During the UFO 50 discussion at the book club, someone pointed out that there appears to be some amount of intentional decision to choose bad game decisions over good ones which makes it into an interesting piece of art. But, there’s a bit of an argument about whether or not all of those decisions were good or not.

Someone asked how making the game might have been affected by the decision to make bad design decisions, but someone else pointed out that part of the draw of UFO 50 is that it’s like a carnival where you pay a ticket to enter and that the fun is seeing a bunch of different games and not really necessarily that each of the games is really good.

The group generally seems to have games they think are either trash or really good, and the group feels that contrast between good and bad in the collection is also part of the intended experience. The way the games are grouped together changes how you engage with the other games as well. Like, you might read all of the books in a series even if you don’t like all of the games. So, in UFO 50 the fact that all of the game’s completions statuses are tracked means that you might be inclined to try and play or beat all of the games. Someone mentioned it’s a bit like how the context of the book club changes how you engage with the game that has been selected for book club, even if you don’t like it.

Someone said that things like carnivals and Dave and Busters have their own draw on their own, without considering what games they have exactly, and that’s what UFO 50 is like.