A trending discussion on social media this week about the absurd complexity of developing games with doors (doors!) got me thinking about game-breaking glitches and the absurd complexity of developing games with other things besides doors too.
“Doors are complicated to have in games and have all sorts of possible bugs,” Death Trash developer Stephan Hövelbrinks tweeted on Tuesday. “Mostly because they’re a dynamic funnel and block in the pathfinding, potentially locked, potentially destructable [sic], but in general because they sit potentially between any game interaction or character to character situation from here to there.”
Doors #gamedev pic.twitter.com/7CJgKin1dE
— Stephan Hövelbrinks (@talecrafter) March 9, 2021
I dunno about you, but that’s new information to me. I mean, I know game development necessarily involves a lot of “if this, else that, else if…” code to manage inter-connected contingencies like these but it’s a kind of an abstract, huh-I-guess-so concept. Like I also know those Nespresso coffee pods are super toxic for the environment, but I’m totally disconnected from the inconvenient reality that the planet is choking on non-biodegradeable junk because I love those Nespresso coffee pods. Actually, maybe that’s not exactly the same but you know what I mean.
That code is built into every second of every game, but so what, I’m too busy wrecking polygons in the Federal Bureau of Control to appreciate the stupid doors.
I don’t exactly know how many man-months went into the door system in Control, but more than most abilities and weapons, for sure.
— Sergey Mohov (@krides) March 9, 2021
Oops, my bad.
So, huh, I guess so. It makes sense that a glitch in door logic can break a game. A glitch in some campaign event sequence that misses a semi-colon, skips a loop, and breaks the game? That too, because subsequent campaign events probably can’t initialise without it. Fixing the previous glitch, accidentally introducing a new glitch, $breakthegame++? That sucks, but I get it. I’ve copy-pasted random PHP into some of our website core code and broken it, so I’m basically a game over developer now. Same namespace, different class.
But the glitch that the wiped the 50GB Fallout 76 beta client on PC by clicking a button? Okay, it’s a Bethesda game so “it’s Bethesda game” is important context, but even those of us who finished Fallout 4 despite Fallout 4 must concede that’s a next-level glitch.
In a since-deleted tweet, Bethesda’s social media team told players to “not click any buttons on the client for the time being” and I wish I could’ve been in the office for that awkward conversation.
SCENE
“Sorry, the glitch what?”
“It wipes the beta client, boss.”
“The entire beta client?”
“The entire beta client, boss.”
“…”
“Buttons are hard, boss. Like doors.”
“Like doors? Shit, doors are complicated.”
One of them takes a slow drag on a cigarette. The smoke hangs in the room like some sort of contrived ambience.
“Don’t worry, boss, we’ve got our top nerds working on it.”
“Buttons.”
“Buttons, boss.”
“Buttons are like doors.”
“Buttons are like doors, boss. The space between the user and the game. Lots of things can go wrong.”
“But what do we tell Twitter?”
“It doesn’t matter, boss. We can delete the tweet later.”
END SCENE
NEW SCENE
Boss wakes up. The neon display on the bedside alarm clock reads 03:47. A wolf howls.
“People. People are like doors. PEOPLE ARE LIKE DOORS.”
CREDITS
Boom, it’s out this summer.
Anyway, that’s what I was thinking about.