Yes, you should play bad games

For a number of years while I was at Destructoid, I did a weekly column that was sort of unofficially titled “Weeky Kusoge.” That was before I realized Hardcore Gaming 101 did a series under a similar title, but anyway, not important. What’s important is that I deliberately played bad games every week, with “kusoge” being a Japanese portmanteau of “kuso” meaning “crap” and “geemu” (pronounced more like gaaaay-moo) meaning game.

And I enjoyed it. The only reason I ended the column is because I was told I needed to focus on traffic, ie. endless shitty guides. Even then, I could have probably kept doing it, but it was obvious that my employer didn’t appreciate me or my writing, and I didn’t want to keep giving quality writing to someone who treated me like that.

The reason I enjoyed it is a nuanced topic, and while I’ll try to touch on every facet of it here, I probably won’t be able to cover it all. However, the point of this whole thing is that you, as someone who, I assume, loves video games, should play bad games. “Bad” should probably be in quotation marks because, like the reasons for playing them, there’s a lot of nuance in what makes a game “bad.” A lot of “bad” games aren’t bad, they’re just deficient in some way or another, or just misunderstood by mainstream audiences. Also, at some point, an English teacher probably told you to avoid simply using generic terms like “bad” and “good,” and they were right.

Whatever; let’s talk about why you should play bad games.

ANYTHING BUT ASSASSIN’S CREED

“There isn’t enough time in the day.” I’ve heard that one a bajillion times. I don’t know what the situation is like for folks who say that sort of thing. Maybe they have a 60-hour workweek and then go home to cultivate their brood. Sometimes, the way the dice land doesn’t result in abundant free time.

However, I still think playing critically well-received games every spare minute of the day is boring. The last Assassin’s Creed got, what, 81 on Opencritic? I’d rather play The Flintstones: Bedrock Bowling, and I’m not exaggerating. It maybe takes 20 minutes to see everything in that terrible, dubiously bowling-related title, so you can probably fit it in between helping your spawn shed and consume its skin or whatever parenting involves more easily than an Ubi-box.

I would usually play one of these games to completion each week for my column, and here’s a secret: I didn’t get time to play games during my job. My employer required five articles a day for most of my time there, and writing that much didn’t leave any time to actually play the games. Every review you saw from me on Destructoid; I played that game in my own time. A 40 hour workweek, plus the time it took me to play through a game, and then sometimes I’d get additional writing done in the evenings so that future Zoey wouldn’t have to bust her ass so hard the next day. That’s what my work life was like, and I still intentionally played shit.

But again, I sincerely can’t imagine how hard it is to fit games around parenting and full-time employment. Sounds like hell, so thanks for taking some of the time you have to yourself to read my articles.

IF IT TAKES SHIT TO MAKE BLISS

I strongly believe that our perspectives are shaped by the extremes. You need to to experience the bad in life to recognize the good. If you don’t, you’ll take good things for granted and won’t appreciate them. If you’re surrounded by kind people at all times, you won’t understand the true value of a kind act. Thankfully, there are a lot of jerks in the world.

The same is true for games. If you don’t play a game that is truly terrible, then you’re going to start applying “worst game ever” to games like Doom Eternal or something, simply because it was maybe disappointing. Minor problems in a polished game get compared to minor successes in another, and blemishes begin to look like cancer.

You might think that classic beat-’em-ups are formulaic and repetitive. Terrible failures like The Tick will bring out that nuance and help you appreciate classics like Final Fight a lot more. Primal Rage may seem like an awful fighting game if you’ve only played Street Fighter Alpha 3, but Dino Rex will help you realize the true depths of that septic tank.

I just don’t really like hyperbole. Not in the age of social media and SEO, anyway. “Worst game” or “best game.” Have some nuance in your perspective. Once upon a time, I thought Beast Wars: Transmetals was the worst game possible, but now I know that “worst game” is not even a title that can belong to a single game. Beast Wars: Transmetals is bad. William Shatner’s Tek War is bad. They’re both really unpleasant to play, but in different ways.

And in that line of thought, some games are bad in ways that are extremely entertaining. Jurassic Park Trespasser? Horrible game. Absolutely hilarious. Well worth tranquilizing your children for a moment to play.

BEYOND THE STENCH

For that matter, some games that aren’t well-received can be really good. On MobyGames, Chulip has a critic score of 58%. That’s one of my favourite games of all time. I don’t keep any kind of list of my favourite games, but if I did, it would probably land in the top 10.

Is it good? It can be painful to play. Anyone who tries it and bounces off; I get it. I don’t even care if you try it. It hates the player. It cares little about your time. However, the uncomfortable moments where you have to wait for several minutes for the train to show up? It adds to the experience in a weird way. I never would have found it if I didn’t learn of it years ago from former Destructoider, current Maximum Utmoster, Jonathan “Forklift” Holmes.

And, really, without deliberately seeking out kusoge, I would never have found Cool Riders (technically bakage) and Smashing Drive. A bleak existence, indeed.

In fact, circling back to Assassin’s Creed, I dunk on it so hard because they’re bland games, and I’d rather play a bad game than a drab game. Frankly, I’d rather play Super 3-D Noah’s Ark than – with all due respect – Wolfenstein 3D. Talented people? Yeah, whatever. They’re cool. But where do misguided people get the gumption? What vision led to animals spitting on a religious figure?

Those sorts of questions lend better to analysis. They’re more fun to think about. Especially nowadays. Mr. Pibb: The 3D Interactive Game was 13 people, including production. Imagining that group stuck in a small office, fighting with an unwieldy game engine is tantalizing. Wondering about how 500 contractors from all over the world put together an interestingly cluttered environment in a modern game is just vapid regardless of the quality in the end result.

THE HUMAN FACTOR

My favourite analytical question is, “How the fuck did this even happen?” It’s great when you know what goes into a video game. Someone had to pitch Chulip in a way that would make a publisher think, “Yes, this will make us money.” Someone had to convince Acclaim that they had a good idea for a Mary-Kate & Ashley title. Did you know there isn’t just one game based on the 1960’s Supermarionation TV show, Thunderbirds, there’s a multitude of them? How? Why?

It takes a lot of effort to make a game, which is something that some folks who play video games all the time don’t fully understand. Every interaction that you can perform has hours of work behind it. Planning, animation, bug testing, re-planning because the first vision for it didn’t work out quite right. So, you look at something seemingly insignificant, like the fact that you can shave in Deadly Premonition; somebody worked for a long time to get that feature into a game. It likely didn’t happen spontaneously, but it’s possible it wasn’t in the design document, either.

Developers may cut corners where they can, but a lot of thought goes into where time is best spent, and there’s nothing better than when the wrong call is made. I enjoy seeing something like Jurassic Park on the SNES, for example, and recognizing that the programmers were clearly engrossed in their work. First-person shooter segments with texture-mapped walls a year after Wolfenstein 3D on a console that was never great at the FPS genre at the best of times is impressive. And those procedural fractals on the computer screens? Why? Cool. But why?

It’s incredible. You don’t often find these things in “good” games. Especially not these days. Big budget titles are usually heavily planned. Additional features have to be approved, sometimes by multiple levels of management. If weird shit happens, it was probably planned. Where’s the fun in that?

THE TRUE ENTHUSIAST

Not playing bad games is also something rather exclusive to video game hobbyists. Someone really into reading has probably delved into some bad pulp fiction. A big movie buff has totally watched some awful films. A real music lover has contemplated some misguided prog rock albums. Intentionally, I should add.

Video game hobbyists will often avoid games based on reputation. Part of that may go back to a budget of time. Games can take 40 hours or more to complete. That’s, like, 20 movies. It’s like five books. Video games are also often more expensive. Probably. I don’t know, I’m not a big movie/book person.

But they don’t have to be. I’m not saying you need to play new kusoge. GOG has a number of legendarily bad titles for under $10. Many of them have runtimes of, like, 4-8 hours. I’m not even telling you to finish them. Though, the taste of victory after suffering through a trial like Escape from Bug Island is intoxicating. Even that takes, at most, six hours.

Bad arcade games? Probably 45-minutes. Mary-Kate and Ashley: Winner’s Circle? I dunno, less than two hours. There’s kusoge to fit your schedule and budget. Trust me.

STICK YOUR HAND INSIDE

Do it. Convince your family to play Mary-Kate & Ashley: Sweet 16: Licensed to Drive with you (I can’t, I’ve tried). Rather than play through Silent Hill 2 again, try Clock Tower 3. You can appreciate the former for its great story, but it’s worth examining the spectacular failure of the latter. Then you can pull it apart and discover what made it not-tick. If I haven’t made it clear, I can be just as enthusiastic about garbage as I can about fine cuisine.

At worst, playing bad games is going give you an opportunity to discover games that you like more than you thought you would. You could find that rare gem at the bottom of the month-old cassarole. At best, it’s going to make you appreciate the medium a lot more. To understand it better. The downside is that you might find yourself frustrated, annoyed, or uncomfortable. However, nothing worthwhile comes without some sort of struggle.

What I really want to stress is that simply playing the games that everyone likes is boring. It’s fucking boring. Do you really want to say the same nice things that everyone says about games that everyone likes? Does that sound interesting to you?

Nah. It’s cool to be passionate about something. To understand it at a deeper level than the normal people who clog up supermarkets. Actually, I’m probably the last person who should be giving advice on being cool. I’m peculiar at best. Weird, even. But, gosh, being normal sounds awful.