[DoctorEldritch]

@GoLLuM13 Sadly, it would be counterproductive to reward my weight-losing efforts with chocolate the way I can for game-deleting efforts, so I'll need to come up with something else. Normally I do plenty of constitutionals and hikes, but can't really do it that much in winter. But if I am lucky, I may get enough snow to do some nordic skiing.

[GoLLuM13]

@DoctorEldritch You can treat your self this way, for each kilogram you lose, you install a new game 🤣

[DoctorEldritch]

Originally Posted by GoLLuM13

@DoctorEldritch You can treat your self this way, for each kilogram you lose, you install a new game 🤣

But that would mean I can only install about 90 new games before I evaporate into nothing, though 😅

[Saka]

@DoctorEldritch I don't think I played a bad game last year. Usually waiting for others to try things first works, then I am spared the boredom. 😁

And well... haven't played that many games in the first place, so there's that.

[DoctorEldritch]

@Saka It could also be that people rarely remember bad games they tried unless it was a very spectacular fail. Gollum is the worst game of the year (arguably), but I know I tried some games this year that I glanced into, but stopped fast and did not finish. But I can't recall most of them just because of how unmemorable they were.

[Saka]

@DoctorEldritch I didn't play many games the past year, so it really is the case that I didn't play a bad game.

Games with disappointing technical issues/bugs, yes. Warcraft Rumble would be an example, gameplay is great. Android implementation is poor quality however. Long loading screens, frequent game crashes. There were/are also performance-unrelated bugs too.

[DoctorEldritch]

@Saka This is funny, just yesterday I was thinking about this and I remembered a game that I started but did not like and deleted recently, and I thought I'd mention it. But I was away from my laptop at the time, and now I can't remember what game it was again 😅

But I think what you and earlier @GoLLuM13 said does bring up an interesting question: what makes a bad game? True enough, technical issues can ruin a solid game idea, there are numerous examples of that, like Cyberpunk 2077 when it came out. And then there are games with little technical problems, but no "spark" with a bad plot or gameplay design. Gangs of Sherwood are a bit like that, or GreedFall.

When both of those collide, the results are spectacularly bad, like Gollum, but more often the game has one or the other (I mean proper games and not those and not those simple ones that come out unremarkable by the dozen).

To me, the plot/gameplay failure is worse: technical issues can get fixed, but the gameplay is very hard to address, and often developers drop the game rather than doing that. But maybe it is not a popular opinion, I am not sure?

[Saka]

@DoctorEldritch I agree, when the game is bad by design, you can't realistically salvage it without a whole new project.

Technical issues can be worked on, even if they can't be eliminated completely due to ex. engine limitations, they usually can be reduced to the point that they don't have a big impact on the gaming experience.

[DoctorEldritch]

@Saka So then can we say that games with tech issues are bad, or better to call them "unfinished" or "underbaked" or something like that, and use "bad" for games where the issue is deeper and more fundamental?

[Saka]

@DoctorEldritch I think it depends a bit on the scale of the problem. The release Cyberpunk 2077 on old-gen consoles was rather justifiably called a disaster.