Apple Interactive Concept: Game Research 4

Known Game Glitches

I have decided to include game corruption and glitches within my game as a different theme to most other apps on the market. Here I am going to research already existing real glitches within games and how they can create havoc with the player.

Missingno.

Missingno. from the Pokemon games.

The Pokemon games Red and Blue have a glitch which can occur when traveling within a certain part of the game. The player will encounter a Pokemon called Missingno., it appears as a pixelated backwards L. Encountering and capturing this Glitched Pokemon would cause parts of the game to visually and audibly become corrupted. Music would start to change and the "Hall of Fame" would appear pixelated, similar to the Pokemon itself. Certain items in your inventory would become duplicated which proved popular for many players, as certain rare items could become unlimited. There was however a chance the game could totally become unplayable and the publisher of the game, Nintendo, warned not to replicate this glitch or make any contact with it. This proved to hype up the glitch as well as giving it increased fame and infamy to more players making it one of the iconic and popular glitches within a game.

Irregular Physics

A corrupted horse in Sims 3 after downloading custom made content.

Another aspect of glitches which occur commonly in recent games is distorted physics, this mostly affects the limbs of a NPC, causing them to be stretched and twisted. Other features include a character spinning or moving erratically which can have add a creepy aspect to a game without even meaning to. This could be an interesting idea to play upon while designing the corrupted monsters in my game.

Floating Body Parts

Floating body in Fallout 3: New Vegas.

In Fallout New Vegas after killing some characters they will remain as body parts, in an upright position as if they were still standing up. This glitch is sometimes caused by saving and closing the game, then coming back to the location where the person was killed. It is highly creepy, especially if the NPC is still moving around. A fairly disgusting aspect of the game, while being unintentional could be modified and used for my game. For example, when a player thinks they have killed a boss character it will rise once again but in a more corrupted form.

Other Graphics Glitches

This is a graphical glitch from Left For Dead 2.

Other glitches within games include, loading glitches, incorrect textures, flickering imagery, being able to pass through scenery, and many different variants. Many of these features I plan to use within the game, especially in the later stages when the game becomes seemingly more corrupted.

Overall researching many glitches over different game platforms has revealed the potentially unlimited ideas which have been created without the game developers actively creating them. They are often fairly randomly generated due to the nature of their accidental creation which is a highly interesting concept to work on and develop. While changing some of the themes slightly any of the glitches could be incorporated into my game design. The only main change would be these "glitches" would be controlled and not damage any part of the device that the game is running on.