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The third week of November 2024 was a challenging one. I was switching between playing two distinct games released that week: Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl and Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024. Neither experience was favorable.
When I say “playing,” I primarily mean “gazing at loading screens.” Between Stalker 2’s perpetually compiling shaders and Flight Sim’s endlessly activating packages, I spent the majority of the week dismally waiting for the progress bar to reach 100%. But that was merely the beginning. Once the games actually booted up, they were tremendously janky. Stalker 2 was quaintly so, yet Flight Sim much less so.
Jank is peculiar because it evokes one of two entirely opposing responses in me: it’s either “Haha, adore it” or “I require the party accountable to be paraded through the streets and pelted with decaying produce while a no-nonsense woman rings a large bell and proclaims ‘Shame! Shame!'”
What makes jank excusable, even endearing at times, while at other times it’s utterly maddening? It ultimately hinges on several factors:
Personal background
There’s a character in Stalker 2 buried in the ground up to his neck. Yes, up to his neck, not down to his neck: his head is underground while his entire body sticks straight up, with his boots in the air. I have a fondness for him, just like I do for the individual who is snoozing three feet above his bed, as both remind me of the earlier Stalker titles, which were likewise hilariously janky. I can’t interact with this character because he’s immobilized in the ground, which should frustrate me, yet I still find solace in the warmth of nostalgia.
I’m uncertain how many hours I’ve invested in Shadow of Chernobyl and Call of Pripyat, but I would estimate at least 150 hours combined. The infamously janky Bethesda RPGs, such as Oblivion, Skyrim, and Fallout 3 and 4 likely tally up to over 1,000 hours. I wouldn’t have devoted that much time to those realms if I hadn’t cherished them, so encountering jank in newer titles from the same developers like Stalker 2 or Starfield, I’m far more inclined to overlook it than I would be in a series I hadn’t already invested so many hours in.
Open environments
Open environments are intricate, and I tend to be quite forgiving of jank within them. Sandboxes contain a plethora of stuff, and that stuff moves about and collides with other stuff. Creatures, foes, and NPCs must traverse complicated landscapes, interact with one another, and navigate around, over, or through various objects and hurdles. This is no simple task, especially when the player arrives and contributes (or perhaps removes) additional objects and challenges, or even alters the terrain.
Indeed, that extraterrestrial cow in No Man’s Sky appears to be a janky fool wandering around. This is because the planet beneath it was procedurally generated roughly 30 seconds prior, and the alien about 10 seconds ago. It’s not a hand-animated being in a linear level constructed by a designer; it’s an entity that just began to exist, traversing across another entity that just became a reality. Open worlds, particularly those that are procedurally generated, are hotspots of jank, and I’m mostly fine with that.
Advancement
When jank begins to genuinely frustrate me, it’s typically because it’s wasting my time. I can’t finish a mission in Stalker 2 because the last antagonist is wedged behind a wall and can’t be eliminated? That’s unfortunate, as I must first expend time and effort trying to defeat him through a wall, and ultimately I’ll have to concede and restart the mission, sometimes from the very beginning. Similarly, if I can’t conclude a 45-minute flight because I can’t access the airplane’s parking space as it’s beneath a damn building, that’s not particularly charming.
Yet there is a counterpoint to jank consuming time: jank saving time. In another Stalker mission, a group of foes failed to recognize me as a threat—even after I commenced shooting them in their silly faces. I executed one of the most disastrous landings of my life in Flight Sim, but it jankily awarded me a top-tier rating even though I ended up resting in the bushes. Cheers, jank! I nearly forgive you for squandering an hour of my time earlier.
Anticipations
Every game is essentially an early access title now. Games are going to be launched with bugs, glitches, issues, and jank, and subsequently, post-launch patches and bug fixes will be issued to smooth out some of the rough edges. How many titles have we observed this year that debuted with immediate “Mixed” reviews rating on Steam due to jank and eventually settled to “Positive” a few days or weeks later? Numerous.
Therefore, if you’re planning to play a game the moment it launches, it’s helpful to anticipate a certain degree of jank. I realize, that’s somewhat unfortunate, not just for players but for diligent developers who might lack the time or resources necessary to present the game in the state they envisioned. But it’s the nature of the situation. I even found it necessary to take a break from my cherished Stalker 2 after one too many…
Progress-stalling glitches during that first week. Engage in a game on day one and you’ve got to anticipate some quirks, and if you don’t begrudgingly accept this new normal, then I believe the sole remedy might be to cease playing games on their release day.
Humor
I can overlook nearly anything if it elicits laughter. Cyberpunk 2077 was a chaotic disaster at launch, but wow, was it ever amusing. Directly outside of V’s apartment there was a bend in the road that no car or truck could navigate without colliding directly into the concrete barrier at the curb. I stood there for quite some time observing NPCs smash their windshields, carve ditches in their doors, shed their front and rear bumpers, and occasionally totally obliterate their vehicles.
Sometimes glitches are so delightful, we simply can’t do without them.
This peculiar instance of jank persisted for months. There would be patches, updates, and bug fixes, and every time I implemented a new patch and initiated the game, I would rush down to that corner to see if NPCs were still demolishing their cars against that barrier. And the day it was finally rectified… I was honestly a tad bit disappointed. I occasionally wish that unintentionally hilarious glitches would never be patched. I’m not the only one thinking this: when Bethesda eliminated those bizarre moving mannequins from Skyrim, a modder promptly restored them. Sometimes glitches are so delightful, we simply can’t do without them.
Naturally, I could be overanalyzing all of this. Perhaps the reason we excuse glitches is straightforward: we adore games, even when they have their imperfections. If we only cherished things that were flawless, we would never adore anything at all.
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