Game development is one of the most time-consuming and toughest jobs. Gaming studios appoint more than two thousand developers on just one game to complete it faster. But this guy just made a series of games while just sitting in his room. Meet TJ Gardner the game developer who earned a six-figure money by making a game in half an hour.
Gardner, who has a toddler, learned coding by watching YouTube videos and online tutorials.
TJ Gardner is the creator of “Stroke” games. In which players just stroke Animals to collect trophies. The first few stroke games took seven or eight hours, but the most recent one “Stroke the Beaver ” only took 30 minutes. TJ Published ten stroke games on the PlayStation Store.
When users start the stroke games an Animal picture appears, the screen also shows the words “Strokes 0” indicating that you have to stroke the Animal and score. You press X to stroke, and the animal starts to flash. The number goes up to 2,000. If you stroke the animal 25 times the game will reward you with the Bronze trophy. Gardner sold these games on the PlayStation Store for $2,79.
This game simply sounds so bad, that you don’t even need to play the game to know how bad it is. In the tech world, these types of games are famously known as shovelware, they are completely trash. But why does someone pay $3 to play these games? Gardener’s stroke games reward players with trophies, which is more important to players than $3.
Shovelware game developers use Trophies as a bet to attract Trophy Hunters. PlayStation also knows about the situation and they are trying to remove them, they even threatened shovelware game creators.
In 2022 Gardner found out about Sony’s PlayStation Store rules and regulations, anyone can apply to sell a game on the PS Store by submitting a document outlining how the game would work. He then published his first Stroke game – Strok the Dog. Gardner didn’t face any issues and easily sold the game on the PS store.
Stroke the Hamster is his bestselling game with more than 11,000 downloads. Stroke the Cat is his second best-selling game whereas Tortoise is the third most-selling game. Only 10 users out of 11,105 asked for a refund after purchasing Stroke the Hamster.
Even Gardner knows his games suck, but he doesn’t try to hide it by giving false promises. He tells you what you are buying, you can’t expect to stroke pigeons after buying Stroke the Hamster. Gardner told the Guardian that he is trying to move away from shovelware games. Now he is focusing on doing something different.
Gardner said he doesn’t regret making those stroke games, he did it for the family.
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Source: The Guarandian
