GO is a Bad Game?
Channel: Rym DeCoster
Date: 2015-06-23

Go is a wonderfully complex game, requiring profound skill, deep intuition, and studied practice.  It puts Chess to shame in many regards. It is a game for the ages, and deserves heavy and longstanding respect.

It does have one significant problem, however. It does not teach players how to play, get better, or progress in any meaningful way, on its own. It provides practically zero positional heuristics, and scant directional ones. 

Excerpt from the "Bad Games" panel at PAX South 2015:

PANELISTS:
Brandon Rym DeCoster [Producer, GeekNights], Scott Rubin [Host, GeekNights]

Presented at the first PAX South in 2015, Rym and Scott lecture on the nature of what it means to be a "bad" game.

We’ve all played “bad” games, but what truly makes a game “bad?” Is one’s miserable experience not simply subjective opinion? It turns out that the problem is not in defining what makes a game “bad,” but in what makes a game a “game.” Candyland teaches children colors and counting, but is terrible for a serious tournament. Dungeons & Dragons is great for that heroic fantasy adventure, but not so much for your future cyberpunk transhumanist court drama.