What the hell

I find my own taste strange and dubious, as/hence conventional cultural notions of good and bad mean little to me. Many of the games posted here exceed those found elsewhere in the areas of 'charm' (e.g. the hand drawn graphics of thecatamites' marker games or Putt-Putt Saves the Stew) and 'cuteness' (e.g. You are a Blob! or virtually any sylvie game) which are attributes I personally seem to value.

While I've thought about the distinctions you mention, it's rarely been a factor in my decision to post games to the site. Many of my submissions here may not be trainwrecks! I usually just hoped the proper vibe would organically emerge out of having a short development period. I've definitely been guilty of judging games here based on their unintended/intended badness ratios, though...

If ya ask me, GT isn't about trying to be 'bad' or 'bad as a joke' or 'so bad it's good' or anything like that. People can totally do those things if they want, an that's cool. But the heart of GT to me is that there is no shame in what something you make is like! Making a game by yourself is very personal, and high production qualities are both expensive (in various meanings) and not often desired regardless. You should make what you want to make. Things can be good without having to be ironic or an intentional joke or whatever, they just gotta be the thing you wanted to make. And that's good.

Generally, opinions of what makes a 'good game' is very slanted. Look at the opposite of Glorious Trainwrecks - Tigsource. There's certainly games that get seen as good there, but often ones that have a high production quality. Not in ideas or intentions but in the visual surface. There's nothing wrong with that, and aesthetics are very good, but the games industry at large, and much of games creation around smaller places like Tigsource as a result, is focused on nothing but high visual production quality.

I feel this is part of what contributes to feeling shame for making games that are not "good". For a long time I've felt bad and conflicted about trying to release things that were intentionally shy of high production, because what's the point of working on hi-fi cool graphics when I can slap around some lo-fi clipart and re-arrange it to make something new in minutes? It goes with what I'm doing in the first place, if you've played most any of my games.

The thing is what we center around making something as bad or good tends to be a kneejerk uncritical reaction to the sound or look of something, a quick judge on the screenshot showing it off or the first song or whatever. It's hard to get over that but you just gotta keep making it and putting it out and see what happens. My first album (2011) I felt bad about not even a week after releasing it, and I still don't like a lot of it. Compare that to my second album (2014), which I've listened to many times over while working on and enjoy pretty much all of it. There's a a lot of lo-fi on it but I'm going for sounds that are interesting, the production quality isn't so important to me. It worked out!!

Good or bad is something up to you, the person experiencing it, generally. But it's important to realize that most anything you see? The person making it probably thinks it's good, or doesn't like it, or is conflicted between it being good or bad. That's just the tip of what's interesting or not about any media, though. Question why something is bad or good to you. Question why you think your own games are bad or good. Question the values you've learned to focus on for how to judge bad or good.

to me the characteristic of GT lays not in the kind of games posted here, but in the infinite, forgiveful kindness of the feedback posted by the users. The lack of serious competition, and the courtesy in all the written exchanges (be them directly related to games or not) also plays a part in creating this charming, peaceful atmosphere that helps creativity flourish.
I don't really care about what is a Trainwreck or not.

This is what has inspired the mood of the game I made for mno last christmas "true.love". My games often have a sarcastic tone to them, but there I tried to just do a genuinly nice game for mno.

However, I tend to post on GT the "less serious" of my games, the ones that tend (or try) to be "funnier" or the games that are more like "real videogames", and to keep my own website for creations that are more serious, or meant for a broader audience (people who don't play videogames at all).

It's actually kinda interesting. If you look through the list of games I've made for this site you'll notice that most of the old games I've made have been centered around this sort of idea of "badness" - that is, ironic use of Klipart, and game mechanics played for laughs. However, with the release of Grumper I made a pretty big shift away from that. I think in my earlier years I tried to hide my true self in the name of trying to fit in. My time on the Internet has certainly conditioned me to be like this. Eventually I saw fit to open up a little, soften up and switch tracks to making more honest, legitimate attempts at personal games.