametech platforms barely got the creator side working. They assume games behave like videos: lower creation friction -> more content -> algorithmic feed -> engagement Infinite scrolling for videos, images and text works because consumption is frictionless and passive. Playing games is not, unless you are an industry planted indie studio labeling a movie as a game. So, what works then? The future of high-value production of games is focused on the creator, less on the infinite amount of games. Steam marketplace is a great glimpse into the future, as well as game developers building a following for years before launching a game. The underlying technology doesn't matter, unless it's part of your marketing strategy and requires you to build a whole ass programming language called Jai to make people excited to play your sokoban remake. Build games! I don't like the common meme that "someone needs to solve distribution for games". No, no one can and nobody should solve it. That IS the game for devs/studios. Building is becoming easier, cheaper, faster - for everyone. Stop building the next platform, (try to) build great games instead. And all the new platforms emerging hopping on the train now in 2026, with teams clearly in it to make money instead of games: You will fail

I try to resist the knee-jerk response to call the games themselves creatively bankrupt, as merely marketing this way doesn't necessarily mean that the games were modeled after their inspirations in development. Though sometimes it does get to a certain point...

Forza Horizon 6 vs. Forza Horizon 1 intro cutscene Yes, you see that right. A 14 year old game's cutscene looks ten times better than the latest release. We went from the level of Rockstar to Ubisoft. Cutscenes evolved, but backwards.

The video game industry has had the same rise and fall as the cereal industry but you all aren't ready for that discussion.

Trailer for 'Baaad Trip', a 4 player co-op game all about herding a flock of sheep home safely