do game glitches make you uncomfortable?

[Glen]

this is a topic that's been swirling around in my head for awhile, and i know a couple people who feel similarly to me but i really haven't asked very many others. when games begin to act irregularly it really freaks me out (mostly old games, i'd say; though that might just be because it's more likely that i've played them before and that leads me to my next point), and i think it has to do with knowing what to expect and having those expectations broken.

this is something we are not mentally prepared for. it's as if, when reading a book for the fifth time, one of the pages is different. when a game you're experienced with glitches out graphically or auditorily, it's almost a supernatural experience. it's like hearing a loud noise in your house at night when you're the only one in it, only more bizarre because it's much easier to pin a noise in your house on external forces.

i distinctly remember playing pokemon as a young child and quite honestly being too uncomfortable to even hold my gameboy once i started taking the missingno stuff to the next level (garbled cries and things like that).

 

[cantab]

I like glitches, I like to investigate them, they generally interest me greatly. I like to find out what's possible. This can include using cheats. Flying the tank in GTA3 springs to mind.

 

[Firestorm]

I haven't had that happen, but I always feel uneasy and second-guess myself when I start doing things in the game that I don't think I should be doing. For example, making jumps just in the right way where I feel like the game designer likely intended me to go down a different path, but I'm just using the mechanics differently to go a different way and that's gonna screw me over later. Usually this turns out to be wrong on my part and the way I'm going is the correct path, but every now and then I find out I missed an entire section of the game!

 

[Glen]

i wasn't sure if this was better suited for cong or IR but i chose the former because the psychological ramifications of all this are what i was most looking forward to discussing!

the examples you guys give aren't entirely what i'm talking about. it's not that i have issues with exploiting game mechanics or things like that because when i do that the game is still being to my will and doing what i want it to do. i only get nervous when they behave in unexpected ways. i think this is where the allure of the pokemon black version creepypasta comes from!

for example, in super metroid, i'm all about sequence breaks and their ilk. using the murder beam to graphically destroy the game and start falling through the floor while hearing odd sounds kinda weirds me out though!

 

[Lee]

Yes! And like you, I can trace the source of my trauma back to Missingno. Even after all these years I can't quite put my finger on what it was...I wouldn't even go near Cinnabar Island. My little brother would rib me for being such a wimp, so I started telling him 'ghost stories' and made it out as though Missingno was an actual living being that resided in his game cartridge. That freaked him out.

Some glitches I'm okay with...for example the 'wear Fierce Deity mask anywhere' in Majora's Mask where essentially you just go to a certain place on the map, put on the Zoras Mask and then quickly put the on the Fierce Deity mask and voila! But when glitches start resulting in color distortion, garbled cries, blatant defiance of the games mechanics etc I honestly do get uncomfortable. A good recent example is Fallout 3 - a fantastic game but the PS3 version is crawling with glitches. There's a certain enemy called the Deathclaw; 8 foot humanoid monsters with huge claws. Unfortunately they have a habit of flying directly up into the air for no apparent reason (nb: they can't actually fly) and vanishing. Here's the explanation from Fallout wiki.

Hide

'The deathclaws that spawn around the entrance to the Sanctuary have been known to suddenly and spontaneously shoot up into the air. This seems to be caused by their spawn points placing them slightly below a surface they should otherwise be standing on, the resulting reaction of the physics engine seems to propel them skyward.

When that happens, I just wanna get out of that area ASAP...it's a similar feeling to when I was a child exploring abandoned buildings with a pal and we thought we saw a ghost (heh, odd comparison but im being serious) and it's all 'ok this is fucking with my mind and i don't want to be here anymore.'

 

[cantab]

I was listening to music on my DS once and I had this one track really glitch up. Quite amazing actually, it produced something totally different, it wasn't just like white noise. Never been able to repeat the glitch...which only makes it even more incredible.

 

[Staraptor Call]

Most glitches I have no problems with. If it's something like a small graphics glitch where there's a blank area or a small spot that shouldn't be there, it doesn't bother me. In fact, I enjoy hunting for and finding small glitches because when I do so I get to find things I'm not supposed to find. There are some glitches that make me uncomfortable, though. A good example is the Bad Egg in RSE, which messes with your boxes, duplicates itself, can lock up the day care permanently, can never leave your party, and will make you have to restart the game if you beat the Elite Four. Thankfully, I've never experienced this glitch. Tweaking to get to inaccessible areas in D/P also weirds me out. Glitches only bother me when they can mess up the game, or seem like they can.

 

[GMLW]

Tweaking to get to inaccessible areas in D/P also weirds me out.

My friend once did that by accident. The result? He could re-use the same Rare Candy an infinite amount of times. Sounds pretty good to me.

Glitches creep me out. It always makes me worry that there's something wrong with me game and all sorts of bad things will happen to my game.

 

[Mike B]

The infinite money glitch in Portrait of Ruin recessed my desire to make money by other means.


Watching things go horribly wrong in a game usually amuses me, since I just laugh in my head at how bad the coders/testers are.

 

[phalanx]

yea i dont mind glitches, if they are harmless, missingno glitch was, i did find an odd graphics glitch in HG/SS where the outer pixels in one building would be differant

 

[havoc]

yes yes yes. also, the first time I ever played pokemon (red version) when I was 10, my Nidorino evolved on its own to Nidoking at level 37, so when I found out that that wasn't what was supposed to happen I was scared that my game cartridge was going to break or something. I still instinctually think that the Nidorinos/as evolve naturally, not via Moon Stones.

missingno gets to me and the fact that it messes up the hall of fame thing really weirds me out. I distinctly remember after encountering missingno checking my hall of fame and there was a really weird music that started playing and it wouldn't stop unless the game was turned off.

 

[PlatinumDude]

I don't like glitches at all. I feel like my games could be damaged in some way if there were some glitches in them.

 

[Ramblin Wreck]

Hide

'The deathclaws that spawn around the entrance to the Sanctuary have been known to suddenly and spontaneously shoot up into the air. This seems to be caused by their spawn points placing them slightly below a surface they should otherwise be standing on, the resulting reaction of the physics engine seems to propel them skyward.

I actually enjoy most glitches (aside from the data-corrupting variety) for this very reason. It gives you some extra insight into how the game works and how it handles data. To me, it's like psychology: you learn the most about the mind when you study what can go wrong because you then find out where it went wrong, thus leading to knowledge of how it's supposed to work. Anything that gives me an opportunity to learn something new is something that I welcome.

 

[kiryu3000]

For me, it depends on the potential damage a glitch can do on a game cartridge. When I was little, I was told that catching Missingno can damage the Red/Blue cartridge, so Missingno gave me the scares. Nowadays, since I've only been playing console games, I'm not really afraid of glitches because they cannot damage the medium in which the game is stored (i.e. DVD's and Blu-ray discs); in fact, I find most of them amusing or annoying. The latter include glitches that freezes the game or keeps me in limbo. For example, I was playing Demon's Souls trying to jump off a ledge and for some reason instead of me falling, I was floating. The game wouldn't let me open the menu, so I was forced to quit using the PS button, which I find annoying.

 

[Bynine]

Kabutops and Aerodactyl Missingno scared me as a child. Supernatural animated skeletons with their weird cries and game mutating capabilites. Especially the Hall of Fame.

 

[Minwu]

no. we'll eventually master the medium of digital distribution by ultimately calling glitches features in later patches

 

[Tobes]

I'm only affected by a glitch when it directly interferes with my gameplay. Example: Getting killed by a smoke grenade glitch in Gears of War 2 is annoying as all hell, while a glitch that I just recently encountered on Horde freaked me out. A Mauler was standing on top of my Boomshield, and I seriously thought that I was about to die (as in in-game oc). That sort of thing unnerves me.

 

[Glen]

yes yes yes. also, the first time I ever played pokemon (red version) when I was 10, my Nidorino evolved on its own to Nidoking at level 37, so when I found out that that wasn't what was supposed to happen I was scared that my game cartridge was going to break or something. I still instinctually think that the Nidorinos/as evolve naturally, not via Moon Stones.

missingno gets to me and the fact that it messes up the hall of fame thing really weirds me out. I distinctly remember after encountering missingno checking my hall of fame and there was a really weird music that started playing and it wouldn't stop unless the game was turned off.

god yes the hall of fame was unbearable. the weird cries and the music. aghhhhh.

 

[The Shadow Knight]

yes yes yes. also, the first time I ever played pokemon (red version) when I was 10, my Nidorino evolved on its own to Nidoking at level 37, so when I found out that that wasn't what was supposed to happen I was scared that my game cartridge was going to break or something. I still instinctually think that the Nidorinos/as evolve naturally, not via Moon Stones.

missingno gets to me and the fact that it messes up the hall of fame thing really weirds me out. I distinctly remember after encountering missingno checking my hall of fame and there was a really weird music that started playing and it wouldn't stop unless the game was turned off.

You probably know this already, but just in case: link

On the topic of glitches being discomforting:
I've never been bothered by them, quite the opposite actually, I've always found them very interesting and I have experimented quite a lot with the Ditto Glitch and the Hexes that cause some weird stuff(Like this).

Back in the old days I never dared catching Missingno. though, since everyone was so damn certain it would eat your save file.

I never played around with glitches in other games.