Early in my college education I, like most students, was required to take a basic writing composition class. At first I scoffed at the idea that anyone who managed to make it into an accredited university would need any extra training to write standard five-paragraph essays and do proper citation. After all, we'd all presumably been doing those things since middle school, and college applications themselves require some basic essay-writing. Oh, but I was wrong. When our rather disengaged grad student instructor paired us off to edit and critique each other's work, it became shockingly apparent that half of the students in the class had absolutely no clue how to string sentences together meaningfully. I had the good fortune to work with a non-traditional (re: middle-aged) student who composed an essay comprised of little more than an imaginary argument between two abstract concepts, a corporation and its customers. As in a literal argument. On that day I didn't learn how to better compose an essay, but I did learn that the core of stupidity is simple misconception. Take the following Flash games. They're awful because the people who made them just don't seem to understand what a "game" is.

JunkieRobo's Xtreme Mountain Climber, a cycling animation masquerading as a game, is chock full of "doesn't get it at all". The supposed premise is that players control a mountain climber who, in an xtreme fashion, must fight against gravity and nature to reach the mountain's peak and feel the glory of conquering his or her own limitations. Mr. Robo doesn't seem to quite comprehend that mountain climbers are not, in fact, green circles and that mountains do indeed have tops. The "game" consists entirely of holding W and A on the keyboard to push the green circle up a hill that never ends. Touch nothing and the circle rolls down the very same endless hill. Unless the point of this game is to get carpal tunnel, I'd say JunkieRobo just failed his computer class.

But at least Xtreme Mountain Climber has motion. Me-Gun, Ultimate Experience, on the other hand, pushes the limits of what even counts as content. Players can select one of four tools of destruction from a hastily scrawled menu and then totally kill whole armies of doods with them!.. wait, no, that's not right. Instead the game just takes players to a blurry screenshot of the selected weapon that they can click to hear a sound clip and see a cartoon muzzle flash when it "fires". Even the title of this game doesn't make sense. I sincerely doubt anyone considers it the "ultimate experience" of anything except boredom, and the last time I checked, a tank doesn't count as a gun.

But terrible games that aren't really games can still be amusing. When I clicked on the link to Avatar: Flying I naturally assumed that the crude green creature that appears against a black background at the start was nothing but a loading screen. A larger game never really loaded, so I soon discovered that this ugly sprite is the game. Using a simple mouse click players can make him meander to one point or another. I'd like to be angry at this sad excuse for a game, but the total lack of effort and the lovably ugly cartoon protagonist are actually kind of endearing.