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In one of the many memorable moments of Ricky Gervais's BBC television
series The Office, troublemaker Tim encases Gareth's stapler in
Jell-O. Gareth is annoyed, and the viewer is amused, because both
comprehend the act immediately: it is a prank.
Pranks
are a type of dark humor that trace a razor's edge between amusement
and injury. The risks inherent to pranks contribute to our enjoyment
of them.
This includes the risk of getting caught in the act, or the
risk that the object of the prank might become hurt or insulted. And
yet, this risk also gives pranks their social power. Because he risks
blame, the prankster affirms his relationship to the victim.
The same is true when the victim chooses to laugh the prank off rather than to
mope. If that victim chooses to retaliate later, the result is not
spite but a playful type of social bonding.
Developer
Pranks
One
obvious connection between pranks and video games are tricks
developers play on their employers or publishers. The easter egg is
one example. An easter egg, of course, is a hidden message in media
of all kinds, from movies to games. In software, ester eggs are
usually triggered obscure sequences of commands, such as the hidden
flight simulator in Microsoft Excel 97.
Software
easter eggs arose partly in response to the cold anonymity of the
computer, and the first video game easter egg had precisely this
problem in mind. In the late 1970s, Atari engineers created titles
for the Atari VCS singlehandedly, from concept to completion.
Despite
their undeniable role as authors of these games, the company did not
publish credits on the box, cartridge, or manual. When Warren
Robinett completed the classic graphical adventure Adventure in
1978, he included a hidden room with graphics that read, "Created
by Warren Robinett."
The
process of discovering the hidden message was complex and
unintuitive, although not difficult enough that it couldn't be done.
Atari learned of the prank when a 15 year-old player wrote the
company a letter about it. It was never removed from the game, and
Atari even used the gag to their own benefit, spinning
it
as a "secret message" in the first issue of fan magazine
Atari Age.
Soon enough, higher-ups embraced the easter egg as
a way of deepening players' relationships with their titles. Howard
Scott Warshaw's inclusion of his initials in 1982's Yars' Revenge
was fully endorsed by management.
A
more controversial prank can be found in SimCopter, a 1996
Maxis title that lets players fly helicopter missions around the
cities they create in SimCity 2000. Developer Jacques Servin
secretly added speedo-clad male bimbos (Servin called them "himbos")
who would meander the city and passionately kiss on certain calendar
dates. Servin cited unfavorable working conditions as an inspiration
for the prank, and he was subsequently fired.
This was just the start
of pranking for Servin, who has since made a practice of public
interventions as a member of the subversive activist collectives The
Yes Men and RTMark.
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Another game included was the 'infamous' Desert Bus mini-game, which was basically a prank on anyone who played it. You drive a bus (that constantly veers a little to one side) from Tuscon to Vegas. The bus goes at a constant speed and takes 8 hours to get to Vegas. When you get there, you get 1 point and turn around having to do the entire drive again. Hilarious.
Creating pranks with the hope of making people think a little about video games while being entertained, we always wonder if one aspect is not hiding the other. The prank and the game mechanism it plays on go hand in hand, and the more accepted, the more conventional the mechanism is, the more direct and efficient the comical effect of the prank is. The problem is that some conventions seem to be imprinted so deeply in our gamer's mind, so natural, so invisible that, even with a prank to underline them, people seem to hardly go a step further and question them. Currently we let our 'sabotages' speak for themselves and we keep our confidence in the pranks' ability to convey a message, but we are considering adding notes to share and discuss what we are trying to do, should this confidence waver.
I once had an NPC that would teleport players to good dungeons, but his text warned them that he was "just learning" and he had a randomized chance of shooting a player all over the map. (He was an ongoing theme in the MMO, not the brightest wizard around).
Another time we introduced a magic ring that changed attributes--not always good. Strangely, players would enjoy the prank if it was done in the proper spirit (never too harsh and with an inkling of what was to come--those are the best!).
Having just played Eternal Darkness, that's the first thing I thought of when I read this article. Another similar example is the Psycho Mantis fight in Metal Gear Solid.
As for the future of pranks in games, I'd like to see them target people who pirate games. Perhaps if any members of a team have any downtime they could add a prank to a version which they could then proliferate via torrents and P2P networks (sort of like those fake versions of mp3s that record companies put out for a while). If cleverly done, those versions could work as a demo of the game and maybe encourage people to buy the real version.