For those of you who don’t want to watch the video, I’ll explain what’s going on. A player is exhibiting gameplay for Moon Gaze, an open world action RPG developed by Wang Yue.

A quick web search didn’t find much information about the developer, aside from that he was maybe a lone developer in China, though it’s conceivable that he has the assistance of a development team. If someone has more information, feel free to share in the comments, and hit me with a “nice research”.

When I say that the game is heavily derivative, I’m not kidding. It lifts gameplay elements from Genshin Impact, Grand Theft Auto, Tears of the Kingdom, and there’s a creature collection mechanic that’s perhaps reminiscent of Pokémon.

As derivative it is might be, I still wanted to play it. But seeing it got me to thinking: Is this the future of slop?

When you think of slop games, you probably think of low-effort licensed games that are pushed out to make a quick buck, or derivative me-too games that are purchased by parents who can’t tell Pokémon from Monster Rancher. They’re not always bad, but they usually are. And sometimes, we like them, even if it’s just because we’re forgiving of it because it has our favorite brand stickered on it.

But it looks like slop is changing, and that’s because the game development landscape is changing. For one thing, because AI is becoming a tool that can be used in game creation, and a person might not even need to be a seasoned game developer to use it effectively. A person would only need descriptive prompts. People might even be able to generate games at home, using prompts issued to personal AI agents.

If it got to that point, game development studios might end up becoming mostly superfluous. Which could mean the end of the game industry as we know it. Game devs would be quickly replaced with something different.

What’s more, game development has opened up in the Chinese market, where the legal structure is apparently different as compared to the United States and Japan. Recently, Nintendo has gone after PalWorld over how derivative the game is, perhaps to the point of using assets from Pokémon. Both studios are based in Japan. On the other hand, we’ve seen the release of Wuthering Waves, which is basically the same as Genshin Impact, but with a more technological theme, and seems a bit more edgy. Yet Mihoyo, the company behind Genshin Impact, doesn’t seem to have plans to legally confront Kuro Games, the maker of Wuthering Waves. One studio is based in China, the other, Hong Kong.

If some small game studio in China wants to make some Android game that takes heavy inspiration from a Nintendo game, Nintendo might have no choice but to groove with it, especially considering that there’s nothing stopping us from side-loading it onto our Android devices.

Thus, the landscape of slop is changing, from low-effort licensed drivel to high-quality derivative games, perhaps monetized by microtransactions. In a sense, this shifting landscape reminds me of the “video game crash” from the 80s. The game industry speaks of it as though it was a disaster, because for them, it was. But for consumers, it was great, because it meant that we could score piles of games for cheap.

So it is with the changing of the game landscape. Users and small studios are starting to make the games they want, and share them with the world, which has been going on for a while with freeware games, but is now expedited with advanced tools and apparent immunity to legal interference.

Considering this, one might ask: why buy Nintendo games, or games from other developers? The answer is obvious: it’s because people like their games, enough to justify purchasing them.

That might just be what keeps these game makers going in the near future.