Gameplay Journal Entry #5

Glitch

A glitch is the deviation or divergence from the original programing code or its intentions. Glitches can be graphical, audial, affect gameplay, or any combination of the above. There have been glitches that do not render a character’s face correctly and it will look like something out of your worst nightmare. An audio glitch could be that you can hear characters talking through one-foot-thick stone walls. A gameplay glitch could be randomly falling through the ground and freefalling for eternity. Menkman sees a “glitch as a wonderful interruption that shifts an object away from its ordinary form and discourse, towards the ruins of destroyed meaning” (340). So, a glitch is an unexpected manifestation or occurrence that was not intended by the original code.

Glitches can be surprisingly funny. In Skyrim, there is a small chance that a chicken will spawn into the game world and be as big as a house as seen below.

Giant Chicken Glitch (0:43)

This does not affect the game in any way other than having the chicken out of scale. It sill has low health and dies in one hit and walks around slowly. Its just jarring to be walking through town, turn the corner, and be face-to-face with a 20 foot tall chicken.

Glitches can also be exploited towards the players benefit. In Skyrim, if you steel an item within view of its owner, they can report you and can have a bounty placed on you. One “glitch” is to place a bucket or similar item over the owner’s head, then you can steel whatever you want, and the owner won’t be able to “see” you do it.

Bucket-Head Glitch (4:57)

With this “glitch”, you will in theory never have to pay for anything in the game ever again.

Sources:

Menkman, Rosa. ‘Glitch Studies Manifesto’ in Geert Lovink and Rachel Somers Miles (eds) Video Vortex Reader II: moving images beyond YouTube, Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, 2011, pp. 336–347.