Gaming Glitches Add Character

jasoncart writes "Glitches in videogames are always a bad thing, right? Wrong, argues columnist Rob Wilson - citing developer oversights in titles like Halo, Pro Evolution Soccer, Vice City and Quake as adding welcome 'character' to our gameplaying experiences." From the article: "Then, in the distance, something astonishing happened. The car I was chasing sunk into the road as if it were careering off a cliff. The car vanished and a welcoming sight flashed up on the screen. 'Mission Passed - $1000'."

Comments

Glitches

[64nDh1]

I've always found it quite welcome when you don't go looking for cheats, but end up working out how to beat parts of games. Things like in NHLPA '93 on Genesis/Mega Drive if no teammates were ahead of you and you pressed pass at the halfway line the puck went straight up the ice and under the goalkeeper. It was a goal that couldn't be stopped, but still tricky to accomplish. If you screwed it up it was icing, or a two line pass. And it was a pass, so it improved your stats if like me your anal about stuff like that, so you could actually win a game and have no record of any attempts on goal.

Glitches obviously can also be the ruination of a game, but they're not all bad.

sounds familiar

[cryptoz]

Sort of like real life...We don't like our friends to be perfect. We don't like anyone to be perfect, because that's just wrong. Things begin to feel unnatural and ugly. I mean, virtually anyone who has a best friend who's near-perfect absolutely despises him/her. Granted, for different reasons, but it all stems from the same concept.

And it's not like video games are an essential part of our functioning society (except for perhaps intensely helping the economy through the millions of dollars that travel around pointlessly) like other software is. That is, you don't want your Bank or your Hospital software to have "personality", now do you?

So I say this is a good thing. Let the games be imperfect. Let them have flaws. Not because it builds "character" or anything, but becase it more closely relates to reality. Okay, okay, this isn't always a good thing. But we don't want our kids (wait, sorry, this is /., we don't have kids) to grow up expecting their real lives to be as "perfect" as their video games. Or is this already happening?

Diagonal run

[yotto]

I /still/ diagonal run in every FPS I play. I have no idea if it helps or not, but Doom taught me that it was the "right" way to do it, so I always will.

By the way, is this not the fluffiest fluff piece we've ever seen? 3 examples of cheating and he's done?

From the same man who brought you: Abuses r fun

[CrazyJim1]

Some people think imbalances are fun because if you find them early, you can advance your character faster, or inflate your ranking vs other players. But in the long run, everyone uses the same imbalances, which results in people not using other parts of the game.

Glitches are sometimes fun. For example,"In Stunts, the old racing game, you could get a car to go flying." Or in Super Mario bros, there was the minus world, where you could go swimming forever.

For the most part, glitches suck, but sometimes they're amusing. If you want your game to be amusing, its best to design for it, not hope for glitches.

Pro Evo Soccer

[64nDh1]

I had to RTFA before I could think of any glitches, and I'm not sure the article exactly nails that game for its problems. I still play Pro Evo on PS2 and its gameplay isn't tarnished by its aging. However, the article makes a valid point about the commentary. Only Konami could think a commentator of any sport would ever really say something to the effect of "the crowd are getting restless, this game is really disappointing". Fine, if it's intended as a dig at the gamer that's no problem. But if a real commentator said that it'd be on a par with "why not turn your TV off and do something less dripping with sponsorship?"

That games predecessor was Internation Superstar Soccer on N64 where you knew you got away without punishment if you heard the commentator say "Oh a definite foul there". The soundbyte was only played if you made a dirty tackle and got away with it.

Last note on commentary, the worst ever is NHL 2002 on PS2. You can turn the colour commentary off thank god, but when on it's a never ending deluge of vacuous crap. When off, it's dry, boring factual mush. The most the earlier versions of this series (EA Hockey, NHLPA '93 etcetera) had were the organs and crowd noises. This was enough IMHO.

Speed Demos

[Kelerain]

http://speeddemosarchive.com/

Bending the rules is pretty much the entire premise behind speed runs. They are very entertaining as well. The origional inspiration for the site was Quake done Quick, a full play-through of the origional Quake in 19:49, which culminated in a 12:23 run through Quake on Nightmare skill. (not that they aren't trying to improve on that time).

At the speed demos archive, you can watch Super Mario Brothers 3 completed in 11:11,Super Metroid in 36 minutes flat and The Legend of Zelda in 35:50. On the PC Game front there is Half-Life in 45:45, Fallout2 in 17:51 and Jedi Knight in 34:03. I find these very entertaining, and sometimes informative. Check out the Game List and see if any of your old favorites are there!

Article is wrong....

[Koiu Lpoi]

The article claims that, since his graphics card was failing, the road disappeared and the other car carrened through the level. Last time I looked at a game engine, the video card's inability to display the ground doesn't affect the internal game engine's dealing with it.