Magic: The Combattening - Hearthstone

[Paelos]

Or you could come post in the Hex Beta Key thread, then spend your money on a CCG that doesn't suck.

Or lose everything in a lawsuit. I mean if we're making broad statements, we might as well go full disclosure.

[schild]

Or you could come post in the Hex Beta Key thread, then spend your money on a CCG that doesn't suck.

Or lose everything in a lawsuit. I mean if we're making broad statements, we might as well go full disclosure.

It's not a very broad statement. Hex doesn't suck, so much so that someone is suing them. Hearthstone is terrible and is purely a money sink since there's no secondary economy.

It is, in fact, a very specific statement.

[Paelos]

I think Hex sucks. I think Magic sucks. So do many people in the world. Because sucks is a broad subjective opinion of fun, or because many people don't like traditional card games.

This thread seems to try to be making opinions into facts. But I'm not going to wander into HEX threads anymore for a couple of reasons. One, you hid them behind a private wall, and two I don't care if you find it fun or not. I don't feel the need to tell you why I think Hex sucks if you like it and I don't.

[schild]

I think Hex sucks. I think Magic sucks. So do many people in the world. Because sucks is a broad subjective opinion of fun, or because many people don't like traditional card games.

This thread seems to try to be making opinions into facts. But I'm not going to wander into HEX threads anymore for a couple of reasons. One, you hid them behind a private wall, and two I don't care if you find it fun or not. I don't feel the need to tell you why I think something sucks if you like it and I don't.

[Paelos]

Sort of making my point. I mean at what point would a normal poster be told "we get it, STFU" by the mods? My guess is long before the 20th page of a game you don't really give a shit about anymore.

[schild]

No, at the point where you can't tell the difference between "the design is flawed and problematic" and "this game is bad because opinion."

No one ever argued it wouldn't make a shitload of money and a bunch of simpletons wouldn't love it. It's a nice distraction and maybe the height of "taking-a-shit-gaming." But it's awful. It's not even an opinion. The game is very, very poorly designed and structured. It's unfixable without adding a shitload of complexity because they stripped it down too far.

The idea of "a design is complete when there's nothing left to take away" was a hurdle they probably passed halfway through development and they were probably like "TOO LATE NOW, CAN'T TURN BACK, JUST, LIKE, MAKE IT A COMBAT PHASE WITH TERRIBLE SORCERIES." Also "let's listen to all the people who say mana is a flawed idea - the wisdom of the masses can't be wrong."

They are wrong. The people that like it are wrong. The people that designed it are bad designers.

The people that coded it though, wizards.

[naum]

I love this forum. 

[Ironwood]

I'm going to go ahead and admit that I adore these new K gifs that Schild has.

Cracking me up every time.  Fun, irreverent and hugely offensive to people who think they have valid views.

Well done young man.

[Rendakor]

Paelos, I didn't intend that as a broad statement to everyone, just to jakonovski who was about to waste money on a game he doesn't seem to be enjoying.

[trias_e]

I still really enjoy the game and have played a probably embarassing amount of it since October.  I've never been so happy to enjoy a terrible game!  

I think where Hearthstone's design is successful is that it's designed as a computer game.  Resolution and the stack make sense on a desk playing face to face, but are poor design for a computer game.   Yeah, there's no doubt that Hearthstone loses much complexity from removing it, but on the other hand they don't translate well into the medium at all.  Perhaps there's some middle-ground solution that's not 'click pass after every action your opponent makes', but it's not obvious to me what that solution is.

Regardless of whether or not mana is a flawed idea or not, do you really think the mana crystal system in Hearthstone is poor design?  I haven't heard that one complained about before.  

Hearthstone has its share of good randomness and bad.  First of all, a general defense of randomness:  If cards are deterministic, players have perfect information as to what will occur, meaning there is only one level of analysis necessary. With RNG added to decision making, players have a more difficult task: They have to weigh events by their probability along with the outcomes of those events. As long as there is decision making involved with the RNG, and the RNG is not too severe, the game will become more difficult to play with RNG introduced. This leads to what may seem like a paradox: You can increase the variance in a game while also increasing its skill cap.

Bad cards are shit like Nat Pagle (flip a coin to draw a card) and the old Tinkmaster Overspark (turn a minion into 1/1 or 5/5 by flipping a coin).  Luckily, both of those cards have been changed.  Ragnaros is also kinda bad (as it also leads to coin flip situations).  Unfortunately, it's still around.  In general, cards that always end up flipping coins for significant effects are shitty cards.

Most of the good ones in HS are 'deal damage to a random creature' cards.    One of my favorites that I consider to be 'good randomness' is Avenging Wrath:  Deal 8 damage to random targets. I like it because it can result in so many different board states, and when to use it is often a difficult decision.  If there are 0 minions on the board, it's just 8 damage to the face.  If there's one minion on the board with 8 health, then it can result in 9 different board states weighted by probability.  The more minions you put on the board, the more board states can result from playing the card.  It's really neat.  Of course, sometimes it's obvious that you should play Avenging Wrath despite all this, but often you have to make pretty tough decisions that are made much more complex by the random nature of the card.  A somewhat similar card is knife juggler (when you play a minion, deal 1 damage at random to an enemy).  Often players will have to decide if it's worth it to make a suboptimal minion choices for the chance of getting additional damage where you need it on the board.  Because it's prbabilistic, it makes the decision making much more difficult than if you could simply direct the damage where you wanted.

[Margalis]

It's a well-designed game for doing what it sets out to do, but what it sets out to do is not to be a well-designed game.

In many ways it's sort of the summation of modern game design, especially mobile/social gaming - build a lot of "stickiness" on top of an uninspiring core. Like all these social games where you wave your mouse around or click on stuff to get resources to fly to the top of the screen and make a pleasing sound effect - there's no actual gameplay there at all beyond "you get X resources every Y minutes." But it's dressed to the nines.

I think where Hearthstone's design is successful is that it's designed as a computer game.  Resolution and the stack make sense on a desk playing face to face, but are poor design for a computer game.   Yeah, there's no doubt that Hearthstone loses much complexity from removing it, but on the other hand they don't translate well into the medium at all.  Perhaps there's some middle-ground solution that's not 'click pass after every action your opponent makes', but it's not obvious to me what that solution is.

I agree, as I said before the priority passing in Magic doesn't work well in a computer game where it has to be explicitly clicked-through. That said, Hearthstone removed that but replaced it with nothing. The game is non-interactive in the drafting phase and not very interactive in the actual play either.

[schild]

If cards are deterministic, players have perfect information as to what will occur, meaning there is only one level of analysis necessary.

Yes, the level of analysis necessary is "you're going to need to be making better choices than the opponent taking into consideration past, present, and future game states." Most people can't do this, it's what separates the good from the bad in a balanced strategy game.

With RNG added to decision making, players have a more difficult task: They have to weigh events by their probability along with the outcomes of those events.

NO. THEY HAVE TO MAKE THE RIGHT DECISION AND STILL HOPE FOR THE BEST.

Fuck me, did I just respond to a joke post?

[Margalis]

Any card game with a shuffled deck already has a bunch of randomness in it, and requires players to evaluate expected value, think about "outs" etc. Adding randomness on top of that feels weird to me.

I suspect the motivation is that when players lose they can think to themselves "I could have won if only I had gotten luckier." It allows players to rationalize losses, and to sometimes get lucky wins. So I think the motivation is probably less good game design than good monetization / stickiness design.

[lamaros]

Also to take some of the skill out, so newbies or those who aren't very good win more than they should. That's a significant role it plays in many games, to take skill gaps from 10-0 wins to 7-3 or 6-4 and thus keep those who 'aren't good' playing.

In terms of making a game that more people want to play I think it certainly plays a role in 'good' game design. Many classics and favourites are so because the randomness makes them appeal to a wider audience. Losing all the time isn't especially fun, you see.

I think Hex sucks. I think Magic sucks. So do many people in the world. Because sucks is a broad subjective opinion of fun, or because many people don't like traditional card games.

Did you just call Magic a traditional card game? Did you just mean to write 'card game'. Because nothing about a TCG fits those terms otherwise.

This thread seems to try to be making opinions into facts. But I'm not going to wander into HEX threads anymore for a couple of reasons. One, you hid them behind a private wall, and two I don't care if you find it fun or not. I don't feel the need to tell you why I think Hex sucks if you like it and I don't.

Obviously, you have to keep your powder dry so you can keep posting about how kickstarter sucks instead. One man can only have so many personal projects.

[Hoax]

It's a well-designed game for doing what it sets out to do, but what it sets out to do is not to be a well-designed game.

In many ways it's sort of the summation of modern game design, especially mobile/social gaming - build a lot of "stickiness" on top of an uninspiring core. Like all these social games where you wave your mouse around or click on stuff to get resources to fly to the top of the screen and make a pleasing sound effect - there's no actual gameplay there at all beyond "you get X resources every Y minutes." But it's dressed to the nines.

Exactly this. Hearthstone is not as far removed from Cow Clicker as some people in this thread desperately want it to be.

But for whatever reason every couple of pages someone like Paelos needs to remind all the posters -who have all said as much themselves several times in thread mind you- that Hearthstone will/is raking in cash.

Guess what? So did fucking Cow Clicker. So does Justin Bieber and Arianna Grande and One Direction and Selena Gomez's songs. Do you have anything more useful to say than "Hearthstone is making money" or "I like Hearthstone so its good"? Because if you don't...

Just shut up. Enjoy the game. Post about the game if you want to. But stop saying the game must be a good game. Its not a good game. Stupid games that aren't very good are just fine sometimes.

[Soln]

So, all hate and love aside, why is this game so random?  I bet there was a fair amount of effort to keep a working RNG going.  But why did they bother?  Why not put that monies into a tighter design for balance like other CCGs?   I guess I don't understand the design.  Feels like they choose to emulate Powerball over MODO and it's so far working out for them.

Would you also agree that Poker is flawed game design because it also includes RNG?  You guys sound like scared babies on the EQVault forums when WoW first started taking over.  Oh my god, wow is for carebear babies who don't love inverting their own penises and fucking their inverted penises with a  1:1 scaled replica of McQuaids  schlong.

Not even a remotely sane comparison, nice try though.

Wrong. That guy was ripping hearthstone bc it's too "random" ergo it must have bad game design. 

You guys really sound so sad it's pathetic.  It's really the UO/Trammel fight all over again, just more pathetic because it's over cards instead of virtual worlds.

Making things seem random in software is hard.   To keep a CCG going with some balance of random I expect it's hard.  That's it.  Back to your fight.

[trias_e]

If cards are deterministic, players have perfect information as to what will occur, meaning there is only one level of analysis necessary.

Yes, the level of analysis necessary is "you're going to need to be making better choices than the opponent taking into consideration past, present, and future game states." Most people can't do this, it's what separates the good from the bad in a balanced strategy game.

With RNG added to decision making, players have a more difficult task: They have to weigh events by their probability along with the outcomes of those events.

NO. THEY HAVE TO MAKE THE RIGHT DECISION AND STILL HOPE FOR THE BEST.

Fuck me, did I just respond to a joke post?

Of course they have to make the right decision and hope for the best.  My point is, it's more difficult to make the right decision, assuming that the randomness isn't something stupidly simple like 'flip a coin'.  This is trivial, and if you aren't getting it, you're misunderstanding fundamentally.  Decision making based on probabilistic outcomes is more difficult than decision making based on deterministic outcomes, at least if it does lead to legitimate decision making.  For example, Nat Pagle is bad not just because it flips a coin, but also because it doesn't even change the board state.  There's basically no decision making to be made with Nat Pagle.  With Avenging Wrath?  Difficult decision making as how to play it (and all of your cards around it), and much more difficult than if it were 'choose to distribute 8 damage at will to enemies'.  

Of course, that doesn't mean it's always a good idea to add randomness.  There's significant downsides to too much randomness.  Go too far and you have a game that is difficult to play 'optimally' but basically a coin flip between players.  But, the more basic point here is that through randomness, one can increase the skill-cap of the game while at the same time making it more likely that a weaker player will win (increasing variance). This phenomenon basically explains the more interesting forms of poker in a nutshell.

Speaking of poker, it's generally recognized that pot limit omaha is more difficult to play than NLH.  It also has far more variance (weaker players win much more frequently in the short-run than in NLH).

Also, for evidence of this, check out backgammon.  A game which thrives on randomness, but has an insanely-high skill cap.

[schild]

My point is, it's more difficult to make the right decision, assuming that the randomness isn't something stupidly simple like 'flip a coin'.

No, it's not more difficult to make the right decision. That's what you're missing. You believe randomness is changing the dimensions of the actual decision making. The right decision is still completely fucking obvious in any given play (at least, to me) and can still backfire. That should not happen, ever, and a shitload of Hearthstones cards promote that behavior.

Don't compare Hearthstone to poker. Once you show your hand, one card can't magically turn into another card and fuck up your game plan. There isn't the equivalent of a shaman and using his power can either win or lose the game for you. That is just a thing that does not exist in good card games (or should not be played, if it does). There are entire essays on Magic cards out there where they talk about the very, very few "random result" style cards and how much they totally fuck things up and how Magic - as a committee designed game - no longer makes cards like that, or provides cards where even the downside is really an upside in most cases.

You're doing a great job of internalizing horrific design as an increase in depth, which is totally cool with me. But it's absolutely insane to think that making the right decision should have the possibility of completely fucking up the entire game for you.

Anyway, the vast majority of poker is a skill game. I stopped playing because bad beats are worse in Poker than any other game. And on that note, bad beats can happen in every game. But they never happen because you played a perfect game. I can play a game of Hearthstone to absolute pristine perfection and still lose - which is just about the most damning thing one can say about any skill-based game. If the game fucks you on draw. that's fine. If you fuck up playing, that's fine. But if the game gives you mediocre to excellent draws and you play perfectly and mathematically you should win the game - and then you don't? Well, you're probably playing Hearthstone because I can't think of another game where that happens (note: I don't know how to play YuGiOh or Pokemon or any of that crap, but games that target children are generally total shit).

Edit: Scratch that last bit, I know the fundamentals of Pokemon and the core concept behind YuGiOh and that both games, particularly the latter, are absolutely riddled with power creep - which is an entire set of problems all to itself.

[Margalis]

Poker is a bad analogy in many ways. A single hand of poker is very short, after which state resets. It also has psychology, betting patterns, etc. If you have to compare to poker the best comparison is probably to a single-elim head's-up tournament.

I am personally not of fan of games that amount to bare optimization problems. If you have a card that does 8 damage distributed randomly yes, it is more complicated in some ways, but in an optimization-problem busy-work sort of way - deriving the EV means going through the permutations, which to me is not interesting or satisfying.

What's more interesting to me than "how will these 8 points of damage be distributed" is "if every enemy takes 2 points of damage how can I play the rest of my cards to take advantage of that, and is my deck constructed such that doing 2 points of damage to every enemy right now gives me the best chance to win?" The interesting part is in how the individual well-understood pieces interact.

[schild]

That's ALSO a concern. Going from "If I do A, B, C, and D with X card what's the next best thing to do" is far better for player-happiness than "if X randomly does A, B, C, and D I can maybe possibly use this other card to do something, or this other card, or I guess if I draw something and he doesn't or uhhhhhh, ya know, fuckit."

[Morat20]

Also to take some of the skill out, so newbies or those who aren't very good win more than they should. That's a significant role it plays in many games, to take skill gaps from 10-0 wins to 7-3 or 6-4 and thus keep those who 'aren't good' playing.

They have that -- their matchmaking system (both casual and ranked). It's a very SHITTY implementation of it, so it's just annoying now.

[SurfD]

I had fun with HS for maybe 2 or 3 weeks, and then I hit the grind wall.  Grinding out gold on dailies so that I can run an Arena just isn't something I want to spend my leisure time on, and the lack of trading/sale of owned cards means I can't convert my card winnings from previous Arena runs into gold to run new Arena matches so I just said goodbye.

I thought their Disenchant / craft mechanic was supposed to be the "fix" for the lack of trading.  You cant convert your unwanted winnings into gold for more arena, but you can convert anything you dont want into dust to make cards that you do want.  problem is, they really need a better way to earn gold.  Maybe giving you a few random quests (kill x minions, cast x spells) but also a pool of quests to pick specific ones from, so you dont end up with "win 5 priest / shaman games", when you dont actually have a priest / shaman deck that is worth shit.

[Johny Cee]

I had fun with HS for maybe 2 or 3 weeks, and then I hit the grind wall.  Grinding out gold on dailies so that I can run an Arena just isn't something I want to spend my leisure time on, and the lack of trading/sale of owned cards means I can't convert my card winnings from previous Arena runs into gold to run new Arena matches so I just said goodbye.

I thought their Disenchant / craft mechanic was supposed to be the "fix" for the lack of trading.  You cant convert your unwanted winnings into gold for more arena, but you can convert anything you dont want into dust to make cards that you do want.  problem is, they really need a better way to earn gold.  Maybe giving you a few random quests (kill x minions, cast x spells) but also a pool of quests to pick specific ones from, so you dont end up with "win 5 priest / shaman games", when you dont actually have a priest / shaman deck that is worth shit.

Crafting was sold as the fix for trading, but it actually does nothing of the sort.  Playing MtG, you can draft pretty much nonstop with a bit of skill plus plucking out any "money" cards that get passed to you in draft since you keep your drafted cards, and you can turn around and sell your cards at the prevailing market rate for packs/tix for your next draft.  In HS, you don't keep your drafted cards and just get gold and some packs that you can only disenchant for half value.  If you have a couple bad pools (as compared to your opponents, who aren't using the same draft pool so it is far more likely you get shafted when you have a weak pool) it burns through your stockpiled gold and leaves you at the stage where you must either grind a bunch of games you don't want to play or shell out cash.

That's the point where the mobile game comparison comes in.  You need to do a few hours of busywork you probably won't enjoy in winning quest games, wait to refresh one quest a day to get a quest for a class you actually have a deck for, or spend gold to play Arena again. 


On constructed card availability/deck building, or "why crafting is bad, part 2":

The larger the market, the lower the average price of cards will be until it approaches equilibrium for supply/demand.  By disabling trading, there is no market so the actual resource cost of cards (in time, dollars, whatever) will be at its highest.  If I see a cool deck I want to try from a recent tournament, in MtG I can go to the trade channels or online resellers and buy/trade for cards at the market price (which is determined by the global supply/demand).  In HS, I'm locked into trying to come up with dust to craft missing cards, which forces you into disenchanting cards for half value! 

I used to play a fair amount of Constructed MODO, and I could do that with about 80% of cards from winnings from Limited events (drafts, Sealed) supplemented by selling excess rares and buying/trading for missing pieces.  Basically, I'm totally funding my Constructed "fun" from the byproducts of the fun I had Drafting.  This is a game that is famous for supposedly having a high barrier to entry.

Basically, the HS system forces you to cannabalize your resources (cards/dust) at a 50% discount to get the cards you want to play with now....  and then when the meta shifts or you get tired of that shiny new deck you are forced to discount your own resources again to shift your available cards to a new deck.

Unless you are playing Arena (finishing in the money) at a very high level, throwing real dollars at the screen, or are content with a months long grind of dailies to Arena runs, you are far more hamstrung in what Constructed decks you can actually build in HS.

[lamaros]

Also to take some of the skill out, so newbies or those who aren't very good win more than they should. That's a significant role it plays in many games, to take skill gaps from 10-0 wins to 7-3 or 6-4 and thus keep those who 'aren't good' playing.

They have that -- their matchmaking system (both casual and ranked). It's a very SHITTY implementation of it, so it's just annoying now.

That's a similar but different thing. Being told by the system that you aren't good enough to play with the big kids isn't the same as getting to play with them and winning despite being crap.

[schild]

I don't even want to talk about how shitty the matchmaking is, particularly for the arena, or the crafting. God, fuck the crafting. What a terrible fucking system.

[Jeff Kelly]

Look at other devs. Look for example at Carcasonne for the iPad, one of my favorite board game adaptions ever. They managed to integrate an ELO system into their online matchmaking,like in chess or other 'competitive' board games. Golf has the handicap system etc.

Most of those systems have a much better and more meaningful way to match players with similar 'skill' or to offset the skill difference. They also make it transparent . hstone's matchmaking is nothing like that.

[Zetor]

FWIW I think that Hearthstone is similar in complexity to the Arcomage minigame from the Might&Magic series. And hey, Arcomage was pretty fun! I just wouldn't spend money (or much time) on it, is all.

[Ginaz]

I stopped playing around Christmas time but up until then I had some fun with it from time to time.  However, for me, it only has slightly more stickyness than a decent mobile game.  And really that's what it is.  A beefed up mobile game with the Blizzard polish and the Warcraft IP.  If it wasn't for those two things, it would have been relegated to the place where mobile games go to wither and die.  It's a fun little time waster that you can play on the go or, as Schild does, on the toilet while taking a shit.   I can't say I'm surprised at how successful it is, it is Blizzard+WoW after all, but I am surprised at how seriously people are taking it as a CCG and E-sport.  Even that Kripparrian guy, who has won some high profile games and tournaments, has said HS is very luck based, with the RNG playing a big factor on who wins and loses.  But hey, what does he know, he's only just better and more knowledgeable wrt HS than probably everyone posting here.

[jakonovski]

Paelos, I didn't intend that as a broad statement to everyone, just to jakonovski who was about to waste money on a game he doesn't seem to be enjoying.

Tbh I do enjoy feeling superior to all the other players. I don't think  I'll spend any money either way.

[Paelos]

Paelos, I didn't intend that as a broad statement to everyone, just to jakonovski who was about to waste money on a game he doesn't seem to be enjoying.

Tbh I do enjoy feeling superior to all the other players. I don't think  I'll spend any money either way.

I think the biggest failing of the game is it doesn't give enough incentives to actually use real money.

[jakonovski]

Paelos, I didn't intend that as a broad statement to everyone, just to jakonovski who was about to waste money on a game he doesn't seem to be enjoying.

Tbh I do enjoy feeling superior to all the other players. I don't think  I'll spend any money either way.

I think the biggest failing of the game is it doesn't give enough incentives to actually use real money.

It doesn't even have any cosmetic stuff, it's weird. Baby Murloc summoner for 10 or even 20 bucks, they'd have my money in a flash.

[Big Gulp]

Just shut up. Enjoy the game. Post about the game if you want to. But stop saying the game must be a good game. Its not a good game. Stupid games that aren't very good are just fine sometimes.

I think what a lot of you card vets are purposefully ignoring is that a lot of us don't necessarily want something with all the doodads and bells and whistles of Hex or Magic.  This is stripped down, basic, and fast.  The only time I have for gaming any more is in 5-10 minute chunks, and for that, this game scratches that itch admirably.  If you want to go all TCG neck beardy that's your prerogative.  Doesn't make Hearthstone a bad game, though.

[Job601]

This thread has really improved on this page to the point that people are actually analyzing the game instead of just complaining about it, so good on you guys for that.  In M:tG terms, Hearthstone is pitched very strongly at Timmies and much less so to Spikes and Johnnies.  That doesn't make it a bad design if it does what it sets out to do.  We should be able to talk about the audience for this game in terms which don't implicitly insult them.

The distinction between randomness on the cards and randomness in the draw helps me understand why some people dislike this game so much.  It's definitely a feel-bad moment when your mad bomber hits you three times and misses your opponents 3 x/1 creatures.  That said, games of MTG in which you don't get to play your cards are no fun either.  The two don't seem that different to me; I can make the right play statistically and get screwed either way.  The extent to which an experienced CCG player like Schild dislikes one so much more than the other seems like a bias based on what's good strategy in Magic, not an obvious general design principle.  These kinds of cards can make competitive players feel bad because they feel like they're out of control, but a lot of players really like them, and Hearthstone has reduced variance in other ways.

As for Kripparian, he may be correct at very high levels of play, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the game is too random for the vast majority of players whose mistakes will hurt them much more than bad luck over time.

[lamaros]

There's a difference between 'what am I going to be able to do based on luck' (card draw, booster pack contents) and 'what is actually going to happen when I do this' based in luck.

If you played poker and after everyone played their hand you spun a big wheel to determine what cards are wild would it be fun? I'm ok with 'this is what happened, now to do the best I can' and not as keen on 'make hard choices and then say fuck it and flip a coin anyway!'

And yes, to some extent that feeling of agency is an illusion - but it feels better and gives me a relationship with a game that lets me try and better myself, and measure that skill more easily and satisfyingly.

[Falconeer]

Why people can't accept sometimes that they like bad games and that's OK? When you happen to dance to a shitty tune (if you do) you still know it's bad. When you giggle at a shitty comedy you still know it's shitty, and it's OK that you enjoy it, you have your reasons, but that doesn't change the fact that you can see why it is shitty, obvious, badly acted, overly reliant on unwitty references, tropes or other bad old jokes. It is all fine, but why can't people ever admit they like a bad game, and it always has to turn into factions when it comes to games? Why everyone is always so defensive about their tastes in games?

Bad games, like bad songs or bad comics or bad shows, are NOT strictly the ones that don't make money or the ones that YOU are not playing. This is the very basic concept of "pop" culture. We all buy into it at times.