We are all gamers, so I hope most of you will know what I am talking about.

I will use as my example Spec Ops the line hopefully without any spoilers. The game, while wonderful IS a mediocre shooter in a sense. I read somewhere that it was made that way on purpose. The point I am trying to make here is this.

If you make something bad on purpose and as helping tool to deliver to your message, should you be praised for it? While it is bad on purpose, it....well it IS still a bad thing.

When you say in your title "doing something bad," it makes it sound like a moral question. And, no, you should never do a bad (immoral) thing.

But, to make a subpar shooter? You're making a product for sale. If it sells because people are willing to pay for other aspects besides challenging gameplay, then you are successful. There's no real dilemma here.

You can still see this as a bad design, but when you acknowledge the context, it makes it somewhat justifyiable.

You know, like a "offensive" piece of art, that is made "offensive" to take your attention on something important. It's still "offensive" but on purpose.

You should decide if this purpose is significant enough to warrant this.

Fair enough, I was more pointing out to the fact when you break the game mechanic on purpose (not that it happened in Spec Ops : The Line)

But it is true, that while gameplay was mediocre, it is one of the best games I have ever played. For me it was always simple, if I like the game I don't care about the details. I was just wondering how others feel about it.

If shooting puppies is what it takes to make more people buy Sacrifice, then it's worth it.

What about "The Heinz Dilemma"? Guy needs medicine to save his wife's life. Doctor refuses to sell the medicine to the man to the man for anything less than $1000. Man doesn't have $1000, the doctor won't budge on the price, so the man steals the medicine. Who's wrong here? What's the bad thing?

XD leave it to you to add a whole other element to it. I post a typical Psych 101 question and you turn it into an episode of CSI.

It's a gift. I just wish there was someway I could use my powers for Good.

In what sense exactly? It seemed to play perfectly fine for me...

I don't buy it.

You can make a "typical" shooter without making a "bad" shooter, if that makes any sense.

I haven't played, so in what ways is it considered bad: boring, wonky, broken, or something else?

For what it's worth, Ed Wood made a career out of unashamed bad-ness. One example of many...

If you hadn't elaborated I would have pointed to killing as bad and war as the means by which many people justify it.

I've heard that Uwe Boll makes bad movies on purpose to exploit some tax loophole. I certainly wouldn't say it's justified but I'm sure he thinks otherwise.

Yes. He used to. But as far as I know they finally closed this loophole (which was known in Hollywood as 'stupid German money'). So there is a slight hope that Uwe Boll won't be making as many movies in the future.

It just isn't a fun shooter, because that's kinda the point of the game, that war isn't fun. If the gameplay was more entertaining the message would be undermined.

On topic: I too thought this would be a moral conundrum, but as for making something deliberately bad, that is perfectly valid. In their case it enhances the themes of the game, they made a choice on what they wanted to focus on, then simply acted on that choice.