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'."

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?

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.

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.

hacks are now "glitches"?

[SanityInAnarchy]

With careful manipulation of a game's code, unscrupulous types can purposely create glitches know as hacks.

Say WHAT?

Tell me how an aimbot is a "glitch". You make it seem like it's the developer's fault that aimbots exist. No, that's the server admin's fault for not banning the fucker.

For that matter, exploiting any glitches in any Internet game with any king of subscription can get you banned.

I agree that not all glitches are bad -- in fact, most of the Halo glitches are actually quite fun, like the sword glitches and warthog jumps. Unfortunately, the sword glitch seems to be gone now, but the point is...

"Glitches" are the fault of the developer. "Hacks" are the fault of the user, or the server admin for not banning the user. Both, if exploited in order to win a (multiplayer) game, are cheating.

Re:Diagonal run

[thrift24]

In some it definately helps. In wolfenstein Enemy Territory, which is based off the Quake3 engine(and therefore most likely in Quake3), you can gain more speed if you jump, and then once your in the air do the diagonal run. Combine this with a few "bunny hops" and what is called a circle strafe jump(all "glitches", albeit accepted in competition and ussually no one whines about it on public servers), you can make your player jump unnatural distances. The players who can use these tricks well to complete goals are called "trick jumpers", and can be quite important to a team's effectiveness. Entire level sets have been created to aid trick jumpers and these glitches are a must to be able to perform many of the usefull jumps. These glitches are totally accepted by punkbuster and even the game developers new about them before they released the game(as quake 3 had the same glitches and the glitches were well publicized before Enemy Territory was released) So for Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory at least, these glitches aren't just fun asides, they are a major part of the game.