iddqd through it, blasting everything you see, fine. If it means that you play it with more constraints on yourself than the developer places on you, fine. It doesn't matter. It's entertainment.•Games are rule-based systems in which the goal is for one player to win. They involve "opposing players who acknowledge and respond to one another’s actions. The difference between games and puzzles has little to do with mechanics; we can easily turn many puzzles and athletic challenges into games and vice versa."Video games have mechanics, yes, and these mechanics resemble rules. If a glitch allows the player to circumvent some of those mechanics, you can argue that this goes against the creators' intentions. Such a glitch signifies a failure of execution on the part of the game's creator in implementing that intention.
•Puzzles are rule-based systems, like games, but the goal is to find a solution, not to beat an opponent. Unlike games, puzzles have little replay value.
•Toys are manipulable, like puzzles, but there is no fixed goal.
•Stories involve fantasy play, like toys, but cannot be changed or manipulated by the player.
For instance, in the realm of computer entertainment software,
•Quake is a game, which includes some puzzles.
•The Incredible Machine is a series of puzzles, which includes a toy-like construction set for building puzzles.
•SimCity is a toy, which players make more puzzle-like by setting their own goals.
•Myst is a story, which happens to be told partly through puzzles.
As a developer, when you release a game, THATS IT. Thats what the player has to play. Unless you patch it, its over. Trying to figure out what the developer was intending is stupid for a number of reasons. There are probably a number of obviously fair tactics the developers didn’t intend or think about. Players won’t and shouldn’t play in some sterile ‘what would jesus-imeandeveloper do?’ way. They figure out and exploit the nuances.When I play Super Mario Bros, I always attempt to jump into the first pit in level 1-1 at full-speed. If I miss that pit, I either reset the game or stop playing. Why? At this point, it's a tradition, and it's a tradition that I value higher than the game's implicit objective of avoiding hazards. Why should I put the developer's intent over my own enjoyment? I happen to love falling down that pit at full speed, at first because it pissed off my friend when I was a kid, but now because this is how I play Super Mario Bros now. By your definition, m0nm0n, I'm cheating when I do this, but I cannot help but strenuously reject that choice of terms: I'd be cheating to jump into that pit at less than maximum velocity, or (worse) to continue through the level without jumping into that pit at least once.
Games that are interesting are not interesting because the designers perfectly plotted every little detail of the game. That is umpossiblz. Instead, they make games interesting by creating environments where interesting nuances and details will emerge. Whether or not something is a glitch doesn’t exactly matter. Glitches and exploits have often been legitimized in games by the developers, and obviously intended tactics have been removed because the developer went “My god, what was I thinking!”
If there's not another human involved that I'm competing with, it doesn't matter what the creator intended: it's my game and I'll play it how I want.I'm going to assume you've just given me explicit permission here to TAS (and I mean utterly destroy) the next exquisite knorpse.
posted by jsnlxndrlv at 6:05 PM on December 8 [!]
I think there's a mistake in the title. That wasn't Symphony of the Night, it was too broken to be! In other words, yes vote. :pThere's also some debate on whether he cheated the TAS rules by starting with a glitched memory card that unlocks some things for sale earlier than you'd get them otherwise.
You broke the graphics and most of the game as well. Yes vote.
don't the rules say that you must start from a clean starting point?posted by Nelson at 1:47 PM on December 9, 2010
You shouldn't do it unless there is a good reason but like all rules they can be broken for the sake of entertainment. If arukAdo decides the run is better without a clean memory card I'm inclined to agree with him.
« Older 14 Actors Acting (nytimes).... | The University of Washington's... Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
Also known as Trainers, or just plain cheating.
posted by Old'n'Busted at 9:59 AM on December 8, 2010 [2 favorites]