Video Game Glitches and You: How they Disrupt the Game Experience Negatively and Positively
In my nearly two-decades’ worth of experience in video games, I would define a glitch as something that disrupts the flow of the game and either breaks a player’s sense of immersion or serves as a fun way to interact with the game in ways that might have been overlooked by the developers. In a worst-case scenario, a glitch can detract from the overall experience with animation, progression, and/or graphical errors that will halt players from experiencing everything the game has to offer. An example of such an incident is when a player is tasked with going from point A to B but they are constantly clipping through the floor because of collision detection bugs, making progression nearly impossible. On the opposite side of the spectrum, glitches can enhance a player’s experience if they aren’t as intrusive as some of the other game-breaking glitches, whether it is something as silly as luring an enemy off of a cliff due to AI issues or as surreal as walking outside of the game’s boundaries and seeing an endless horizon of empty space. I’m mostly drawing from Rosa Menkman’s definition of a glitch as it falls more in line with how I personally view glitches, which is “a wonderful interruption that shifts an object away from its ordinary form and discourse, towards the ruins of destroyed meaning.” (340) The reason I see glitches this way is because for better or worse, they are almost as integral to the experience as the mechanics themselves, where they interrupt the experience to either increase a player’s enjoyment of a game or ruin it to the point where they wouldn’t pick it back up again.
An example of a glitch that achieves a positive effect on players is the Flyable Pelican glitch in Halo 2, where two players are able to take control of a Pelican after performing a series of steps in the mission Metropolis. I believe this glitch pertains to Menkman’s definition of what glitches are because it helps create a personal experience that is unique to the game itself as it presents a new form of gameplay that we did not perceive of prior to witnessing it. Menkman mentions how glitches start out as negative experiences because of how they disrupt the gameplay but they then turn into “a spark of creative energy that indicates that something new is about to be created.” (341) In the case of the Flyable Pelican glitch, it allows players to access a new form of gameplay that inspires players to search for new ways to experience Halo 2, such as going outside of the game’s boundaries with a new vehicle. This glitch intentionally disrupts the habitual forms of gameplay by presenting a way to play the game that was not programmed by the developers but functions as if it was. It demonstrates how glitches such as these can seem like hindrances at first but then serve as novel ways of experiencing this medium that we are all taking part in.
Source:
Lovink, Geert; Miles. Video Vortex Reader II : Moving Images Beyond Youtube. Institute of Network Cultures, 2021.
