terrain, or The Cursed Pickle of
Shireton, a raucous faux-MMO
that runs in text-based debug
mode thanks to a
‘malfunctioning’ graphics
engine. But there are also
big-budget titles such as Metal
Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes,
which may be ‘infected’ by the
fictitious FOXDIE virus, and
Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s
Requiem, where stressing your
character out might see the
game pretending to delete your
save data. These projects give
you a glimpse of the artistic
potential in the disruption of
form and function; they don’t
just ‘turn bugs into features’ but
suggest that imperfections can
be a source of drama.
But what exactly counts as a
bug or glitch? These concepts
are arguably meaningless in
themselves: they are defined
with reference to specific
common way of avoiding this is to frame them as
problems with a technology inside the game’s
world. The most famous example is Assassin’s
Creed, in which modern-day protagonists relive
the lives of their ancestors care of the Animus, a
piece of holographic genetic memory tech.
The Animus – or at least, the present-day
storyline it connects to – is often reviled by fans as
a wonky distraction; Ubisoft’s own marketing
department was dubious about it back in 2006.
But it has proven to be a powerful storytelling
framework, allowing Ubisoft to string a dozen
games in different eras into one, on-going
sci-fantasy intrigue. It allows the developer to
explain away contrivances such as the HUD itself
as features of the Animus software. And of course,
it allows the game to dramatise errors – notably,
catastrophic ‘desynchronisation’ resets when you
fail to act as your ancestor would have acted.ALTAÏR EGO
If Assassin’s Creed is a potent ‘glitch game’,
however, it is also a game about fixing glitches and
reconciling the tension between the Animus UI
and the setting. “We didn’t want the Animus
technology to overwhelm the player or to break
the experience by having too much ‘data stuff’
happening,” observes Nicolas Rivart, visual design
director on Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, released in- Rather, the new game’s Animus and Norse
aesthetics are carefully entwined. “Given that the
machine is decoding the memories of a Viking
chieftain, we felt that it would be interesting to
show the visual elements of the era transferring to
the Animus.” The Animus of Assassin’s Creed
Origins, Rivart goes on, had a “goldish, sand-
stormy feel” reflecting its Ancient Egyptian
timeframe. For Valhalla, the developer has based
technologies and expectations. There are plenty of
graphical errors, such as texture-wobbling in 3D
PS1 games, that are embraced as hallmarks of a
particular platform rather than slammed as
failings. Similarly, lighting issues that are
overlooked in lo-fi productions might be perceived
as terrible shortcomings in blockbuster shooters
with slick, photorealistic aesthetics. Simulating a
glitch is thus a kind of silent, inverted commentary
on a game’s production and design context. It
reveals the unvoiced rules and assumptions that
surround these games by breaking them.
There’s obviously the risk that a pretend error
might be interpreted as the real deal. OneSIMULATING A GLITCH IS
THUS A KIND OF SILENT,
INVERTED COMMENTARY ON
A GAME’S PRODUCTION
AND DESIGN CONTEXT
FEBRUARY 2021 59 59Breaking Ground
FE ATURE
LEF T: You’ll face
digitised
arch-demons in
Pony Island.
MAIN: Valhalla’s
anomalies jolt you
out of character.