I don’t play AAA games (and haven’t played an ND game since Jak 3) so I don’t have a horse in the Naughty Dog race, but Druckmann’s take on “fun” was a valid one. A work of art can be engaging and emotionally impactful even if it isn’t “fun”, and sometimes evaluating a game based on whether testers are, in their own opinion, “having fun” is counterproductive. Is Papers, Please fun? Is Kentucky Route Zero? Is To The Moon? Hell, what would a tester say if you asked them if they were having fun after spending an hour with Disco Elysium?

Either way, you can hate the game and its plot, but to call TLOU2 shovelware is genuinely deranged. When’s the last time you played an actual shovelware release?

I’ve heard TLOU called many things, but shovelware is a new one.