Gameplay Journal #6 — Glitches Part 2
While visual glitches can be some of the most straightforward and obvious (and, despite this, some of the most thought-provoking), functional game glitches can allow players to tear away the veneer from a product even easier and can thus inspire a greater range of changes to the gameplay experience, and ways to view and pick away at the game’s inner workings. Such glitches are usually taken out of games due to their ability to ‘break’ the intended experience, in all but the most specific circumstances, but every so often, a game is released where such a glitch can be performed by anyone, easily. One such glitch, as seen in a video by Game Grumps (and many others) covering the game Sonic Boom in 2014, was just one among countless glitches in the notoriously buggy game, but the “Knuckles Double Jump Bug” allowed a wide range of players (including the show hosts) to view and cause all sorts of problems in the game engine, effortlessly bypassing the intended gameplay and creating a new mode, which showcased all sorts of problems. Moreover, due to their dissatisfaction with the game, the players repeatedly used the glitch throughout their entire playthrough, giving extensive documentation of all the ways it could be used to ‘break’ the game — from allowing the players to effortlessly sequence break, to bypassing loading zone, to being able to skip most of the game’s puzzles.
As Ferreira describes in his paper, a glitch “[I]s both the product of malfunction and artificial creation. Glitch artefacts are produced through signal or process corruption and by designing dysfunction” (p.114). The glitch is a definite example of designing dysfunction, as it was discovered quickly after the game’s release, and can affect the experience in so many ways. During their playthrough, Game Grumps uses the glitch to intentionally and unintentionally manipulate the game. Typically, they use it to sequence break — meaning to skip to an area in the game they aren’t meant to access yet — sometimes to skip a puzzle or fight they didn’t want to complete the intended way, and sometimes because the area was just out of reach. In some instances, however, they simple attempted to cause interesting bugs or test the limits of the game’s engine. In one instance, they try jumping as high as they can to repeatedly watch the AI characters — programmed to teleport to the player’s location — fall out of the sky and teleport back up to them repeatedly, which exposes how the mechanic works and its shortcomings. In another, they simply let themselves jump out of the loaded game world and fall into the void, seeing if the game will ever return them from out of bounds — which it never did. In another instance, an entire town that was entered improperly did not load, confusing the Game Grumps, until they left and returned — revealing the area was simply unloaded and that they had unknowingly skipped a loading zone. All these instances and others allow players interested in defying the game’s intended play mode a very accessible way to actively glitch the game without outside software — so long as they have access to Knuckles as a playable character.
Anyone interested in seeing the glitch for themselves can watch this video by Game Grumps: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJyiWoe3bUg
All rights to the video and its content belong to Game Grumps, and I am not related to or endorsed by them, nor are they endorsed by me.
Works Cited:
Ferreia, Pedro, and Luisa Ribas. “Post-Digital Aesthetics in Contemporary Audiovisual Art.” Https://2020.Xcoax.org/, 2020.xcoax.org/pdf/xCoAx2020-Ferreira.pdf.
