If...

So I've finally figured out why I keep playing games that I hate, long after the point where I know I don't want to play them anymore. I need to understand why I dislike them. If a friend asks me, "Should I play X?" I want to be able to tell them that it's a ten-day open-air crapfest without having to resort to a wishy-washy, "But that's just my opinion." My viewpoint doesn't solidify into law after that magic ten-hour point, but I feel that savaging a product requires a greater burden of proof than deeming it Pretty Good. Dan Hsu's policy at EGM was to play a game until he felt like he could give it a review score in good faith, then keep playing it until he'd doubled that playtime.

But then, this may all just be equivocation. Maybe I enjoy hating games. (Actually, I'm sure I do.) Maybe I play bad games so long so that my dislike can congeal into bleeding odium.