Game development is an expensive and time-consuming business. Right now, 2,000 people are working on the next instalment in Ubisoftâs blockbuster Assassinâs Creed series, across 18 studios around the globe, and itâs a project that will take 2 to 3 years. Imagine how any of those people might feel to learn that last year, a self-taught programmer racked up nearly £280,000 from a series of games he made while sitting in his pants on hot days in a two-bedroom flat in Harlesden. And that each one took him about 30 minutes.
âThe first one, Iâll be honest, probably took seven or eight hours,â says TJ Gardner. âBut the subsequent ones â Stroke the Beaver, for example â would have taken about half an hour.â
Gardner is the creator of the âStrokeâ video games, available to download from the PlayStation Store for £3.29 a pop. Each one features a different animal â cats, dogs and hamsters, along with less cuddly creatures such as snakes and fish â and they all follow the same blueprint.
When you start the game, an image of the animal appears against a plain blue background. In the top left-hand corner of the screen are the words âStrokes 0â. You press X to stroke the animal. The animal flashes briefly. The number in the corner goes up by 1. After 25 strokes, you are rewarded with a bronze trophy. Keep going until you hit 2,000 strokes, and you will receive a platinum award.
Thatâs it. There is no animation; there are no sound effects. Just a picture of an animal under a Creative Commons licence from Wikipedia, and some lo-fi acoustic beats looping endlessly in the background. No running, no jumping, no guns, no baddies, no special moves or power-ups or puzzles. Are the Stroke games even video games at all?
âIt depends how you define âgameâ,â says Gardner. âThere is interaction â granted, that interaction is very limited, but it is there, and there is a goal ⦠Iâll happily admit itâs not hard, itâs not complex, but it is still a video game.â
Looking at the figures provided by Gardner, perhaps it doesnât matter â at least to his bank manager. Since launching in September 2022, the Stroke games have been downloaded more than 120,000 times, amassing over £275,000 in sales. Sony takes a 30% cut for hosting the game in the PlayStation Store, leaving Gardner with a pre-tax profit of more than £190,000.
No one is buying these titles for the addictive gameplay, gripping storyline or whizzy visuals. So whatâs the attraction?
It all started in the mid-2000s, when console manufacturers began rewarding players with virtual accolades for completing extra objectives within games. These are called Achievements on Xbox, and Trophies on PlayStation. A new subculture emerged, established by a community of gamers who play for prizes rather than pleasure. They are known as trophy hunters. Some will go to any lengths in the pursuit of glory, perhaps even playing Hannah Montana: The Movie: The Game.
The PlayStation Store became populated with dozens of games aimed at these players: low cost, laughably simplistic titles, offering easy trophies in exchange for a few quid. Gardner, who had a partner and toddler to support, had recently taught himself to code (âmostly from YouTube videos and online tutorialsâ) and saw an opportunity.
âIt was a bit of a struggle, with a young family, going from paycheck to paycheck,â he says. At that time, says Gardner, anyone could apply to sell a game on the PlayStation Store, and submit a design document outlining how it would work. âI had a look through Sonyâs back end, and saw it was actually quite easy to get through their quality assurance,â he says. In 2022, his first game, Stroke the Dog, sailed into the Store without any issues. âSo then I tried a few more, obviously with slightly different animals.â
Stroke the Hamster is the bestseller, with more than 11,000 downloads. Cats are the second most popular animals for stroking, followed â perhaps surprisingly â by tortoises. But what was the inspiration behind Gardnerâs magnum opus, Stroke the Beaver?
âIâll be honest, at one point it sort of became a joke to me,â he says. âI thought, Iâll see how far I can push it.â Quite far, it seems. Gardner then released Stroke the Dik-Dik. âItâs an animal, yeah?â
Not everyone found the games funny. Internet forums are full of posts condemning trophy hunter titles, the people who make them, and Sony for allowing them into the PlayStation Store at all. Gardner has attempted to address the criticism, admitting the Stroke games are shovelware, and winning some defenders among the critics.
âHe found a niche and exploited it,â wrote forum user the1andonly654. âMore power to him ⦠Which company doesnât do that? All the Call of Duties, FIFAs and Assassinâs Creeds are not that much different, in essence.â
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Of course, thereâs a vast difference in terms of how much time, money and creative endeavour is invested in those games, and the richness of the experience they offer. But there are similarities in the business models: new instalments are churned out frequently, with a view to exploiting an existing market. There is an emphasis on reskinning the visuals, rather than developing new ideas.
Thereâs an argument that Gardnerâs Stroke games represent a more honest transaction than, say, loot boxes with randomised in-game rewards. At least when you buy a Stroke game, Gardner says, âyou know exactly what youâre buying. Thereâs nothing in there to take advantage of you ⦠Or to suggest you have to buy the other ones. If you donât want to buy it, you donât need to buy it.â He hasnât had many complaints â of the 11,105 people who have bought Stroke the Hamster, only 10 have asked for a refund.
But the critical voices remain, and it appears Sony is listening. In November 2022, the platform holder reportedly began a crackdown on shovelware, threatening in emails sent to developers to delist trophy hunter games and terminate their creatorsâ publisher accounts.
Itâs hard to see evidence of this policy in action on the PlayStation Store, though, which is still full of such titles. Sony didnât seem to mind when, last December, Gardner released Stroke the Animals â a bumper offering featuring 10 creatures. (âDo you,ike aminales?â [sic], reads the game info. âGreat! Well we have a load of them that you can stroke, so start stroking them.â) Perhaps itâs not such a mystery why Sony hasnât cracked down: thanks to that 30% cut, the company has made more than £80,000 from the Stroke games.
The first thing Gardner did with his share of the profits was to pay off his debts. Then he decided it was time to turn his attention away from shovelware: âI did get to the stage where I thought Iâd try something a bit different, because while itâs making money, itâs not the most rewarding, as you can probably imagine.â One of his new projects is a new website, gameachievements.net. Launching in a couple of months, it will allow players to track their in-game awards across multiple platforms.
So does Gardner have any regrets?
âIâll be honest â no,â he says. âI did it for my family, so Iâm never going to regret anything I do to help them.â