CharlieR wrote:I think that is the point the thread is trying to make. I was just thinking, might games be made out to be worse bad, and people exaggerate upon how bad they are?
This happens
constantly. For many people, a "bad" game is a game that makes them feel confused or helpless because it doesn't reward them with godlike abilities from the word go, or because it's not exactly like all the other games they've already played. Games are for telling them how great they are, just the way they already are -- not for making them
learn something, for heaven's sake.
For some players, a tough game with a learning curve is intriguing --
I've never seen anything like this before, maybe I can figure it out? -- but for a lot of people it enrages them. They interpret that sense of mystery and challenge as an ego threat, as if the game is calling them stupid, and so they want to destroy it and mock it because the alternative would be admitting defeat or ignorance.
(And they have the same reaction to music, movies, books, etc.: if they don't understand it right away, then it must be stupid. They're God's gift to humankind, and nothing is ever their fault or reflects badly on them, so anything they don't understand must be stupid by definition.)
I'd go so far as to say that I enjoy most "bad" games more than I enjoy most "good" games. Many "bad" games are short and offer an intense challenge -- something I've always appreciated: I love a really tough game that, once mastered, can be beaten in under 10 minutes without exploits -- whereas many "good" games strike me as overlong, handholding affairs designed for someone who certainly isn't me.
I suppose it's sort of like cinema: I'd rather watch a trashy horror movie for most of the tedious, self-important junk that passes for mainstream cinema these days. At least the trashy horror movie might surprise me or make me laugh -- at least it's not boring and predictable.