Overall I agree the game modes front page is basically just "AI Slop" at this point. Using AI isn't inherently bad, but copy-pasting a prompt and calling it a game leads nowhere good. The problem is, even a game that offers nothing of value something like "click here to become awesome" can still pull a few bucks from Playfund. Just a couple dollars, sure, but nothing stops someone from pumping out 20 of these and collecting the money. And if it's not one person doing this but 10, 50? The front page gets buried even deeper, and actually good modes get lost in the noise.  

That said, I disagree that there are no good game modes on the platform they exist. Just not many, and they're hard to find. They're solid, but low player counts keep them stuck outside the top.

I'd really like to see a reworked recommendation system and some Playfund improvements. Facepunch has their vision and they're working toward it, I trust they'll get there. But there's still that lingering worry that something might go wrong on launch day and as part of this community, we should do everything we can to make sure new players actually have something worth playing when they arrive.

Estabilished orgs are either working on standalone games or have been demoralized because the games they spent months working on get no attention, we can expect that to change when the game releases.

The moment Facepunch decided to stop doing contests to give money to the community and instead implemented the playfund it all went sideways, it was introduced way too early.
90% of the money went to people that don't care about the platform and don't spread the wealth by hiring other developers. The only players came from Gmod youtubers and that's what they want to play.

I hope Faspunch understands that content needs to be filtered, freedom is freedom, but is this the level of platform that real developers, the Faspunches themselves, players, and aspiring developers want? Right now, these games are played by other developers, their friends, or the community they've somehow managed to build, but will these games be of interest to those who pay for the platform? What will they think of the platform upon release? And the release will be a big hit, no matter what.

I thought the idea was for developers to create unique projects and stand out from the crowd of Fortnite and Roblox, giving beginners a head start, testing their ideas, and learning before launching on Steam.

A developer should definitely maintain a blog and build an audience around their games, but will they follow them to a $20 platform with AI Slop on the front page, or will it be easier for them, with their existing audience, to release the game directly on Steam for $5?

You spelt Dark RP wrong

he said most entertaining

For some reason, it seems to me that all these gambling games are a fiction, played by bots so that their developers can get Play Found money.

It encourages games that take a take a long time... and really fast to make. (... most of the time using AI for the fast reason)
Why is that?

To build a game that is long yourself takes too much time investment that doesn't pay out for most people. + You will need to constantly update it. Even with a team it's really hard.
... and because of that if you create a game that people make there own "fun" and have no need to have that much developer input.

Or just endless upgrades ... (like clicker,afk type games that live on S&box quite well)

It's not that the platform is bad. The monetization system just encourages to make games specifically for this.

Multiplayer. (To be shown on the top of the server browser... that basically everyone opens immediately)
Long (To get as much play fund as possible.) - I don't think this is a problem.. but it leads to one when every games goal is this.
+ Easy to support (Make a easy game that doesn't have many breaking points.) 
(or easy to make with AI. -> AI slop games)

And with those 3 points you eliminate like 90% (alot)  of the games.
And you are left with clickers,simulators and Rp games.

Wait till you try out supra mayro kratt, you wont have to play any other game EVER again.

There is no way of getting around the fact that multiplayer games will always be the best choice for s&box. It's a social platform with a customizable character, people logging in are for sure looking for a multiplayer game to play.

If a game is successful in keeping a player logged in of course they should be rewarded. This is a net positive for Facepunch since it's another player logged in playing s&box increasing the total player count.

There's probably some argument to make that actively logged in players are more valuable than AFK players; the playfund should be setup to reflect that.

I think all we really need to do is just wait for s&box to mature, and you'll gradually see a decrease in these lower quality games.

I can already see the youtube tittles: GMOD SEQUEL IS AWFUL, GARRY'S MOD 2 IS A FLOP, WE GOT THIS INSTEAD OF RUST 2, THIS GAME IS WORSE THAN ROBLOX, RUST DEVELOPER SITUTATION IS INSASE...
 My biggest concern so far is that the editor is very unfinished in its current state, not to mention the complete absence of any documentation. Should we use Hammer, or its unfinished replacement, or maybe both? Is Hammer going to be removed in the future or left as a legacy tool, and what else is going to be derpecated?   I wish Garry had given us a roadmap, or at least bothered to explain the mess that’s piling up, because I DONT WANT THE GAME/PLATFORM TO BECOME ANOTHER TARKOV PAID BETATEST FOR ANOTHER 2-3 YEARS.

I guess that's why exporting games will be fundamental for single player/smaller experiences to profit. 

this gmod2 situation is sad

There's a difference between a good game and a game with broad target audience.

There's a lot of awesome games on Steam that don't get many players because they're in a niche category.
I feel guilty because how can I make a game and expect success when they have a far better and cooler product while barely scraping by with their sales?

On the other hand, games with universal target audience can do well even if they're not masterpieces, you just need to satisfy enough people to be a success, bonus points if it's an actually competently made game.

It makes no sense to categorize a game as "good" if it has players and "bad" if it doesn't in a platform like s&box with only 100 daily players.
Comparing a game with 2 active players on s&box to one with 30 is like saying DeadLock with 70k active players on Steam is shit compared to CS2 with 1.4M

I don't think S&Box is anywhere near ready, also I think it should be more like Garry's Mod, we need a lot more free assets and stuff to use, maybe the Sandbox game to work off as a base, right now it just like a poorly made Unity,


I don't want to have to make everything, Models, Sounds, Animations, and more, It be awesome if that's optional, and still be able to create gamemodes like you could for Garry's Mod, while using already existing assets and more.

Make it a Garry's Mod 2 not this, anything but this.

We have plenty of engines to make games in already.

Does a platform make a good one by having similar projects? I created my game a month ago, and since then, nine clickers have been released, all identical to each other. You can see how many clickers have been released over the years, but for clarity, we'll use a month.
Six of them have good playtimes. Do you think these are good games? Gamers criticize Ubisoft for the similarity of the Assassin's Creed series, but on a platform that could potentially cost players $20, such similar games are considered good. Are there any methods for detecting gamers who cheat? Meanwhile, two projects were released in the same month, both distinct from each other, but no one paid attention to them.
Or does the platform encourage cheating so that the "authors" can quickly make money and never return?
Back when there were game jams, such projects would never have made it, and the attention would have been focused on interested authors who put some effort into creating something that could be called a full-fledged game. Players really don't care how much you spent on coding, whether you used AI, or how long it took to create the graphics. What matters to them is a cohesive game with a clear gameplay loop. Even if it has only one system, it will deliver more than a brain-rotated game.
Yes, there's even more garbage on Steam, but no one pays attention to this garbage, and the creators still have to pay for it, while the platform itself gives away the money. Could it be that the trending games will be overrun with clickers, and the worthy creators who wanted to find their audience here will simply move on to another engine, and eventually the players will leave too, and that's the end of it?

I'll add something because I read Urbe's post about mass appeal and simply a good game. There are over 10 clickers on the platform, all of them look the same and offer nothing new. Whose games are these mass appeal? Bots, the creators' friends, or does the current target audience only crave this kind of content? RP has a mass audience, and it deservedly ranks at the top, and the game itself feels like a game, not a browser interface with a single button. Also, Dota, Counter-Strike, Vampire Survival, Balatro—these games are mass appeal, but for some reason, the creators of Brainroot content didn't want to make them, because LLM can't handle it. I think mass appeal games are simulators, farming games, co-op games, roguelikes, but no one makes them because they take a long time, and money needs to be made now.
For a platform to survive, it needs good games, otherwise real players who come here won't stay for long. And a good game can be mass appeal, which will attract an audience to the platform. I can't tell my bro, "Let's go play a clicker," because it's a massive hit on the platform. But I can invite my bro over to play Dark Descent, Ghoul Grounds, Micro Mayhem, and other projects that genuinely want to work for the platform's success.
Harry initially said he was sorry that Gmod creators were switching to other engines, which was detrimental to the community and the project itself. Therefore, the goal of creating a platform-engine mix for export is a cool and ambitious project that can succeed if developers make games and are rewarded for it, and then players will have something to play and find hidden gems.

"Wanting" and "liking" are two separate things.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5171207/

So, being driven to play a game for a long time does not imply that the time spent with the game was fun. Players may feel a drive to keep playing a game that offers no pleasure. Broadly speaking, humans do things for more reasons than simply to feel good. 

The current model incentivizes bilking suckers of their precious few hours on this blessed, gay Earth.