Inspired by the most recent episode of thumbs, I bought badjam.biz...

[jharp]

www.badjam.biz

 

Anyone hiring for experienced and professional web developers?

 

But seriously, if there's anything cool that can be done with this domain for the community, I'm all ears. Otherwise, I'll pay a small fee every year to keep this monstrosity alive.

[Stuart]

The return of Idle Thumbs reference internet domains has come! Would be cool if there suddenly is an actual Bad Game Jam. Not sure how that'll happen though.

[shammack]

I'd be willing to make a bad game.

[Badfinger]

I wonder how difficult it is to make a bad game. Does it have to be fully functional yet completely irredeemable? If it's bad but there are kernels of ideas nestled in there, is it disqualified?

[Gormongous]

I wonder how difficult it is to make a bad game. Does it have to be fully functional yet completely irredeemable? If it's bad but there are kernels of ideas nestled in there, is it disqualified?

 

Doesn't Japanese culture, with the whole kusoge movement, have a conception of this? As I understand it, kusoge are holistically bad games, but their badness is such and so much that there's some sort of charming or memorable experience to be had from playing them.

[Twig]

I Wanna Be the Guy is a fucking terrible game that everyone loves. Does that count?

[jharp]

Rest assured, readers. If there was a bad game jam, this could be its home page. I have just enough experience in Construct and Game Maker to put something together, but just enough not-talent for it to suck.

 

I Wanna Be the Guy is a fucking terrible game that everyone loves. Does that count?

I wish I could hate you to death.

[Twig]

If you could do that, I'd have already hated that garbage out of existence. C'est la vie!

[Justin Leego]

I Wanna Be The Guy is reference humor so it gets a free pass.

[Badfinger]

Doesn't Japanese culture, with the whole kusoge movement, have a conception of this? As I understand it, kusoge are holistically bad games, but their badness is such and so much that there's some sort of charming or memorable experience to be had from playing them.

 

That's not a strictly Japanese phenomenon. I love You Got Served. It's one of the worst movies I've ever seen.

 

The thing about a game being so terrible that you can't believe you played to the end means it's functional enough you could actually play to the end.

[Bjorn]

An interesting game jam might be one where you take bad ideas (think the Animaniacs old Good Idea/Bad Idea skit), and then try to build games around the bad ideas.  Kinda like Molyjam, but less surreal. 

[Reyturner]

Are you allowed to make a good game if you design it to be played exclusively with the Nintendo Power Glove?

[Ben X]

http://www.badjam.biz/wizard

 

404 Not found

 

[jharp]

I put that 404 page there on purpose, knowing you guys would check, and....

I'm a bad man, I apologize. 

[Patrick R]

That's not a strictly Japanese phenomenon. I love You Got Served. It's one of the worst movies I've ever seen.

 

The thing about a game being so terrible that you can't believe you played to the end means it's functional enough you could actually play to the end.

 

I am of the opinion that "so bad it's good" is a myth. Most of the worst movies ever made aren't at all compelling in any way. You go watch any number of Z-grade westerns or sci-fi movies from the 50's by Republic or some similar studio, the films are too tedious and dull to be funny. The "so good it's bad" phenomenon is actually way more of a specific thing. Video games are actually good examples of this. You think about the worst Gameboy color platformer you ever played, you probably weren't laughing and slapping your knee the whole time. It was probably just boring and frustrating and you turned it off.

 

If we all aimed for that, I imagine it'd be hard to maintain enthusiasm

 

So is the goal of this game jam more to do something like, say, Goat Simulator? Where it's buggy and weird but the bugs make it hilarious? 

 

Or is it a self-deprecating thing, where all the amateur programmers on the boards try their best with the understanding that their best is probably not that great at this point?

 

Or is it to make games that parody and satirize things we find bad about video games?

 

Or is "Bad" just the theme? Like "bad ideas", "bad guys", "bad date", "bad bad Leroy Brown"?

[ihavefivehat]

You could look at Glorious Trainwrecks for one example of a community with a highly developed bad games aesthetic.

[Merus]

I Wanna Be the Guy is a fucking terrible game that everyone loves. Does that count?

 

Kayin and I are internet friends, or at least acquaintances. He is a pretty cool guy. I don't know if it's fair to call it a bad game because it's an early hobby project, and it achieves its artistic goals, which is to make the player the butt of the joke. He is working on a real game that he intends people to play and enjoy.

[Twig]

You're right, knowing the person who made the game makes it difficult to hate the game.

 

I think it's a terrible game. You're free to disagree. It won't change my opinion. Also, my opinion has no bearing whatsoever on the person who made the game. I find it really odd that you'd bring that up.

[Ben X]

I am of the opinion that "so bad it's good" is a myth. Most of the worst movies ever made aren't at all compelling in any way. You go watch any number of Z-grade westerns or sci-fi movies from the 50's by Republic or some similar studio, the films are too tedious and dull to be funny. The "so good it's bad" phenomenon is actually way more of a specific thing. 

 

"So bad it's good" generally is used to mean "bad in such extreme ways it's amusing". Those tedious films don't count, something like Troll 2 does.

 

I'm interested in the "so good it's bad" phenomenon, do you have any examples?

[BobbyBesar]

If an annual event, bad jam could be all of these things!

 

I'd vote for games inspired by Michael Jackson's Bad, but I feel like that's a joke you have to use after a couple of iterations.

[Chris]

I wonder how difficult it is to make a bad game. Does it have to be fully functional yet completely irredeemable? If it's bad but there are kernels of ideas nestled in there, is it disqualified?

To clarify, we weren't saying the games would be bad. We were saying the games are themed around things associated with the concept of badness, like Michael Jackson's Bad, or the game Bad Cat, or the movie Bad Boys.

[Patrick R]

"So bad it's good" generally is used to mean "bad in such extreme ways it's amusing". Those tedious films don't count, something like Troll 2 does.

 

I'm interested in the "so good it's bad" phenomenon, do you have any examples?

 

Well, Troll 2 is a good one. The Room. For a while Plan 9 From Outer Space was the gold standard. I think what makes something "so bad it's good" is really that it's "so uniquely weird it's fascinating". A lot of Syfy channel original movies try to ape 50's monster movies as a way of selling pre-baked camp, but I think only truly fascinating films apply. You watch Troll 2 or the Room, you cannot help but try to get inside the heads of the people who made it. When you see Sharktopolis Vs. Steampunk Squid it's not really fascinating, because it's kind of obvious what the producers are trying to do. There's no mystery. It's not evocative, it's trite.

 

I think the sensation of "so bad it's good" really isn't far removed from seeing any work that you find compelling for it's oddness. Whether it's

or

 (the second link is possibly NSFW for a second or two). The only real difference is that stuff that people classify as "so bad it's good" is usually trying to emulate mainstream entertainment. It looks just enough like successful versions of the same entertainment that people decide it's merely an unsuccessful version, when it's actually a much weirder version. 

[Twig]

I enjoy watching many of the Syfy original movies. Not all of 'em, but a decent amount. Precisely because they're terrible.

[Patrick R]

Sure, that's why they exist. People like them. I'm just pointing out what I believe to be essential differences between them and something like Troll 2.

[Bjorn]

"So bad it's good" generally is used to mean "bad in such extreme ways it's amusing". Those tedious films don't count, something like Troll 2 does.

 

I'm interested in the "so good it's bad" phenomenon, do you have any examples?

 

On "So good it's bad", I'd say that the movie I point to is Eyes Wide Shut.  It's a movie that on paper sounds incredible.  The themes are engaging, the cinematography is great and the acting is good.  I enjoy the slow, methodical pacing of it.  And yet I find it to be a completely unbearable film.  I've rewatched it a few times (as it's the only Kubrick movie that strikes me this way), hoping that it gets better as I age and have a wider frame of reference for the material, and yet I think it is actually getting worse the more years that pass.