Thanks to you and @Jorpho for putting me onto this. I’d never heard of Ashens it and it’s certainly a topic I’m interested in.
I just finished watching supergreatfriend’s LP of The Ring: Terror’s Realm. At the end he muses about whether it’s the worst game he’s ever played. It can’t be, because he has a series of videos where he plays every (or nearly every) game that came out on XBox Live Indie Games, but he says that comparing it to other games that actually showed up on store shelves, it might be the winner.
What’s the worst game ever? A game that was designed as a scam? A game that was designed to be unplayable boring on purpose? A game where people honestly tried to make money off of licensed intellectual property and just made terrible design decisions at every turn?
This needs DLC. Specifically, there needs to be a Burning Man Exodus Simulator where you are stuck in stop and go traffic for 12 hours, have to pee now and then, and have to make it back through 7 rows of cars to find your vehicle once you find the portapotties on the side.
You know, putting some more thought to it, I don’t think Desert bus should be on that list.
If we think about it, sure, desert bus is boring. But it’s functional, so we can’t really call it broken. It’s not a cash in, and frankly, it doesn’t make awful choices.
So, what makes it a bad game is that it’s boring, which normally would be reason enough for a game to be boring, except, there’s one big difference between Desert Bus and almost all other games - it’s intentionally boring, whereas most other games are made to be enjoyable. And it achieves that objective, it makes the statement it wants to make, fills the goals it sets out to fill.
So, if it’s not broken, it’s not just some cheap cash-in, it’s decently made, and it achieves pretty much every objective that it set out to achieve, and those objectives wern’t harmful. In any other scenario, we’d call that a big success, we’d call that a good game. But because the objective was for something other than for the entertainment value of the game itself, does that make it bad? Or just different to most other games?
It set out to achieve a specific goal: create the most inoffensive video game possible, in response to the outrage over violence in video games. It recreates, accurately, the utter tedium of driving from Tucson to Vegas, in real-time, with no antagonists. It does exactly what it was created to do and is a unique piece of interactive artwork.
I definitely think the broader context is important when examining whether Desert Bus is “good” or not. You’re right, as a piece of interactive artwork seen in the context of the early-90s violent videogame debates, it’s pretty great. It’s even great as a prank minigame, which is the context it’s most prominently given within the Smoke and Mirrors product itself. However, I think it’s a successful piece of art by being a truly abysmal game to play. I don’t think it’s really accurate to call it the worst videogame ever, but it does seem to be one of the most intentionally terrible ones ever made (I think Ze Frank’s Atheism might beat it out for the brevity of the experience). “Worst” is really more suited for games that are broken in spite of their earnestness, like E.T., or Aliens: Colonial Marines, or whatever Steam Greenlight detritus washes up on the shore every week.
Don’t diss Big Rigs. That game is hilarious, and it’s a fun toy. Unlike other famously bad games (like Superman 64, which I won’t be defending any time soon) BR:OtRR lets you really get into it, discovering its odd quirks and the ways it gets so close to being function but then fails (your opponents, when they actually race, always stop right before crossing the finish line, and they then wait there forever). It never broke down or kicked me out of the game, leaving me free to drive backwards up mountains and out into the endless void. Everyone should try it at least once.
It’s interesting in that it makes us distinguish between a good game and a game we actually want to play.
Desert Bus is great and it is a game, and it’s a direct challenge to the idea that the point of a game is to have fun playing the game.
Exterior: Mountain road.
The car finally has an advantage over the truck and manages to put some distance between it.
Then it pulls over and shuts down for a firmware update.
