Gameplay Journal # 5

Given the complexity in software right now, a glitch is always expected. Based on my own experience, glitches can be defined as unwanted, unexpected, or unintended outcomes of the execution of a program. Glitches could happen in both software and hardware. In this week’s reading, Menkman address glitch as “a wonderful interruption.” (340) I agree that glitches can be wonderful from many perspectives. However, the glitch is not necessarily all interruptions under certain circumstances. A glitch in many situations is not single-sourced. In video games, it could be a side-effect of a series of incoherent designs, a logic error in coding, or a misrepresented visual element. Also, when we analyze a glitch, especially in video games, we sometimes need to put the glitch in content to define if it is one or not.

I have been playing World of Warcraft (WOW) for many years. There have been wonderful glitches in the past, and there will be many glitches in the future. Some glitches in the game could make conquering a boss much easier than it was originally designed. Some glitches could bring unfairness to PVP activities. The glitches that I liked the most are the ones that could bring players to areas that were not supposed to be reachable in the games. The Let’s Play video is a demonstration of this kind of glitch.

Link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8CFsBrbgDo

Since WOW has many major updates in the last 16 years, the incoherent designs caused many glitches in the game. In the video, a devil hunter reached the edge of a dungeon map via the ability of double jump and gliding, which did not exist when the map was first designed and built. Was this a glitch? It was not when there was no devil hunter in the game because there was no other class that could do so. Is it a glitch now? Yes, that is not an outcome within the intended gameplay. Did the glitch interrupt the gameplay? No, I do not think so. Even though it is a glitch, it did not crush the program, or cause errors. Furthermore, since most of the MMORPGs do not have a linear progression, the glitch became a kind of gameplay instead of interrupting gameplay.

Work Cited

Menkman, Rosa. “Glitch Studies Manifesto,” Video Vortex Reader II: Moving Images Beyond YouTube， PP 336–347, Institute of Network Cultures, 2011.