Trash or Treasure: A proposed typology of bad videogames

Although critically maligned and popularly derided videogames are a persistent part of gaming culture, scholarly work has scarcely acknowledged the different ways in which games are understood as bad. This article disambiguates bad videogames by providing a critical overview of the various manifestations of badness in games. Through examining a series of case studies, we propose a framework for understanding how a videogame can be perceived as bad, focusing on presumed developer intentions and reception by players and game journalists. We chart four distinct yet interconnected categories of bad videogames: So-Bad-It’s-Bad, So-Bad-It’s-Good, Bad-in-Context, and Intentionally Bad. Rather than identifying specific sources of badness, these categories aim to clarify how badness impacts audience understanding and appreciation of videogames. At the same time, by focusing on the bad, uninspiring, and ugly side of videogames we take a political stance against the typical game studies canon by expanding the archive of what games and play experiences are conceived as legitimate and worthy of scholarly attention.