Clive Thompson In Search Of The B-Game

Clive Thompson's column this week deals with the question of why we take no pleasure in games that are so-bad-they're-good. There are no B-games in the same way that there are B-movies, he says:

Certainly, the phenomenon exists in every other form of entertainment.
Everyone loves B movies – films that are so atrociously acted and scripted that they become perversely enjoyable. There's also plenty of
B television. (For two seasons I religiously followed Pam Anderson's show V.I.P., mostly for the odd joy of tallying up the clichés and acting so wooden it was nearly Brechtian.) The pleasure of
B entertainment is pure, narcotic-level irony – the peculiar joy that comes from seeing something that is trying to be good but failing on every level.

These Games Are So Bad, It's Not Funny [Wired]