elmuerte Posted April 11, 2014 Plan 9 was NOT amusing, it was horrible. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Badfinger Posted April 11, 2014 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. Oh! I understood the conversation you guys were having. I just momentarily hijacked the thread to do my own musing on specifically attempting to make (and complete) a bad game. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Ucantalas Posted April 12, 2014 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? I worked on a bad game once! It's easy to make a bad game in the right circumstances. IE, one developer straight out of school working in a language he's never used, to make a game on a platform he's never worked on before, taking orders from a group of people who can't agree on anything and are changing everything daily. I feel awful about it, because there was a good game buried somewhere in there, but I just couldn't do it justice... Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Noyb Posted April 12, 2014 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. Definitely check out the Ahoge jam sometime. (Previous entries are in the blue box to the left.) Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Problem Machine Posted April 12, 2014 I Wanna Be the Guy is a fucking terrible game that everyone loves. Does that count? I respect any game that knowingly and willfully disregards the commonly accepted tenets of 'good game design' to achieve a specific artistic intent. Doesn't necessarily mean I want to play it, but I wouldn't feel comfortable calling any game with that level of self-aware player abuse bad just because I didn't find it fun. Treads a little bit too close to the territory of people calling Gone Home and the like bad because it doesn't scratch the particular itch they want from their video games. More directly on topic, the 'bad' theme actually seems like a really solid basis for a jam to me: Specific enough to inspire creativity, but broad enough to be open to interpretation. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
clyde Posted April 12, 2014 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. If you are interested in providing a portal(? I am not really familiar with web-hosting but I get the picture that hosting data centrally is expensive while just collecting links is labor-intensive) for bad games, then I would be interested in submitting mine. It's really difficult for me to commit entire 48 hour periods to making a bad game, but I do intend to extrude bad games slowly, over a lengthy period of time. I don't know what you are offering, but if you want bad or broken games I'm down with providing some. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
prettyunsmart Posted April 12, 2014 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. Your post implies this, but I think one of the key parts of a work that is "so bad it's good"is earnestness, or at least the appearance of it. The Room or Troll 2 are more interesting than the Mega Shark movies because they seem naïvely incompetent rather than cynically constructed to provoke a reaction. I was interested in your comment that "so bad it's good" doesn't really exist. I get that the movies or games that are really the worst just end up being dull, but are you saying that we should think of these things as accidentally kind of good, our more like so bad that they are mildly interesting? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Patrick R Posted April 12, 2014 I was interested in your comment that "so bad it's good" doesn't really exist. I get that the movies or games that are really the worst just end up being dull, but are you saying that we should think of these things as accidentally kind of good, our more like so bad that they are mildly interesting? Pretty much. I think "so bad it's good" is a brush people use to paint a really broad range of things, and often fails to recognize camp. Something like Killer Klowns From Outer Space isn't "so bad it's good", it's a comedy. A lot of ridiculous over-the-top action movies from the 80's were purposefully that, and calling something "so bad it's good" often feels like people trying to take that achievement away from the artists. Meanwhile, stuff like The Room and Troll 2 have the fascination of something like outsider art, where a lack of technical skill ends up revealing more about the artist than anything. On another note, I was listening to a lot of Michael Jackson this morning, and a game jam based on Bad would be delightful. Or Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
namman siggins Posted April 12, 2014 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. Huh, never thought I'd see someone drop Jandek.Saw him live in Columbus, OH while back ago; interesting show. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Reyturner Posted April 12, 2014 "So bad it's good" can't happen on purpose. It is an alchemical mixture one can only achieve through the combination of pure sincerity and incompetence. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Problem Machine Posted April 12, 2014 Perhaps, but attempts to ape that aesthetic can have their own appeal Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Twig Posted April 12, 2014 Related, but different, there is a game called Bad Rats that is completely terrible that I got as part of a bundle of video games on Steam many years ago, and it has since become a sort of joke game. Oh, Bad rats is on sale for a dollar again? Time to gift it to all my friends! Or something like that. Anyway it's completely terrible. And I hated it. But I refused to let it beat me. And so I beat it. I demolished it. The game is no more. Bad Rats is a Rube-Goldberg Machine Simulator featuring rats murdering cats over and over in bloody fashion. It is a physics-based game with nondeterministic physics. As in, if you hit play and watch the machine play out and hit stop and hit play again, it could play out significantly differently, such that it goes from couldn't-be-further-from-success to success. And sometimes the ball would roll right into the screen on the z-axis, despite the physics being "locked" to the x-y plane. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Problem Machine Posted April 13, 2014 You are a bad enough rat to save the president. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
chummer Posted April 13, 2014 I put that 404 page there on purpose, knowing you guys would check, and.... I'm a bad man, I apologize. Bad Man's badjam.biz Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
