Synopsis
Our experience of videogames is often filtered through a spidersilk gauze of
market research and high production values. Videogames, we’re told, are a
pristine domain accessible only to small armies of trained professionals working
overtime. Taking a longer view of the medium’s history, though, we see: absurd
physics, nauseating graphical bugs, tedious repetition, maddening difficulty
curves, and eyeroll-inducing voice acting. It seems that videogames also have
the capacity to be abjectly, unequivocally, gloriously shitty! What better way,
then, to approach this vibrant, diverse, and crucially contemporary form than to
catalog its many failures? In doing so, many videogame designers are now
reclaiming an ugly, broken mess as a call to action: make bad games!
Bio
Jake Elliott makes videogames and noise. He is half of indie game studio
Cardboard Computer, and a different half of experimental internet radio station
NUMBERS.FM.
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