What's a Better eShop?
How do you make a "better" experience? What do you include, and what do you leave out?
(edit of the original logo, belongs to Nintendo Life)
Recently, the outlet Nintendo Life announced its initiative to make a Better eShop, a site looking to improve Nintendo's Switch offering. Although the site has been met with relative enthusiasm, a not-so-little minority has taken issue with certain inclusions in the "shovelware" filter.
"Shovelware" is commonly used as a term for low-effort content that's spammed into a storefront to occupy space and gain sales thanks to SEO optimization, low prices, and the sheer quantity of offers. It's generally regarded as a pejorative, and with the label comes the implication of little or no effort and being devoid of substance.
The shovelware tag was, at the moment of launch, the biggest tag in Better eShop. This means that a good majority of games were filtered out of regular searches (as long as you keep filtering shovelware, which most people would do, obviously).
I doubt many people would find shovelware on itself particularly problematic. It's a well-known problem that many digital storefronts are bursting with low-effort filler, a lot of them made using IA or recycling basic templates and assets.
The criteria used for shovelware at Better eShop, however, quickly became puzzling. There is a plethora of spammy games on the list, but there's also Milk outside a bag of milk outside a bag of milk, Subway Midnight, and regular visual novels that may or may not contain romantic elements.
There are also plenty of sexual or mature visual novels and games in there that might be considered low-brow by some people, but are still games sometimes from well-known studios. You might not like them, but with human talent and time put behind art, music, story, design, and everything, they are hardly shovelware.
It brings a sort of definition problem to the front that I find quite interesting. You could say that visual novels all follow a similar pattern, and with easy tools available for creators, a VN might be seen as a quick easy game to throw out and collect a few bucks with cute girls and low cost.
Anyone who has made a VN will be more than happy to tell you, however, that planning and writing a branching narrative is hard, and that art is expensive. Compound that with low sales (unless you blow up, which is by no means something certain), and you can hardly call it a quick cash grab like combining a Unity parkour controller with some random map asset and free models.
I decided to contact Nintendo Life before doing a write-up, and they answered my questions rather quickly, something I find commendable. Let's examine:
1. What are the criteria for the shovelware section?
The goal is to weed out the low-quality games that the Switch eShop is plagued with, so that it's easier for the user to find "real" games. We didn't want to launch with that category empty, therefore used all the data we had to automatically categorise some games. Whilst the feedback on the concept of the site has been positive, it's clear that the shovelware filter was way to liberal and miscategorised lots of games. We've been working through them and have already re-classified over 1,000 games.
To me, this reads like a sincere effort to make a more approachable store, and I appreciate knowing that they're in the process of re-classifying games and examining them on a case-by-case basis.
However, I'm really curious about that automatic process based on the data they had. About sexually explicit themes, here's their answer:
2. Are all sexually-themed games sent to that category?
No.
Well, that's a very simple answer. I can sympathize with the fact that making a clear distinction between what games are considered shovelware can be really difficult. After all, there is a large number of "hentai" games that use AI on the shovelware section, I doubt anyone would disagree with calling them shovelware.
The problem is, what process is followed when a game contains sexual material? How do you assess the effort taken on its making? How do you know if the publishers/developers are "serious"?
3. There are a lot of visual novels in the shovelware section. Among them are sexual games made with AI, but there are also games like "milk outside a bag of milk outside a bag of milk", which is a very well-liked psychological surreal experience, and "A Winter's Daydream"; a visual novel written by prolific and well-respected in the space author ebi-hime. What determines if a VN goes in the "shovelware" filter?
There is no link between visual novel and the initial shovelware batch.
That's also reasonably direct. Although it's difficult not to think there's a relation with the number of visual novels in the filter, we can't be certain without knowing the exact process. The implication made in response is that there's something else that flagged them as shovelware, but, what could it be?
4. It was surprising to see "Subway Midnight", an indie darling from a few years ago, in that space also. What was the reasoning for this?
I can see this has already been re-classified as we have been going through the lists.
It seems like Nintendo Life has been re-classifying games since launch, and I can personally attest that both Subway Midnight and Milk outside a bag of milk outside a bag of milk are not on the shovelware list anymore.
While this is progress, the situation serves as a reminder that moderation and curation can be really tricky as a topic. It may seem easy or obvious at first glance, but trying to set criteria in stone is sure to cause discord and debate among users.
Are visual novels low effort? You could certainly say that they don't require the same skill as an open-world MMORPG. But that's true of many different kinds of games, where's the line?
It may be tempting to say that the line should come from game quality, and that might be the most reasonable answer... ... until you remember that means the curator (or curators) need to play every single game to make a value judgment. What happens if a game isn't of a curator's liking? What happens if they don't get it?
Steam's Curator function is able to sidestep the problem by making it a subjective voice you can follow, instead of an authoritative part of the store interface. That's not to say that there aren't plenty of stupidly managed Steam Curators out there, as we probably all know.
At the end of the day, Better eShop is a reminder of that simple, irksome fact of like: classification is actually very difficult. It's more of an active, constant process, as you assimilate new information and less about checking a box on a game's profile.
A better experience might be measured in many different ways. Limiting visibility might seem like a logical step, but any process of obfuscation should have a clear rule set.
Or is hiding games even the best approach? It's hard to say, as user tags can also present their problems.
These rules and UX decisions mold the culture and usefulness of a store. What kind of environment will Better eShop foster? Will their filtering system be useful? Only time will tell.
thanks to Nintendo Life for answering my questions! I hope you enjoyed the write-up. If you do, you can buy me a coffee, or share it around. Have a nice day! :)