Not quite, preservation means keeping it in the form you found it. Keeping something alive, might actually be different from the form you found it in.
For instance an Egyptian mummy is preserved, for those outside the belief of an afterlife, it is not “alive”. You are right that quality is not an issue as that is subjective.

Not sure he is a troll, but he has no understanding of the reality of the computer/video game business.
You can't expect a business to spend a lot of money on something thet does not promise some kind of return down the line.
Anybody who thinks GOG will become a repository for every game ever made is living in another reality.

As already mentioned, what's bad to some might be OK or fun to others. So unless the game is a broken technical mess, I think GOG should consider getting it. To me, part of the attraction of GOG is the wide variety of older games on offer, not just your Doom, Sid Meyers, Nukem and so on. The more obscure ones are usually the more interesting to me these days because I most likely never played them growing up, I only played the bigger titles since they were easily avaiable in my country at the time. I mean, I don't think GOG's primary source of income today are the old games they keep releasing, instead it's games like Cyberpunk, Biomutant, Control, Wicther, Horizon Zero Dawn, and so on.

I'm not sure how we reached comparing William Shatner's Tek War to dead people, but I enjoyed the trip

I did not like the default character so I started in the training area with a new one.(just ascetics change)
you cannot save in the first city at all until you finish it. the training level is the only place you can save once you leave it it takes forever to find a "save point" so why didn't they make save markers. I reached quite far in the first city after the training but took forever to get to a save point. I pledged in 2014 therefore had no way of knowing it was going to be a lemon, same with Shroud of the Avatar. a lemon! bland and empty.

oh, right my bad, I was talking about bad games generally

I had no idea there was a training (I thought the first few rooms were meant for that - tutorial basics)
I meant the first city with traders, with friendly NPCs. Also I thought you could plant a sampling to any dirt patch you find.
Well, there was also a great game from Peter Molyneux.

There are some games I get some enjoyment in spite of glaring flaws. However, it's rare that I purposely buy a bad game just to laugh at its absurdity. I have too many games I want to play, but haven't even started.

It's rare for me too, in fact I'm not sure I ever did it on purpose, but I do recognise that a bad game can be a lot of fun precisely because of it's flaws (provided it's not broken in the most basic ways that would make it a chore to even play). For example right now I'm playing Teenagent, which I had in my library for free ever since I first made an account here and never touched before, and to my surprise it's an absolute blast. It's such a wonderful artefact of the struggling 90s Polish game dev scene - the graphics, the ridiculous story, the bad voice acting, the tounge in cheek, self aware writing and the overall feel of great enthusiasm for making a game with humble means - it's exaxtly the kind of "bad" game I think should be preserved and available here. And while it's great to have it for free, I would not regret it if I spent a few bucks on it.

I still consider Icarus: Sanctuary of the Gods, a guilty pleasure. So, I actually would purchase at least one bad game to re-experience.

There's a lot to be said for ambition and "heart" alongside meager resources. But when they have lots of resources and lose the "heart"...

To me -- except for the most blatant and uninspired cash-grabs -- most games have something that will connect with someone. As with the thrift store ethos... "One man's trash is another man's treasure."

I think to the Hellboy game you mentioned. Sure, it's probably quite mediocre, but to a big Hellboy or Mike Mignola fan it certainly could be worth the time to play. I've played plenty of games that people claimed "terrible"... but I quite enjoyed them. Great? No... but enjoyable nonetheless.

I am referring to "Pluto's Gate" not the main area. you can save there but no where else. at least not for a long long time!. you cannot plant anything until you get to the trading area.

All the ambition and heart in the world won't help unless you also have competence.

Unabashedly yes, possibly exempting licensed shovelware.

However, this continues to play into what I say often:

GOG needs a 100% compatible sister site (AKA, same account/downloads/Galaxy/everything behind the scenes -- only store front/browsing to buy is different) that can do these kind of things, along with "less curated" indie games and whatnot.

Plus, some bad games might still bring great memories for some people.

And, there's a lot to learn from bad games too. Everyone who wants to design games should play Castlevania 2 as an example of "don't do this, any of this".

EXAMPLE:
Lexi-Cross (https://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/lexi-cross) is a bad game, or at least has no good value that hasn't been replaced entirely by new things. But it still has plenty you could learn from it. And it would bring me joy to revisit.

Yes, we need bad old games like Skyrim, Call of Duty series, Battlefield series, etc. here.