Allow me to explain:
Taking the “Crafting Survival” genre as a prime example, why do they all have the same feeling of being cheap, amateurish, and janky af? There is just this certain something about how every single one feels to play. The differences tends to be more in the grind, progression, and aesthetics while the game feel is exactly the same. The way your character moves, the way combat feels cheesy and unbound, the often minimalisticly artistic UI (like it’s just a 50% transparent box with text/icons on it), and almost always riddled with bugs.
Even the big budget ones made by giant, long-lived developers tend to feel exactly the same as the independently made-by-one-dude-in-a-garage games. They might have better visuals, but everything else feels cheap and just to the point of functionality.
The weirdest part of this, to me, is that Minecraft doesn’t feel like this and it is basically the grandfather of the genre. It’s just every other one built in Unity or Unreal that feels like a janky ARMA module made by someone who just learned how to code. With so many developers making so many games in this genre, you’d think at least one of them would make one that feels more “luxurious.” I lament not being able to put into words exactly what I mean; it’s really something that can only be described through comparison and experience. But I have to believe others who have played games like Rust, Ark, Valheim, etc know what I mean.
For me there are two different kinds of cheap: There’s no budget but creative use of tools cheap. I’ve seen some awesome results coming from this.
And then there’s “I wanted to publish fast and maximize profit” cheap. Never seen something good coming from this.
And also reusing stuff is totally fine, if it’s actually the right fit. Some titles still feel different to me. E.g. Don’t starve (together) wasn’t that early to the survival craft party and I also think it’s not a very outstanding title as in being innovative gameplay wise but I just love it.
It has a very specific charm and it just makes me feel like this game wasn’t created to earn as much money as possible but to make an idea come true.
Or when I think of the early Harvest Moon Games that look quite boring and repetitive compared to newer comparable titles. They still have some appeal to me. They feel authentic.
While the newer games feel more sloppish and generic like a joke that was told a thousand times already. They look even worse compared to titles like Stardew Valley that actually tried to develop the existing ideas of the genre slightly further instead of just regenerating them in different styles. While it still relys heavily on existing ideas and mechanics and extends them.
It kind of boils down to the question whether the developer / author / whoever ideated the whole thing had to add anything of their own at all or if it’s just a remix of existing things.
I mean, you can even sell the same game over and over by just changing the number on the title… looking at you fifa