Remember when people looked at the hot mess that Steam was turning into with a sad, wistful look like they were watching the elves leave Rivendell, and then they'd look over at the Google Play Store and say "Well, at least we don't live in THAT neighbourhood?" Seems a long way away now, doesn't it? Like when you watched The Truman Show and it looked like futuristic satire.
Well, it's finally happened. The day has come when all barriers have dissolved. Not only has Steam become the elephant's graveyard of quality control, and not only are dodgy mobile ports flooding the streets of the once picturesque berg like ragged refugees, but now the river is running in both ways. Today, if a shitty game can't get purchase (no pun intended) on Steam, it can hop right on over to Android and iOS.
The wall has been torn down. The border patrol has been disbanded. Checkpoint Charlie stands empty, and toothless Bulgarian hobos are gumming hot dogs on the street corners of Paris.
In case you hadn't guessed, I don't like Emily Wants To Play very much.
Emily Wants To Play is a bad first person horror game on Steam. In it, the player runs round a small map avoiding the attentions of three demon dolls, each of which have different failstate jumpscare conditions. The plot is hokey, the textures are ugly (especially for a ONE FREAKING GIGABYTE download!), the physics are broken, the monster designs are dull and the jumpscares are tired. The jump from mouseykeyboard to virtual twin sticks hasn't helped things much either.
It's not the fact that Emily is a bad game that's really gnawing my cocktip with a salty gob, though. It's not even the fact it's such a cynical and obvious attempt at making a YouTube bait game for Markiplier and Pewdiepie to squeal at. No, what's flicking my bellend with an elastic band about the situation is the dickhattery that behaviour like this represents.
I'll break this down into three simple requests for game developers.
1) STOP TRYING TO MAKE THE NEXT FIVE NIGHTS AT FREDDY'S. FNAF is done. It's SO done. It's outstayed its welcome, that's why Scott pulled the plug on it. The next Five Nights at Freddy's has already happened, and it was called Spooky's House of Jumpscares. You know why? Because Spooky's is NOTHING LIKE Freddy's. It's it's OWN GAME. STOP DUMPING YOUR MEDIOCRE GAMES ABOUT SCARY PUPPETS ON US. MAKE US A NEW GAME.
2) If you do squirt out a half-hearted attempt to jump on the FNAF bandwagon, DON'T PRICE IT LIKE FNAF. I'm not paying six bucks for Emily. I might pay one or two for it to help support the Dev in a "Hey, not a bad first attempt, here's some pocket money, let's see what you can do next" kind of way. And even if it was as good as FNAF I still wouldn't pay FNAF prices for it because as previously pointed out, FNAF IS DONE. MAKE SOMETHING OF YOUR OWN.
3) Assuming your dick is now out and everyone can see it flopping around in the breeze, and people are pointing at it in the Steam reviews and the mainstream media and the YouTube community and saying "Well, it's OK, we suppose, but it's not very long and he could have made more of an effort," you know what you should do? GO BACK AND MAKE SOME EFFORT. Remaster your cock. Pretty it up a bit. Give it a trim. Wash under the foreskin. Maybe start work on a completely different cock that'll be bigger and better. DO NOT GO AROUND FINDING MORE PEOPLE AND WAVE IT IN THEIR FACES TOO.
That's the tragedy here. Emily Wants To Play actually has promise. It's got a good idea, it's got potential. It's not a terrible asset flip like every other horror game on Steam and Android. The dev had an idea and he's followed it through to the end. Once he'd done that, though, he should have drawn a line under it and made something actually good. Built on his experiences. NOT punt it on iOS and Android, followed by XBone and PS4! YES, YOU HEARD RIGHT, THIS HAS ACTUALLY BEEN APPROVED FOR XBONE AND PS4!
That's what's REALLY tweaking my coxix about this whole situation. The GALL. The SHEER COCKGARGLING GALL of this individual who's got to wring EVERY LAST RED PENNY out of his frankly half baked game before he has even ONE SOLITARY MOMENT OF INTROSPECTION OR ARTISTIC INTEGRITY and tries to actually produce something WORTHY of this much reach.